Enrichment for Your Pet Bunny

Rabbits are intelligent, curious creatures. They quickly get bored if they do not have enough space to explore or enough toys to entertain them. And any rabbit owner knows a bored bunny is a destructive bunny. Follow these tips to make your bunny a happy bunny.

Rabbit with cardboard box and tunnel

Give Them Space

If your bunny is contained in a puppy pen, condo, or cage, make sure you let your bunny out everyday into a bunny proofed room.  Rabbits love to sniff and examine their surroundings. Plus, they need room to do bunny 500s and binkies!

Get Down to Their Level

Rabbits prefer interacting with you on the ground.  Wait for them to approach you and investigate so you can build trust with your bunny.  Once they’re comfortable with you, they’ll enjoy being petted and will seek out your attention. Read our article Building a Relationship with Your Rabbit for more information.

Get Creative with Cardboard

By cutting rabbit-sized doors and windows into an old cardboard box, you’ve transformed it into a cardboard castle for your bunny to renovate. They’ll love widening and shaping the doors and windows to their liking.  Putting a smaller castle inside a larger box gives them even more things to renovate.  Rabbits also like tunnels. So be sure to save any narrow/tall boxes or tubes for your bunny’s enjoyment. See Building a Cardboard Castle for Your Bunny for more information.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Rabbits like toys they can hold in their mouths and toss.  They enjoy baby keys and toys made for birds. The toys don’t have to break the bank though. Cardboard tubes from toilet paper or paper towel rolls are bunny favorites. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can even fill the tubes with hay to make Dynamite Stixx à la Amy Sedaris. Watch the tutorial below:

Some Recommended Chewing and Digging Toys for Rabbits

For more about bunny toys and games, see our articles, Logic Toys for Rabbits and Playing with Your Pet Bunny.

Rabbits often investigate the world around them by sniffing, nudging, chewing, and digging. They are mischievous, innovative, and persistent. Enrichment for rabbits is vital to their well-being. Catering to these natural tendencies by providing safe items they can interact with (and often destroy) will ensure a fulfilling experience.

About the Author

Abi Cushman is a veteran house rabbit owner and a contributing editor of My House Rabbit.

Soaked!

When she's not writing about bunnies for My House Rabbit, Abi writes and illustrates funny books for kids, including Soaked! (Viking, 2020) and Animals Go Vroom! (Viking, 2021). And yes, there are bunnies in them.

Learn more at her website, www.abicushman.com, or follow her on Twitter: @abicushman and Instagram: @abi.cushman.