multiple bunny housing questions

[BethM]

Well, Jason and I are in the process of buying a house.

Originally, we had hoped to get something with many bedrooms, so that Nick and Amelia cold have a room, and Tobi (and her future partner) could have a room. Of course, we fell in love with a smaller home that only has three bedrooms. One is the master, of course; the smallest will be for the computers (Jason and I each have one); and the medium-sized room will be for the bunnies.

How do people manage multiple bunnies in one room, when they don't really get along?

Tobi is quite aggressive towards Amelia, even lunging and trying to bite through the bars of the cage if Amelia gets near.

Right now, Nick and Amelia have a HUGE pen area in our living room, and Tobi has a smaller pen in the computer room, where Nick and Amelia are not allowed. Nick and Amelia are used to having the run of the living room and dining room in the morning and evenings. Tobi gets to run in the hallway 2-3 times per week; we have to put two baby gates across the hall to keep her separate. We will have to very slightly reduce the size of Nick and Amelia's pen, but will be able to increase Tobi's pen.

We're not sure how to manage run times, either.

Should we think about splitting up the bunnies and computers (Nick and Amelia with one computer, Tobi with the other computer)? The living room in the house is more of a rectangle, and I don't know if a rabbit pen will fit in there. (I also want to get Amelia away from the kitchen, as she is quite delicate and easily bothered by the smell of food cooking.)

Tobi is so territorial, I really do not want Miss Amelia to get bitten on the nose. We also don't want to cut down too much on the "out" time Nick and Amelia get, but Tobi obviously needs more time to run around.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

 

[Amy27]

For my buns I use an x-pen type thing. I will put it aruond the cage of the bun who is not out. With two cages around them they have not been able to get their noses through. Let me see if I can find the link of what I have. It is round or you can leave it straight so that you can form it around whatever type of cage you have.

The Little Bunny would still lunge and grunt at Chase. But after about a month she stopped. I don't know if she just realized it didn't do her any good because she couldn't get to Chase through both cages or if she just got use to Chase being there.

When I moved into my condo I put both bunnies in the laundry/storage room. I leave the door open and just used a baby gate. Just make sure the gate is made out of metal. At first I used plastic and came home to the bunnies running around as they ate a hole through it. The room is pretty big. I even built a 3 floor condo in it. Not sure if you have anything like that in your new house.

http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2751767 Here's the link. It shows it in a circle but there is a rod you can take out so you can put it in any shape you want. You can kind of see the rod if you look for a small circle at the top of the gate.

Congrats on buying a house. That is exciting.

 

[BethM]

Thanks Amy!

We do actually have a two x-pens, similar to what you linked to. One is currently forming part of Tobi's pen, and the other is stashed away somewhere, it was part of N&A's pen before I made them the NIC pen. They have the wider bars, though.

We've also got two metal baby gates, one is across the comp. room door, the other across the bedroom door. I ended up with sciatic nerve problems from our old step-over plastic gates, so I had to invest in some metal walk-through gates.

I think me might go ahead and try splitting the bunnies up.
After a year and a half with us, Tobi adores Jason, but is still quite aggressive towards me. Those two can share, and I'll room with N&A.

We really would have preferred something a little larger, just for the bunnies' sake; we wanted to be able to foster, as well. Unfortunately, the larger homes in our price range needed a lot of work done to them, and we don't really have the money or know-how to do much of that.

We'll still have to figure out run-time, so no bunny gets shorted.

 

[Amy27]

Figuring out the run time is difficult. I am still working on that. Sometimes on the weekends I will let one bunny stay out all night. I am a really light sleeper and I sleep on the couch and I really wake up whenever they do anything. If you had a bunny you trusted to be out and not eat the house could you do that?

One other thing I have done a few times is give the bunny run time in the room that doesn't have their cage. That way both buns can be out and I just put a baby gate up so they can't get to each other.

When I bought my condo I felt the same way. I didn't want to do work on a place so I ended up buying a new condo instead of buying an older house that needed work even though I could have gotten more room.

 

[BethM]

Amy27 wrote:

Figuring out the run time is difficult. I am still working on that. Sometimes on the weekends I will let one bunny stay out all night. I am a really light sleeper and I sleep on the couch and I really wake up whenever they do anything. If you had a bunny you trusted to be out and not eat the house could you do that?

One other thing I have done a few times is give the bunny run time in the room that doesn't have their cage. That way both buns can be out and I just put a baby gate up so they can't get to each other.

When I bought my condo I felt the same way. I didn't want to do work on a place so I ended up buying a new condo instead of buying an older house that needed work even though I could have gotten more room.

Unfortunately, both of my females are very destructive. I don't think either of them would be able to be out without supervision.
Poor Nick would have a fit if he was out and Amelia wasn't with him. He's really dependent on her.

"Our" house is actually a little older, but it's been recently renovated inside, and has a lot of newer things (roof, air con, water heater, kitchen). We did the inspection this afternoon, and there were only a few issues; hopefully the seller will be willing to address these, so we don't have to start over.
The housing market in our area isn't as bad as it is in some other places. There are a lot of houses for sale, but the nicer places are still selling for a premium. There is nothing in the way of new construction in our price range, unless we want to drive an hour to work. (No thanks!)
We did choose a house rather than a condo or townhouse, because I want to be able to have a garden. I also have arthritis in my knees (had it since high school), so I need to have as few stairs as possible.

Our other issue is...........The house has all hardwood floors. Which is nice for us, but not so much for the bunnies. We'll have to buy rugs right away.

 

[BethM]

Well, we've gone back to having both pens in the same room. I will have to reduce Nick and Amelia's pen by a few feet (Tobi will still get a bit of an increase) to make it work. The big pen is currently 4ft. by 10ft, that will have to go down to 4ft by 6ft.

I'm ok with that now, but I know when it comes time to actually do it, I will feel terrible. It will be very convenient, though, to have everybun in one room, along with their supplies, which are currently spread through our apartment and stuck in wherever there's a bit of space.

However. Nick and Amelia love their pen so much, some nights they don't even come out to play. They will rattle at the gate until I open it up, then they will just lie down instead of coming out. I am hoping that the smaller pen size will encourage them to come out more. (Amelia REALLY needs the exercise!) Sometimes they will finally come out, about 15 minutes before I'm wanting to go to bed, which gets a little annoying.

Amy, I will try your idea of using my x-pens as a sort of fence. Or, if I have enough extra NIC panels, I might try to make some sort of attached fence that can just be moved to direct the flow of bunny traffic.


Should I expect there to be some territorial issues, as far as litter box habits go?