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Forum HOUSE RABBIT Q & A How to stop your rabbit chewing

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    • GD29
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        Firstly, let me start by saying I have had years of experience keeping rabbits. I have noticed that there are are number of threads related to instances of chewing behaviour. 

        A rabbit should not be a frequent chewer. Chewing walls, carpet and even cables etc is not being done because of taste or texture. It is is the rabbit seeking to wear its teeth down because it is not chewing its hay, grass or other plants for long enough. Rabbits need constant access to hay and only one or two handfuls of pellets daily, three or four for a large rabbit. The rabbit should be consuming at least five different sources of vegetables or plant material daily which again wears the teeth down further.

        Chewing is a sign on intense frustration and should be viewed as a desperate act on the rabbits  part. Later it can become a habit. 

        I have 6 rabbits, two indoors and we found this out when we began natural feeding three years ago. None of our rabbits ever chew anymore except to strip bark from the branches we put in the pens to eat. Yes, rabbits eat bark, but only thin , young bark.

        Chewing wood and other surfaces is not good for a rabbits teeth, they are designed to be worn down by grazing plants, not chewing on wood daily. This design makes them thin and they break easily. No rabbit chooses to chew wood and carpet unless there is an issue.

        Decrease pellets and introduce more (safe) plants. This will help.

        Your rabbit should not chew anything other than its food or soft items such as cardboard out of boredom.

        Good luck!


      • Mocha
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          lol, I wish this worked.

          My rabbits eat loads of hay, their desirable amount of veggies, and have loads of chew toys, and still insist on chewing the moldings, walls, carpets, and everything else they can.

          Correction- rabbits only need 1/4 cup or less of pellets each day. If you are feeding your rabbit a perfect diet of veggies and hay, you don’t need to feed pellets but if you want to, your rabbit needs no more than 1/4 cup.

          How can plants wear down a rabbits teeth?

          Hard wood toys are good for rabbits, as they file down their teeth, not break them.


        • JackRabbit
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            GD29 – got ant suggestions for getting a bunny to stop digging in his litterbox? (He’s not interested in a digging box)


          • LongEaredLions
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              Some rabbits will display destructive behaviors (such as chewing) as a frustrated behavior before they are neutered. However, some bunnies will still chew household items for fun, even if given aquadate chewing material. It is in their nature. So don’t forget to bunny-proof!


            • Beka27
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                I wish someone would have told THIS to Meadow (the gorgeous mini rex in my signature and profile picture)! She was apparently not aware of this at all!

                She definitely got better once she was spayed and matured for a few years, and now she’s a very good girl, but darn… Those early years were rough! :-\


              • Flopsie
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                  My bun is spayed and eats a ton of hay. Also, I have to monitor her if she is out of her cage/xpen set up otherwise she’ll kill herself.

                  She will basically chew everything in sight including things that can hurt her such as carpet, cloth etc.

                  This is despite that I give her appropriate things to chew.

                  I’m convinced Flopsie is just a destructobunny for life


                • Aeyja
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                    Mine has hay, wooden toys, veggies every day and he still prefers my shoes, laptop chargers, handbags… He also has a strong preference for my shoes over my partners, so can’t ignore there must be something about the taste (ew) he likes.


                  • LBJ10
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                      Leopold has learned that if he chews the wall, I will come in the room. I can scold him to my heart’s content, he can’t hear a word I’m saying. Once he realizes he has my attention, he will race to the cage and hop in. It’s his way of saying he wants me to feed him his pellets. Wooly usually just follows. I don’t fed them their bedtime pellets though until it’s, well, bedtime. That’s how I got them to go to bed. But now Leopold thinks chewing on the wall will somehow convince me to feed him early. *sigh*


                    • Beka27
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                        Haha LBJ! They think they have US trained, not vice versa!

                        I got into the habit of giving Mead an oxbow cookie right after i give her her bedtime pellets. Now when i fill her dish she doesn’t even go over to it. Just comes to me bc she’s learned that “dinnertime = treat”. But now i can’t stop bc she looks so sad if i don’t give in!


                      • GD29
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                          Lol, ok, in answer to the first one….

                          Chewing grinds the teeth together and that is what wears them down. Wood chews were introduced by pet shops when owners noticed their rabbits gnawing on their hutches. The motion on chewing on wood is completely different, instead of the teeth being ground down properly (the molars in particular) the teeth instead lose larger chipped pieces which results in sharp edges and not a flat surface.

                          This affects the normal chewing behaviour of the jaw slightly which can cause the rear molars in turn to develop sharp edges which can grow out. The same problem can also occur in other grazing species.

                          And for the feed I described, it was accurate. A rabbit should have hay and five different types  of veggies daily with only a handful of pellets (or 1/4 of a cup as you said, to me that is a handful, small hands).

                          As for cardboard and paper, that is no issue. But chewing in general is both a dental and behavioural issue when it is being done out of boredom or due to tooth growth.

                          This isn’t off the top of my head guys, I learnt it studying exotic animal  care in zoo management at reaseheath college if you’d like to look it up   Trust me, it does exist. I’ve kept rabbits for years for reasons that are prohibited here.

                          And if I’m possibly wrong, then why don’t my  six rabbits chew at  all? They certainly dig, but they never chew. They are kept in a colony setting, bar two lops in the house.


                        • GD29
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                            By the way, the 2 llops are as good as gold, i’m hoping you’re not all telling me this is going to change ?  They aren’t spayed.

                            The bunny proofing is done 


                          • MB & Neville
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                              I’ve read online that putting tobasco sauce on cords and stuff keeps them from chewing again. But it seems like even a tiny drop would be harmful, right?


                            • LBJ10
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                                GD29 – The information you are giving about how teeth are worn down and such is accurate. We are not arguing those points. I guess my point was that rabbits chew for many reasons, not just a lack of hay in the diet.


                              • manic_muncher
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                                  I agree… a rabbit going behind an entertainment center that ends up chewing wires probably isn’t chewing from boredom, but rather the instinctual notion that it’s a root in the way of it’s lovely tunnel it’s working on clearing out.


                                • Sarita
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                                    I think most experienced rabbit owners realize that the only thing that helps with dental health in a rabbit is hay. So I totally agree with you about the hay and veggies. I think people who are new to rabbits don’t realize that wood and chew toys are just boredom breakers for rabbits especially those kept in an enclosure all day.

                                    I do think that there are certain breeds particularly Holland Lops and Netherland Dwarfs who are just going to be susceptible to molar problems because of their smushed up face which is cute but it’s not a good trait other than being cute as it can crowd those teeth up in those little mouths.

                                    Also as a rabbit ages they lose bone density which can cause some movement in their teeth and you cannot stop age :~)

                                    Pellets definitely are not good for dental health as they are soft and don’t wear down a rabbits teeth like the silica in hay which also makes the rabbits chew in a different manner conducive to grinding the molars down.


                                  • GD29
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                                      Lbj10, I’m sorry, I misread your post. Thankyou for reading mine thoroughly, I wasn’t trying to score any points in it. I’m not that kind of person.

                                      I will be interested to see if their behaviour changes indoors. I hope not. Currently the white one is skipping around the living room.

                                      Just out of curiosity, a question to the owners here. Are your rabbits caged for part of the day or freeroaming the whole house?

                                      The only reason i’m wondering (this is just from my own curiosity, obviously how you keep your rabbit is upto you, so please don’t read much into this) because i do remember the pens at the college were absolutely massive. I’m talking about 15×15 square feet and each group was only small. The largest group was only four rabnits in that area of space and they did not chew their area, just ran around and grazed their hay. The pens were in a huge building.


                                    • Sarita
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                                        My current rabbit is free roam in the whole house. He does not go to the kitchen though…he could but he doesn’t – I think it’s because of the linoleum floors and to get their he had to go on some tile floors which he does not like…he only likes carpeting.

                                        That being said, I trust that he won’t destroy anything – he has no lower left molars due to an abscess (he was dropped off a guinea pig rescue and had a dental abscess so he lost those lower molars) and while he does at times pull the carpet fibers and “dig” at the carpet he is only 1.5 pounds so he’s not strong enough or big enough to destroy anything.  He goes up and down the stairs too.  Overall he’s very good for being free roam unlike some other rabbits I have had that I could not trust free roaming.


                                      • Flopsie
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                                          GD29, I certainly wasn’t saying that you were wrong. In fact, much of what you said has been confirmed by what i’ve read by many others. So based on that, I do believe you have validity.

                                          However, I made a point to point out my bunny because I feel like she doesn’t fit the mold. I’m a board certified behavior analyst (for humans not animals), so I have a working understanding of behavior and how/why it occurs and how it can be changed. So most of the time, I don’t approach bunny chewing as something we need to stop (as I understand there are reasons behind it), but rather the approach is to replace with a functionally equivalent replacement behavior. That being said, in my situation, it hasn’t worked even though she has been given a plethora of appropriate things to chew.

                                          This is very much like saying that bunnies cannot be fully litter trained if not spayed/neutered or that bunnies don’t like being held. And yet, we see evidence of the contrary on a daily basis. What I take from that is those bunnies are the exception.

                                          Given what you said, I believe it to be true, but I believe there are exceptions. Those bunnies who have hay and things to appropriately chew but continue to destroy baseboards and cables


                                        • kirstyol
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                                            Bramble is a chewer, no matter what I do. He has a good diet, one recommended specifically for his teeth by our vet (he had spurs) and gets plenty of free roam time but we cant trust him to totally free roam unsupervised because he chews everything, he currently loves chewing the legs of the dining table and chairs, he will also chew his cage/pen bars but that one is usually for attention (usually a ‘hey you have been up for a whole thirty seconds, why am I not out of my cage yet?) He was neutered in September in part because of his chewing, he even managed to chip a tooth somehow, probably the cage bars. His chewing behaviour has improved a whole lot since he was neutered, but my dining table is not safe at all and as its varnished I worry about him chewing it.

                                            But Bramble is also proof of what Flopsie said because we got him at just six weeks old and he has used a litter box literally since day one, he has never ever peed anywhere else, although he does sometimes poop in his hay box.


                                          • Mocha
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                                              – My rabbits live in a huge x-pen during the night, and during the day they get to run around their room. For a couple hours every day, they get to run around my whole house except the kitchen (they could easily get stuck under my oven).

                                              – I also agree with LBJ10. I’m not saying that the wearing down of teeth is wrong, but that’s defiantly not the only reason rabbits chew, especially mine.


                                            • gingerg
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                                                My main source for bunny info (other than BB, of course), is the HRS, and they don’t attribute all chewing to “intense frustration”. http://rabbit.org/faq-chewing/ Age, hormones and personality play a role, too.

                                                My two holland lops are on exactly the diet you recommend, have constant access to high-quality timothy hay, constant access to willow structures for them to chew up, grass mats, a diggy box, and many other toys. Both rabbits loved the cords behind the tv, and were constantly trying to get at them; only wrapping the cords in plastic protectors dissuaded the buns from trying to ravage them. This is an experience almost every owner of indoor rabbits has had. in addition, one of my lops also loved to go at certain table legs and room corners (until I found a bitter spray she hated), but the other lop never gave them a second look. How can the factors for chewing be limited to diet and a lack of sufficient chewing objects if two rabbits in precisely the same circumstances behave differently? My experience is that the more outgoing bunny was the furniture chewer, while my more sedate, less active bunny doesn’t chew anything but his hay and toys. Diet and toys are huge factors and those are the first things I’d direct anyone who has a bunny with chewing problems to look at, but I think many owners of housebunnies have found that even natural diets and a surfeit of safe and entertaining chewing outlets isn’t a cure-all.


                                              • BinkyBunny
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                                                  I do appreciate the diet information aspect as that is something to add to the solution box! Gosh knows when it comes to chewing, we can all benefit from more information and learn from each other.

                                                  I think the chewing (and digging) issue is rather complex though for House Rabbits. Rabbits that live in a house are exposed to all kinds of things that may entice the chewing and digging reactions. Definitely many frustrations for them there! (like getting something out of their escape route – some bunnies are very particular about that!)    And as such we do need to be careful as many things are not good for them.

                                                  Here is my experience with this over the years: Some of my bunnies were chewers, others could have cared less — all had the same diet (lots of greens, large variety as well, and unlimited hay). Lots of space (a whole room just for them- and I’ve only ever had three at a time) and many hours of time to run around the rest of the house — minimum of 5 if they were not free roam).

                                                  They were all spayed/neutered too, which may have curbed some, but didn’t with others. Age was the biggest curb of all. After 3-4 years, they mellowed out. But for my chewers, I observed them and tried to figure out why mine would chew and/or dig at stuff. Of course this is not a “scientific” observation, nor am I am a behaviorist! These are just the actions I noticed and here are my best guesses – which did seem to help find solutions sometimes.

                                                  1. Food or Animal scent in the chewing location – One of my bunnies would chew and/or dig at an area where another animal would lay, or mark (cat chinning) or had peed before. Some bunnies would try to mark over it, while another bunny seemed to just want to chew and dig at it. Maybe he was trying to get rid of the scent entirely. I have no idea. This can happen on couch cushions too – where the human scent is strong.

                                                  I had one bunny,who was a crumb vacuum. She would chew up carpet areas that I suspected would have some crumbs. I kept a mini sweeper handy until we finally moved to a place that had hardwood floors.

                                                  2. To get something out of their way: Being that rabbits are prey animals, they will map their area over and over, (they will notice if something new is around!) and they like have easy escape routes and great hiding places. Sometimes I think that dining table leg is in the way, or a corner sticks out too far, or that thing on the floor (a pillow, a cord, a remote, whatever) needs to be eliminated so that they can easily run and escape if need be. In some cases, I could move things around a bit and that would stop it. In other cases, I made a little tunnel near the chew place. It helped not only block it, but also gave a safe haven for my bunny who seemed to be disturbed by something that was in his/her way.

                                                  3. I suspected that a couple of my rabbits were trying to create a “scrape” (an indent in the ground to create a cooler more hidden place, much like their wild cousins do): This is more about digging, but chewing happened with this too – There were a couple of areas that my bunny would like to hang out in the house, but my more nervous bunny liked to chew and dig at that area. At first he would dig, but then the carpet strands would come up and he’d try to chew at those – and vice versa. I ended up putting a small throw blanked (bunched) up, and he would move it around, smooth it out, chew on it to move or lift part of the blanket up and move it around. The bunny blankets always have holes in them for this reason. Anyway, that seemed to seemed to help redirect their energy (for that issue).

                                                  These are not the only three observations, but they seemed to be the main ones.

                                                  Supervision and distraction helped, but sometimes it really was a case by case basis.


                                                • Deleted User
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                                                    Got me bugga’d! When I first bought Henry home (he is free range 24/7 – his house doesn’t even have a door) he was intent on eating my cane bed (NOT happy!) and I had to throw out everything from a tv, to fan’s & replace cords (thank you husband!), twice on my ‘precious’ heater and he even ate the button’s on my remote control that I stupidly left on the bed cause didn’t tuck under my pillow before falling asleep. Yet, he is right now as I post this under my desk at my feet (I can feel his whisker’s, ha ha ha) and I know 2 cords are available to him and he has never touched them once! Huh?

                                                    So I can’t add anything as to the why or why not??? But I can promise you – Henry gets his 1/8 cup of pellets for brekky, hay available 24/7 with a huge variety of veggies and salad every night, along with his daily treat of banana and craisin bit. Once a week I bring in a mulberry tree branch, berries (in Spring and Summer), leaves and all – and he has plenty of cardboard toys and box’s that he shreds – the wooden toys I bought over a year ago for him to chew on are still in his house, untouched. I just thought he was thinking, why chew this crap when there is a huge cane bed just sitting there begging for it??? Lol! Oh, and I should throw in, he loves anything ‘new’ I buy – if it’s old or meant for him, he won’t touch it! But if he can smell new or it’s important to me – he finds that irresistible! I don’t know why he chews some stuff and not other’s??? I don’t believe his diet has anything to do with it – I don’t think I could perfect it any better. He is not bored – he has a choice of 3 dog’s that he takes a lot of pleasure in stalking every day, and he will literally follow us from room to room when he is awake. If I was in my bedroom now, I can assure you, Henry would be too.
                                                    I just put it down to, it’s in his nature/DNA….. for as good as he is mimicking a dog, he is still a rabbit! For as human as my dog’s try to be, they are still dog’s and I won’t let them eat ‘at’ the table! Lol!

                                                    If your bunny is NOT a chewer, you got lucky!
                                                    Just like some bunny owner’s who can pick up and cuddle there bun’s – YOU got LUCKY!!! (Gggrrrrrr!) ha ha ha!

                                                    PS – I tried everything (along with MANY other desperate bunny owner’s) to be able to pick up my boy – NO chance, he’s not that way inclined, and I just accepted it. Again, it’s just part of his rabbit/DNA behaviour – why fight it if it doesn’t come easily for him. I don’t know, maybe just another way to look at it……
                                                    Bunnies are rabbits!


                                                  • JackRabbit
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                                                      Henry doesn’t need to waste his time on cords and toys when his mommy buys him lovely comforters to chew up . …


                                                    • Deleted User
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                                                        I can’t believe you mentioned the word ‘comforter’??? You do know my lip is quivering and I’m about to cry – AGAIN!

                                                        PS – On a serious note, I get into bed every night, look at the holes and the stuffing poking out (you CAN’T miss them!) and think of all that money I wasted trying to have a nice/pretty bedroom. But I am grateful. WHAT? you ask???
                                                        Henry did chew the hubby’s side of the CANE bed – the side facing away from the doorway, next to the outer wall…. you’d never know unless you walked in the room around the bed. Yep, I’m GRATEFUL (and you know I said that through gritted teeth?).

                                                        SIGH……. wiping away a tear.


                                                      • Beka27
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                                                          Haha, AndHenry… “This is why we can’t have nice things!”

                                                          You wait for the kids to grow up to have nice things, but then the bunnies/pets come along and that all flies out the window! Lol!


                                                        • JackRabbit
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                                                            I think, after our kids grow up, we subconsciously want our houses in disarray, and we really don’t want nice things so that we can maintain that sense of family. That’s why those of us who have adult children and those of us who’ve never had children throw ourselves into bunny slavery.

                                                            That sounds logical, and gives me an excuse for my house looking like a barn, so I’m sticking with it.


                                                          • Beka27
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                                                              Lol! Right?!


                                                            • Deleted User
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                                                                Posted By Beka27 on 10/25/2014 2:27 PM

                                                                Haha, AndHenry… “This is why we can’t have nice things!”

                                                                You wait for the kids to grow up to have nice things, but then the bunnies/pets come along and that all flies out the window! Lol!


                                                                You said it Beka!!! What was I thinking???

                                                                Now I’m waiting for Henry to follow in my kid’s footsteps and pack his bag’s and leave home…….

                                                                Won’t happen you say???  Shedding more tears…..

                                                                Ha ha ha ha!

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                                                            Forum HOUSE RABBIT Q & A How to stop your rabbit chewing