I. Can’t. Sleep.

[AnitaBee]

My bunny has been getting more and more destructive at night. I’ve had him for a year and about 7 months now and he was never too annoying at night, he’s free roam so I had gotten used to him hopping around at night and eating. He sleeps in my room btw.
Anyways, it is been in these last few months that he has been getting destructive at night. I could deal with the chewing on EVERYTHING, because I bunny proof and at night I cover up what he likes to usually go for, all my wires are tucked away, so it’s a bareable thing. When he finds something new to chew, I just cover it up. What i can’t stand is the digging on everything on purpose to get my attention. He digs on the door and it makes an extremely loud echo or he digs on the side of my desk, on the wall, and he does it every five seconds. I’m not sleeping anymore. A night, I sleep until 2:30 am and then I’m up all night till around 5 am when he decides to calm down completely. What do I do. I use to get him Timothy ball chews but I found out I’m extremely allergic to them, it helped a little but not much because he would move on after a while, understandably. I can’t put him in another room. He gets more than enough outside cage time because I don’t have his cage to lock him on there I have it to keep his litter. I don’t wanna give him away because that’s my buddy, my child, but I AM EXHAUSTED. I live in nyc and neutering a rabbit costs around $500+ . My bunny doesn’t show any behavioral issues in the day, he’s not territorial, he’s very sweet, he’s very well litter trained. It’s just a night he gets so annoying. Does this happen to anyone, what do I do. I also can’t just buy ear plugs because that doesn’t solve the problem.

 

[Preitler]

I give mine something to do during the night, there are always tree branches under the kitchen table, I doin't mind the nightly nom-nom-nom. They prefer that to throwing stuff around.

The digging, short bursts here and there, is a buck thing, my garden has lots of fist sized holes, everywhere. Does, on the other hand, dig full sized tunnels. Can't tell if neutering would help with that.

 

[AnitaBee]

Oooooh. Interesting! I’ll try the tree branches

 

[John Wick]

Can you limit him to a roomy xpen (replacing the "cage" you mention) for the night so you can better control what he has access to and his attention can be more focused to engagement items more agreeable to your sleeping tolerance?

For engagement ideas, cardboard cat scratchers can be very nifty:




... Also I make a fleece-digging corner:

 

[Tercar88]

Excellent ideas here! I give each of our rabbits an apple branch and willow branch in the morning & again just before i go to bed. It wears them out!
My apple supply is from an abandoned orchard which you can find here and there as land gets developed. Look for apples rotting on the ground. They go through a large basket of cut and washed branches monthly! Cant imagine the cost of buying sticks online and not as fresh anyway.

 

[DeeNtheBuns]

I have the same problem with sleeping- it's been horrible lately! I cannot sleep for more than 1-2 hours at a time and while I love my bunnies, I do not appreciate the constant destruction and noise. Mine are free roam- no cage- and it's the same thing as you described, OP- they do things to get my attention. I have metal grates up against most of my woodwork, my house looks ridiculous. But they still manage to find things to chew on, or they bite/dig at the rugs which they need to hop on because of their hocks. The female is worse- she's about 4, and my male is going to be 8 this June. He was always such a good bunny until she came along lol. Terrible influence .

I am going to try to find pesticide free apple or willow branches for them. Do you give the leaves and everything? And is it weeping willow or another kind? We have a weeping willow next door to us.

 

[Tercar88]

Yes weeping willow. Tender shoots and larger branches. The leaves tend to get buggy so dont feed anything like that. They love leaves. If it looks clean then just wash &;feed. Dont feed cherry wood so make sure there are apples on the ground. You can usually smell them. Old orchards have lots of bedraggled trees in rows with tall grass. Thats how i recognize them. Beware ticks if they exist in your area.
We also have tons of cardboard in the house wherever they hang out. They cant resist it lol. What a mess it gets to be tho.

 

[Catlyn]

We give safe branches whole, leaves and everything if it's the season. I find that rabbits have more fun with bigger, tree-like branches than the small twigs. The latter just get eaten up like stick cigars. Our first big boy Musti loved bigger, log-type pieces the most, digging at and flipping them around to his liking.
I've read that almost any willow is safe, including the weeping kind. We have more bushy-looking straight ones here, but they're equally safe. Only that my current residents don't seem to have a taste for it.
I'll take a few pics and add them below for what we have to show in tree section. My pair (3.5 & 5.4kg fellas) serves as a good reference!
A small log-type bit that is stripped of its bark.


A big literal branch taken from one of our apple trees. Buns like it when i position it a bit higher but completely vertical works too to get them to stretch.