My little critters are only in their pen at night, or if I’m going to be gone for the whole day.
They are so well behaved that if I’m gone for a few hours, I leave them out.
They have access to the living room, dining room & kitchen.

So, I guess they are about two-thirds free range.

Here are a few photos:

1. the pen a few months ago

2. my newer hay / litter set up.

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Mine are not free range ever…we have dogs so they are let out of course..but they never have free range of the whole house.  I wish I could…although Tucker right now would never be able to..she’d get in too much trouble.  Drue’s pretty good about stuff and I’d just have to make sure that paper and stick-like things were picked up.  Last night he had the hall and living room to himself while I was working down there and he ate my daughter’s homework! Luckily it was homework from the night before and not one she needed to turn in!  THat would have been interesting to tell the teacher though..”my rabbit ate my homework”

I only have one that is free range – he’s not allowed around the other rabbits so he’s not totally free range I guess. But he has free access to the front room, dining room, and kitchen and he goes up and down the stairs to my bedroom. I keep him from my 9 others though because they get upset with having him hang out there.

Obviously he uses his litter box very well and he doesn’t chew (too much) on my cords.

I decided to let him run around the house when he got sick and hoped this would keep him from biting me (it hasn’t). But it’s fun having him run around.

Pepper is free-range (except for the sewing room/office/rehearsal room, which has lots of tempting hanging wires and pins).

I also live alone so there isn’t any other pet-trouble for her to get into, and she didn’t want a bunny-friend (and now has pasteurella anyway) she mostly amuses herself.  She’s an older girl who spent a lot of time in the shelter system so she’s pretty set in her ways and I’m fine with that.

We went cageless last January, when I realized that I she had this huge cage in the kitchen but spent all her time under the papasan chair in the living room.  So I got rid of it.

In my new place she has a litter-box/food/water station under the metal rack shelves in the kitchen, and mostly sleeps under my bed (occasionally hopping up to see if I’ve decided to suddenly do somethign intteresting at 2:30 AM).  Her other favorite places are under the living room couch or playing furry-speed-bump in the hallway.

Mine are not free range, since the three of them are not bonded, although that’s the eventual dream. I’d love to let them all live out but as of right now they just get separate binky time in the evenings.

like Sage Cat, mine are 2/3rds DAYTIME free range. they have access to the bunny room, living room (hallway connecting the two) and the kitchen/dining room. Max does not “do” linoleum, so only Mead takes advantage of that at this point. Michael’s bedroom is STRICTLY off-limits (it’s off of the dining room so only Meadow can get in there anyways) and my (bunny-proofed) bedroom is allowed IF i am present. if i’m not in there, the door is shut. i suppose i could leave the bedroom door open always b/c they can’t get to anything bad in there, but i guess it’s just my space…

they have their own bunny room, inside of that room is a double xpen. at night and if we’re gone for an extended length of time (usually 4 hours or longer) they are in the xpen. this is for our own peace of mind. if i run out to do an errand during the day for a couple hours, they are left out.

i like having the bunny room AND an xpen. if i am busy in the house cleaning, or we have company over, or Michael is having a rambunctious day, we can babygate them in their room so they have some space to stretch out (since a double xpen is not enough stretching out space… lol!) but they won’t be underfoot. also, when Mike gets home he doesn’t always like bunnies climbing all over him (Meadow.) so it works out for them to have their own room for our quiet time and theirs.

Liza, you make an important point about an emergency. in case of fire you’d need to round everyone up quickly…

our departed George was free range 24/7, his only bad behaviors were shredding newspaper and chewing the bars at night (and i would hardly consider those bad behavious, more of annoying habbits) .  he also used wake us up at 6am by jumping on the bed and getting in our faces because he wanted a treat.  my wife and i really miss that. 

Marvin and Jessica have proven time and time again they cannot be trusted to be left out on their own.  on ocassion i might walk across the street to get ice from the liquor store if they are lying underneath the dining table quitely, but i am gone 5 minutes at most.  when someone is home their pen is open and they are free to roam from their room to the living room.  they are also welcome in the our bedroom but only if we are in there.  we also have to make sure that the closet doors are closed, otherwise they will attack the carpet in the corners.

My bunnies are not completely free range.  I wish that they could be.  We live in a quad level house and we have 2 high energy herding dogs- Australian Shepherds.  Our Aussies are fine with the bunnies- but whenver you ask them if they want to go out, eat, etc…they zoom to where they need to go.  I am so afraid they would trample a bunny.  When I clean Cotton’s cage and x-pen- I let her out and she can hop around the family room- the dogs are more interested in seeing if they can steal any bunny poo and the actually bunny herself.  I also will have a bunny on the couch while I am watching TV- but they stay on the couch with me.

So even though the family room is OK for bunny exercise- my husband would have a heart attack if I left them unattended.  We already have 2 baby gates up because of the dogs (1 to keep them out of the cats room/litterboxes and another to keep them in the bedroom at night).  Even though Cotton has not destroyed any carpet- I am always afraid that the first time could be the last- if she ingests too much.  And all of our house is carpeted expect for kitchen and bathroom.

I wish I could free-range my bunnies, but sadly I can’t because we have two cats who would love them.. a little too much perhaps? Though the cats probably aren’t big enough to harm the bunnies, I don’t want to take any chances!

Once I was sitting with Nikki and Hershey and Nikki started ripping up my homework. Luckily I was there so I could take it away from her.

mine are 2/3s aswell, only at night i shut them in just incase, we do have dogs but they never really pay attention to each other and the dogs sleep in our bed so they wont be around where the rabbits are anyway, but yeah they are out most of the time

Mine are free range. Ever since I’d heard of it, I’d wanted desperately to do it!! Like having a cat or dog not a caged pet.

Drawbacks-> Even with proofing they do get into things sometimes, proving that you need to check things often and ensure they are proofed. For instance they suddenly decided that while sitting under our leather theatre chairs was awesome, chewing them a bit is fun too! I taped it down (got busted by Dave though) and put phone books under the chairs for them to chew-problem solved.

Because they are out all the time, there is no ‘mad binkying’ episode when you let them out. They binky when they binky (usually first thing in the morning when we get up). I do miss the excitement a little bit.

Pluses->
No need to round them up when you’re running out the door or to bed!!!
No feeling guilty if you are out for the evening as they are ALREADY out!
You know they aren’t bored because they can do whatever they want (also a drawback when you start feeling jealous of them… )

Cotton is free range til we go to bed.  Ruby is free range with Cotton when we are home. Othewise I may come home to  see a hair pulling fight occurred at some time while I was away. Free range of living room only.

Honey Bunny is free range in the bathroom.  Hopefully beginning of next year that will change. He will be able to play in the living room with the other 2.

Jersey is free range. I used to put her in the back room overnight and when I wasn’t home. Then I started letting her stay in the main part of the house overnight through winter. There were no problems. I’ve been dog sitting so now she has been in main house 24/7. I’m thinking I’ll hardly have to put her back into her room after the dogs gone. It does give you piece of mind though to have them in a contained area when you are not at home.   I also suspect she likes to have her own little space.  She’s been missing the back room and window that looks out over the yard.

Mine are completely freerange now that Layla is starting to calm down. It’s wonderful to have them just lounging around but I also miss the excitement of mad binkies when they’re let out.
The problem I’ve found is that Layla is a bit of a dare devil and will get herself into trouble occasionally so after a mamoth bunny-proofing mission, I think I’m ok but they ALWAYS suprise you with trouble when you least expect it.

the girls are free range to the balcony nearly 24/7 now that the weather is nice (never higher then 83 right now with nice breeze the whole time) otherwise they were spending all day while we were at work in their cage, out for a few hours in the evening and locked up all night, im sure they dont mind it being 83 instead of 78 (78 being in home temp during day) the used to only spend the weekends outside on the balcony but since we installed a fan out there they have been spending more time out there, they also didnt have a drop in interaction either.. infact the girls spend more time with my sons now that they are free range outside. I would LOVE for the girls to be inside free range but the truth of the matter is there are too many things for them to get into, kids toys, wires, exc. i just dont foresee us bunny proofing everything as sad as that seems.

Ours are never ever allowed in the computer room, WAAAY too many cords (three computers plus dave’s workshop!!) So they’re free range with one closed door.

You can make ‘bunny gates’ with NIC cubes and then bunny proofing or making rooms off limits is much easier I hope you’re able to do this, I definitely think the pluses outweight the negatives. You have to work with it, sometimes you find stuff doens’t work and have to adjust but honestly it’s very awesome and I know my buns are happy! (NOT that caged ones aren’t though!!! I’m gone alot with volunteering and not having to worry about exercise time is a great guilt relief!! LOL)

My two were free range until recently. ='( I miss seeing them run and binky everywhere.

Our buns have their own bunnyproofed room which doubles as my office as I work from home, in the evenings they come through to the lounge where they are free to roam free range till we go to bed.

We’d happily let them have access to all areas at all times, but they are just too mischievous sometimes – I once awoke having fallen asleep in the lounge to find Leah (now sadly missed) had chewed a massive hole in our brand new sofa, whilst Clarissa once jumped on our bed and gave me a friendly nibble right on the arse (which woke me with a shock).

Jack and Rucy are free range. But they really love their bunnyroom so they do hang out there most of the time. They usually come out to explore early in the am, and then sometimes in afternoon if I have stuff for them to play with in the livingroom, and then in the evenings, they come out and hang with us while we watch TV, but the rest of the time they hang out, sleep and play in their room.