My rabbit still rattles his pen bars (he’s now 8 months) and he’s done it since I’ve had him. He has a 4 ft by 4 ft pen, but he also gets lots of outside time every day (3 to 4 hours on weekdays and more on weekends). Now he kind of knows when his freedom from the pen time is, and that when he goes back in it’s time to go to sleep. He still rattles his pen bar doors sometimes though, seemingly for fun (sometimes he does it when the pen is already open, so he could easily get out if he wanted to).

Even though you have your rabbit in a comparatively large pen, you should still let her exercise at least one or two hours a day outside of her pen (run around the living room inside the house). Are you letting her out of the pen but just didn’t mention it in your post, or are you not letting her out of the pen? If you’re not letting her out, is it because of litter training or chewing issues?

Peppy is terrible about gnawing and rattling at her cage…she starts every morning at 8am sharp (way too early to be awake in my standards, heh!). Who needs an alarm clock when you’ve got a noisy bunny? Tammo was too, but Remi’s more of a chill little guy and just sits around at night. I think it just really depends on the rabbit, but daily exercise hours like Otti mentioned is definitely a good idea too.

Some people recommend that the bunny’s enclosure not be kept in the same place as where he/she is allowed to exercise…I guess the bunny might see the room “out there” that he/she is familiar with, and trying escaping for fun fun time? As opposed to being caged/penned in a room where free time is not allowed, so the bunny isn’t familiar with what’s “out there”. I’ve never tried this myself…Peppy lives in a shared apartment so she has to be kept in the bedroom, whether it’s cage time or play time.

I think Otti’s raised some good questions and I’ll be interested to hear your replies. Petie has been driving me crazy chewing and rattling and bars of his pen. I believe they are black powder-coated steel but not sure. Petie’s pen is 8 foot square and he does run little laps and excursions galloping around the enclosure. He doesn’t get any out of pen time, but once when I first got him, i picked him up and he was so terrified he jumped from my arms, landed on the slanted drawing board table top and fell to the floor and tried to run away so he did have a taste of freedom outside the pen, until I was able to pick him up and put him back in. I think he yearns for freedom on the other side. I solved his chewing on the pen bars by making a wall of his dried grass hidey hut he chewed the seams off of and rendered just flat mats, and attaching it as a barrier just inside the pen wall. Since his access to the pen bars has been cut off, he no longer tries to get to them. He does chew on the dried grass walls but that’s good for him, I figure it’s an extension of his eating hay. You might want to get a coconut fibers mat or dried grass mat, as many as it takes to block her access to the bars – BB Store carries some – made for bunnies, and attach it with binder clips to the bars of your bunny’s pen and see if that makes a difference. I know hearing the little buggers gnawing at their pen bars can drive one up the wall. After an evening or two of trying to deal with the dried grass wall barrier that deprives access to the bars, he’s given up on it and appraently forgotten about trying to get out. He spends the time he used to work at the bars, sleeping, eating, and grooming. He still does the bunny 500 for exercise. Hope this may help you.

Btw, I’ve heard that a rabbit can have its mouth or teeth injured from chewing too fiecely on cage and pen bars so I believe you’re on the right track to try to find a way to stop it. There seemed to be only that one side of Petie’s pen that he had been obsessed with chewing, most of the other sides of his pen are blocked with his “furniture” – hidey houses, wall feeder, couch, litterbox, etc. so maybe attaching something like those against the wall of your pen might help too. It wasn’t until I attached the dried grass mats, though, that really made a difference for me. So far, anyway, until the little bugger finds a way around it!

Bun-bun (Tamaki) used to bite his cage bars when he wanted attention. His cage was in the living room, and if he felt like he deserved a treat in the middle of your movie, he’d chew away.

An easy fix was a little squirt bottle I had from first training him when I got him. He really really hates that thing, and after a tiny mist or two during a chew session, if the bottle is set in front of his cage, he will be a little angel.

On a side note, is it ok to use a squirt bottle for training? It’s more of a misty squirt, so he doesn’t get much water on him at all, it just makes him switch to instant grooming mode from whatever bad behavior it was. It’s how I’ve trained dogs in the past.