Tell me about your indoor pet rabbits! Post pics if you have them!

[silkiechicken]

I've always thought of little bun buns as outdoor hutch pets. In the PNW, winters are usually not that cold and summers not that hot. Maybe a week of snow if that, and maybe two weeks of hot hot 80+ weather. Yeah, I know many say that 80's not hot, but people break out shorts when it hits the 60's.

So my questions:

What kind of set up do you have for indoor bunnies and did you potty train the little guys?

What are your housing preferences? Wire bottom with resting spot, or solid plastic bottom with litter of some sort?

What about feeding time? Free choice or rationed? Pellets only, or hay on the side?

How often do you clean their cages out? Are they musky at all if not fixed?

I'd love to see pics!!!

 

[tunaoftheland]

I used to have a little dwarf mix indoor bunny. We had her in one of those coated wire cages with the plastic bottoms and pine bedding. Or aspen. We would let her run around in one room for like half an hour at a time a couple of times a day at least. She was litter box trained and was very good about using it when she was out. We kept her pellets and hay filled all the time but she never got fat. She mostly went in one corner when she was in her cage so we just scooped out that corner every day and only cleaned the whole thing like once a month which was maybe not enough

She wasn't fixed but she didn't smell at all. She was a female though, I don't know about a male. She liked to sit in the windowsill like a cat and she also chewed up the corners of our leather sofa. But it was getting old anyway. When my cat was a kitten she would chase him, she did not like other animals. But she loved people. Hope that helps

I don't have any digital pictures of her, unfortunately.

 

[LV426]

I have a mini rex that lives indoors and I live in Seattle. He pretty much potty trained himself. He lives in my back bedroom in one of those wire cage pens.

He has a rubbermaid sweater box as a litter box that I fill with pine or aspen. He used to be in a cage with a wire bottom but he wore the fur off his feet and they started cracking so he ended up in the back room. He runs around on the carpet and has a little house and a blanket tent set up that he plays in.

Rabbits like to go in one spot so I started training him by just putting a litter box in one side of his cage and then putting some hay in it. He learned pretty quickly to use his litter box. That doesn't mean he won't leave little presents in the rest of his cage because they tend to drop a little pellet here and there as territory marking. But he always pees in his litter box. Thankfully poop pellets are easily swept up and he only leaves three or four a day around his cage.

As for neutering/spaying you will hear a lot of people for and a lot against but I do know that they become more aggressive if you leave them unaltered and they are harder to litter train. Both males and females with mark with urine if unaltered and rabbit pee really stinks. I prefer to neuter/spay my critters. There are enough animals that need homes and having an unaltered pet seems to just be asking for issues. Especially if you end up getting another rabbit down the road.

As for food, I provide mazuri rabbit pellets and lots of Timothy hay. He also has willow branches, apple branches, pear branches and fresh dandelions and wheat grass to nibble on. Rabbits need to chew to keep their teeth in shape so that's why he gets the branches. The dandelions and wheat grass I grow for my other critters and make a nice snack for bunny. I also don't spray my yard for weeds or bugs so I have a lot of edible weeds that he gets to munch on when I put him outside in the summer. He has pellets and hay and branches all the time and the dandelions and weeds he gets every so often unless he's outdoors and then he grazes all day.

Make sure you have a couple of water bottles too because they drink water like crazy. I have 2 2-liter bottles that I use on bunny and in the summer when it's warmer he can drink a liter a day easily if not more.

One caution about letting your bunny run the house, they chew on electrical cords. I used to let bunny run the house but after he chewed the cord on my vacuum cleaner, my camera usb cable, the cord on my tv, my ipod docking cord and my phone charger he got banished to a cage. He never left any messes in the house but the chewing about drove me nuts. Even with things to chew on he would go straight towards an electrical cord. So if you have your bunny out you need to watch him/her.


Also they like toys. Mine has a hard plastic ball, a wire cage ball with a bell, a parrot toy with a rope and wooden blocks, and he get lots of toilet paper and paper towel rolls he loves to toss around. He's learned to play fetch to some extent , he chases the toys if I throw them but isn't always as good bringing them back.

He also loves playing tag with the cats. Good luck on your indoor rabbit.

 

[lilwhispers]

We have a fuzy lop that my daughter got last year for easter. She has a 2x2x2 cage in our room and the a small roll of cage wire that we make into a run for her in a corner of our room. My wife has her so spoiled rotten. she gives her triscuits and she gets all excited and hopping all over she also really likes cauliflower and gets carrots and celery quite often. We got her for a discount from the breeder because her siblings had pulled all the hair off the back of her neck but she was so cute and her pedigree is quite good. There are 14 legs and 1 Grand Champion on her pedigree and now she is a nice looking rabbit we have neglected brushing her for a while and now i need to shear her to get ridd of the matts (anyone have advice on how to accomplise this). She is the first whooly rabbit I have ever raised. I will try to post pics tonight after work.

 

[ChickenToes]

I use a large dog crate for our bunny, it's 3 x 2 feet. It's about 3 feet tall, so I used the divider that came with it to make a shelf for her to hop up on. I posted a thread about rabbit cages a while back here on BYC and a lot of people said it would be cheaper to build a cage than to buy one. I priced it out and it was about $5 more expensive to buy the dog crate, so we bought the crate.

She's litter box trained when it comes to urine. She still poops all over, but that's normal. If I got her spayed, her litter box habits would be better. I just put a litter box in the corner of the cage that she prefers to use as a bathroom, and she started using it. I use wood stove pellets as litter.

I use the plastic pad that came with the dog crate for her to stand on. I don't like the idea of her standing on wire all day. If you look it up, some people say never to put rabbits on wire because it causes sore hocks, others say that it's perfectly fine. I know that I wouldn't want to stand on wire all day, so I use the plastic pad. It's just my preference. I don't use litter on the floor of the cage, she just kicks it all out anyway.

Our bunny has free choice pellets, we use a gravity feeder. Buns should only eat 1/4 to 1/2 cup pellets per day, so if I notice she's eating too many, I start rationing them. Hay (not alfalfa) should be available 24/7, and it should actually be the staple of a rabbit's diet. Hay helps prevent GI stasis.

I clean the rabbit's cage every morning. I scoop out her litter box, check her feed and water, give her fresh hay, and use a hand broom and small dustpan to sweep up any poo on the floor of the cage. It takes 10 minutes, tops, if I'm in a hurry. If I'm not in a rush I like to sit there with her for awhile.

And yes, urine from a rabbit that isn't spayed/neutered has a stronger odor. If you keep the litter box clean it's not bad, but I am sensitive to animal odors so I will be buying a small air purifier for the room that we keep her in.

Here are some links that I've found helpful. There are some people on BYC that don't like the House Rabbit Society, they like the American Rabbit Breeders Association. Because I'm not a breeder and my bun is a house rabbit, I like the HRS. Here are links to both.

http://www.arba.net/

http://www.rabbit.org/

This one is for a house rabbit forum. I've found it to be helpful at times.

http://www.binkybunny.com/FORUM/tabid/54/Default.aspx


And here are some pictures. Our bun's name is Snickers, and I was told that she's a New Zealand/Chinchilla mix. She's about a year and a half old.

 

[silkiechicken]

Thanks for all the replies! This gives me some hope about the house bunny thing but the potential smell and spraying from unaltered buns might be a bit of a deterrent. I like the kennel and run ideas since the bunny cages at the pet store were so terribly lack luster. They were barely larger than my hamster cages!! I was thinking about a pair of Californians too, so those would be a decent size to have inside and decide to spray things. I already clean out the three hamster potties every other day so cleaning out an extra few potties in the morning won't be an issue as long as they used them!

 

[ChickenToes]

If you get lucky you may be able to find an older, spayed/neutered rabbit at a rescue or animal shelter. Petfinder.com lists rabbits from shelters. I've heard that litter training older rabbits is easier. I've only had my rabbit for about a month, and she's been pretty good about it.

 

[LV426]

Here's my bun, not in his cage. He runs around the bed when I'm home so I can keep an eye on him.

 

[suzettex5]

We keep our mini-rex inside a hutch in the house. We let him run around the house all the time. Most of the time the dogs and cats leave him alone, but we keep a close eye on them , and lock them in another room when our Buster is out playing. As for the 'smell', we havent ever noticed any musk smell, and he is a boy, not fixed. Maybe because he's small, or not around our female? IDK, but the whole 'boy smell' thing in previous posts was news to me, because I've never noticed it, not on his fur, nor in his hutch. We feed him a mixed rabbit food from the local feed store, nothing real expensive, but he does get timothy hay almost everyday, and we go to the farmers market quite often for fresh veggies and fruit. Good luck with your bunny- they are so fun and responsive, I think you'll enjoy having one in your home!

 

[lovesduckies]

this is Billie. she is my inside my room bunny girl. she roams around with her 2 friends Duckie and Quackers (inside the bedroom spoiled ducks). Duckie and Quackers don't like her much, but she's way faster then them. she is a crazy little dutch bunny. right now she is running laps on my bed. earlier she was running around on the floor and jumping on the air, that was after she jumped in the bag of duck food and grabbed a bite to eat. lol yesterday she was running laps around my feet. she is the sweetest little thing. if she didn't think my bed was her toilet area, i'd sleep with her

she also thnks the carpet in my room is her digging ground. my bunny before her has dug a few holes in my dcarpet already (we are renters who cares). she also likes to hop into Quacker's nesting box to keep the eggs company since she is not sitting on them yet. i don't let her stay in for long. she tries to be friends with our cats, but one of our cats hates all animals, even her fellow kitty roommates, so she's not too keen on the bunny trying to get close and sleep with her. she's the cutest little thing. hahah.. she's going nuts again.