CAN'T. STOP. DIGGING!

Rabbits Online Forum

Help Support Rabbits Online Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Catlyn

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 12, 2019
Messages
2,347
Reaction score
1,536
Location
Estonia
So we've been with our fluff ball giant for about 3\4 a year now, he's been living inside for about 3-4 months(from mid-november or somewhere around that time) and he got neutered just after he moved inside with us too. He's a single bunny...

That's devoted to ABSOLUTELY WRECKING THE PLACE!
So here's the deal. He's in our living room permanently, with his cage compound there for the night, he usually gets to roam around most of the day.( he's kind of a lazy wart so he lays around almost always.) He has good litterbox habits most of the time, but he still sometimes feels the need to leave a smudge on our couch or my parents' bed like this morning. No biggie, mishaps do happen from time to time, he's been a naughty messy bun from the very start. He loves digging a lot when he's being active for once.
He digs HIS pillow, HIS rug. He flings around HIS cardboard box. And OUR beds, and OUR couches. OUR blankets and sheets have countless holes because of him. My sister's foam mattress is like a TRENCH HOLE because of his mischiefs. That poor mattress has digging holes all over it.
He munches on MY eraser, (i was dumbfounded by that and confiscated the item from his possession), my pencils. He took away an ash log of ours. (I think it was ash. A fairly light-coloured grey-white sort of bark, safe for buns to eat.) Not that i object of him chewing that. But! ... He steals OUR gummies, OUR chips and OUR chocolate, fish cookies too. He zoomed away with a bite of my bread!

Just for a disclaimer though:
I picked him EXACTLY because he was a little booger thumper, sir-grunt-a-lot. Because i thought with him living outside, it wouldn't be such a big deal if he's a tad bit wonky. But it makes him mischevious when indoors. So i have come here in hopes of finding some solutions.

I am tired of putting up box barriers on my bed, massive pillows on the couch and sister's bed, taking away carpets so he won't get tempted to go to parents' bedroom.

His litterbox is a okay, he can't spill or fling it. When it gets full, he drizzles skmewhere else. We change the pellets in the box and it's okay again. That i know how to solve.

The digging, however, not so much.
He has his box, but he's tempted to chew it. Not good.
We can't seem to find a box that would be undestroyable and also big enough for him to dig about in. Our closest attempt with one he could fit into was filled with hay. That lagomorph had to go and use it as his toilet. Not good.
I'd give him toys. The only ones i could access are tp roll and crdbrd ones. (Our pet supplies are absolutely limited here.) He EATS them, like literally. Not good.
He smashed his roller ball. We can't get another one anytime soon.
I'd give him a tube tunnel, but he's too big for any of them out there and as dear as he is to me, i'm not willing to pay 20€ just to get one for him. Same with mazes. Not good.
Parents absolutely decline getting him a buddy. And i understand their reasoning. We're financially and spacely tight right now. He'll get a friend when i move one day.

So he's a huge dig-o-maniac that i cannot seem to properly distract from mischief. Luckily he hasn't struck cable wires at all despite wrecking my earbuds a dozen times.

ALL HELP VERY MUCJ APPRECIATED!!!
 
One toilet paper tube worth of cardboard a day is not going to harm him as long as he is still eating hay. If you can find a shallow storage tote and put safe digging material in it. I'm glad they finally let you get him neutered!
 
Yes yes indeed, him nibbling on the cardboard will do him no harm, but he treats cardboard as if it were hay-when it comes from boxes or small leaflets, he just scarfs it down into his mouth. When we took him for myxo-whatever vaccine on his b-day 30th jan, he rode beneeath my feet in a cardboard box. Yea he might've been nervous or excited, but he nearly ate one of the smaller box wing flaps or whatever they're called.
We do have shallow storage totes sold around here, but they're not cheap at all. My half-a-meter long bun will not be happy in those since they're too small for him. We use what dad calles a "builder's box" for his litter crate which is around 40X60\70 or smth cm long snd shallow\deep enough for bun to possibly hop in and wreak havoc within. The problem is, that box was a novelty which dad got through his connections and he won't be able to get another one. Dad won't want to drive me into bigger shops further away either.
One thing bun seems to be happy with is a carpetless scrap of floor right beneath his cage, my bed overhang and the cupboards behind the cage. This creates a small tunnelwork that he seems to be hiding away in when dad annoys him too much or when he's absorbing cool for himself.

But because he seems to have and love destroying ALL AND ALL cardboard toys and cat balls that i've gotten him, i'm running low on toy ideas.
I love those desk-like fun centers for small animals but they don't sell them anywhere near me....
 
sounds like he'd love a hay bale to dig, chew, destroy! even a bale of straw would work. Messy, yes, but it might save your furniture. I agree with others, cardboard isn't likely to hurt him. You can buy sea grass mats at World Market or online and he can have fun destroying those too.
 
Where in the world is this world market? We do not have seagrass mats for sale around here.
The bale of hay he had for digging just ended up as his second toilet so we had to dump half a bale "out the window." His pee seeped through the box and corroded some of our floor so it's like a bumpy frog's skin now...
 
I went snooping around some shops today to see if anything suitable has come for sale. The best thing i could've found was a weirdly weak plastic container about 60×40×40 cm in size. Musti is a jumper but that box would've been too high for him to jump into and i'm not willing to pay 16.95 just so he could possibly break a bone of his.
I was asking my dad if we couldn't build Musti a wooden crate, but dad did not take it up on my offer...
 
There are more toys some made of willow branches and you can google for toys made of straw placemats too, if you have straw you can make a plenty of toys rabbits love them and it's easy to make really.

Get some old willow basket for him to destroy, straw mats cut some apple tree branches and make a mat of them, use your imagination

http://www.therabbithouse.com/blog/category/rabbit-toys-enrichment/
 
I would've never thought of using cardboard that way! I'll definetly try it out!
 
So we don't have this much cardboard, but i made a mat for him from newspapers. Now i'm wondering, is it safe for him?
 
Have you thought of blocking off access to those other rooms when he is out. You can certainly give your bunny a room or part of a room where your family hangs out. You could use 2 puppy pen that will give you 24 square feet or 3 of them that will give you 36 square feet but you want to consider his size. An area of 70 square feet would be better.
 
Have you thought of blocking off access to those other rooms when he is out. You can certainly give your bunny a room or part of a room where your family hangs out. You could use 2 puppy pen that will give you 24 square feet or 3 of them that will give you 36 square feet but you want to consider his size. An area of 70 square feet would be better.
No no, he acts well in those other rooms. The problem that i stated was that he was destroying everything in our living room, where he and i reside. I'd had enough of him digging where unwanted as i dreamt of ketting him roam completely cage-free but since he's a destroyer, i'd been looking for other ways of distraction for him.

We also don't have any pup pens sold in estonia, and i ain't paying 40+40€ transport fee and pens themselves, neither do we have space for those. They'd get in the way EVERYWHERE, so it'd be easier to just find distraction toys of some sort, that's why i came here.

Bun is about 50×20 cm long, weighs aaalmost 6kg, big french lop boy.
 
Last edited:
So we don't have this much cardboard, but i made a mat for him from newspapers. Now i'm wondering, is it safe for him?
The newspaper is safe for him. How did you make it? I love trying out DIY things for Theo. If you don't have much cardboard I would go to a grocery store and ask if you can take some boxes. I do that for Theo all the time and they never charge me. It actually helps them out and gives them one+ less box to worry about.
 
No no, he acts well in those other rooms. The problem that i stated was that he was destroying everything in our living room, where he and i reside. I'd had enough of him digging where unwanted as i dreamt of ketting him roam completely cage-free but since he's a destroyer, i'd been looking for other ways of distraction for him.

We also don't have any pup pens sold in estonia, and i ain't paying 40+40€ transport fee and pens themselves, neither do we have space for those. They'd get in the way EVERYWHERE, so it'd be easier to just find distraction toys of some sort, that's why i came here.

Bun is about 50×20 cm long, weighs aaalmost 6kg, big french lop boy.

You could try getting a cardboard box and fill it up with crumbled up or shredded brown paper bags. You could fill paper bags with hay and treats. You could make him a digging box similar to those cat cardboard scratchers. You can cut the cardboard into lengths and then place them up right in the box and sprinkle treats or hay on top.
 
Saturday, july 2013 entry in the blog link given above shows how to make one from brown packaging paper, but i didn't have that, so i :
  1. took away the newspapers' middle clamps\staples (have no idea what they're actually called?)
  2. Folded the big open sheets in half continously until i had the thickness\width of a single strip that i wanted ( mine was about 2 cm)
  3. So i made a bunch of those strips. I think you may try ironing them a little between some cooking paper or do some other trickery. So that they don't actually fold apart again while you weave them( i used yellow painters' tape and removed it later)
  4. I took the blog post as a reference and wove it the same way as it showed. Hiding the newspapers' ends was a little tricky for me because some short ones wouldn't stay tucked. Neeh, i left them be thinking that it'll all be torn anyway...
  5. And it seems that Musti doesn't fancy it very much, he'd rather debark some wood sticks\logs.
I hope your bun aint't so picky like mine is.
 
The bale of hay he had for digging just ended up as his second toilet so we had to dump half a bale "out the window." His pee seeped through the box and corroded some of our floor so it's like a bumpy frog's skin now...

Not sure if you understood cloverhouse's meaning. She wasn't referring to putting a bunch of loose hay in a cardboard box. From the underlined portion above, it sounds like that was what you tried?? That is certainly a good idea for many rabbits but I don't think it is what cloverhouse was meaning.

Cloverhouse was referring to setting down a full, intact bale of hay (or straw) for him to dig and burrow. A bale like this, without cutting any strings. (If you did this, I'd put it on top of a folded piece of plastic tarp.)
 

Attachments

  • 100_9326.JPG
    100_9326.JPG
    87.7 KB · Views: 4
Last edited:
@Blue eyes Yes i think i misinterpreted. I did just stuff a bunch of hay into a box, hoping it'd statisfy him. He dug in it a nest-like hole and munched the stuff around it. Hopping off, he'd always leave poops behind and when something started to stink, we'd found a puddle of stagnant pee below the box. I haven't tried giving him a full bale since the bales we had collapsed. When we get new ones, we'll definetly give it a go.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top