I copied my post from the other thread under this heading: Bunny gnawing at bars?

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 too’ve heard that a rabbit can have its mouth and/or teeth injured from chewing too fiecely on cage and pen bars – can even break its teeth, 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. Sorry for the copied post.

Hi and Welcome, btw! We’ll want to see pics of your bunny, he sounds adorable!

Checkers is reason to show off your cutie! I saw the pics in your introduction thread, things going better with the gnawing on the bars now, I hope? What did you end up doing?

Some rabbits are determined cage-rattlers like my mini rex Lint. He used to do it at night for hours on his gate. It stopped after he was bonded to another rabbit so in his case it was a boredom vice. If nothing helps I would line the cage walls with cardboard at the bottom where he can reach so he can’t damage his teeth. I know it’s sad to block his visual but cage bar chewing can really mess with their dental health.

Yeah, if you attach hay mats, or other mats, you need to attach them EVERYWHERE they can chew, or block off access with attached or wedged in furniture, hidey houses, hay racks, high back litter boxes, couches (lol) whatever you can assemble together. My Petie moved over to the corner that wasn’t covered and started chewing the bars there until I attached his hanging haybag in front of it. Although he tried to move it out of the way, he grew exasperated with the thing continually swinging back in his way, and pushing against him so he stopped. All’s status quo for now. Good luck! That’s funny about the lemon, although I know it foiled your plan. Leave it to bunnies…!

Sunny just does it when he wants out. He stops immediately once I open the cage door, and doesn’t do it while he’s out. Sometimes I will add a zip tie so he can’t do it as loudly.

Barring such ideas (pardon the pun), Petzy’s suggestion of lining the pen walls with cardboard sounds helpful. By the way, now that the haybag is moved in front of the corner bars, he seems to be preoccupied with eating hay more than ever. I guess he knows his bars are on the other side of the haybag, and he figures “okay, darn you, if you’re going to stay in my way, I’ll eat you!” lol

I’m glad you found the hay cubes useful . It’s something I discovered recently too by accident…Peppy just gets so involved in trying to get a good bite out of it (kind of difficult, she scoots it around the cage lol) that I guess she doesn’t bother to chew on the cage. Yay for getting some sleep!

It has been my experience that:

1. Bunnies have OCD. They get obsessed with their projects.

2. Even more so if it drives the humans nuts.

3. They are also extremely stubborn.

4. One other thing – see rules 1-3.

Any questions?

My Bun Hazel was doing the SAME thing she like knew that breakfast time was soon all animals have their own internal clocks kind of like we do. So she WAS getting fed when my boyfriend got up for work around 7am. So if he would feed her a little late or sleep in on the weekends she would rattle the cage seeing that it woke us up and someone would ALWAYS give her something a toy food a treat ANYTHING!
She got used to doing this but i am a light sleeper and do not have to get up early and it was driving me NUTS! She started doing it ALL the time and earlier in the Morning as early as 4am!

I tried all the telling her “NO!” clapping my hands putting bitter stuff on the bars everything i could think of… none of it worked.

Then i thought to myself rabbits learn pretty close to how dogs learn (i am a dog trainer) i should try it that way! So i did. I changed her feeding time to about 11am and when she would shake the cage i would ignore her (for as long as it took…. ><).
The hardest part was getting my boyfriend to not run to her the second he heard his baby upset xD. Once she started realizing she got nothing for pulling on the cage anymore she started doing it less and less.

It took about two weeks but she doesn’t do it any more which is literally music to my ears. Another thing i made sure of was that i did not give her ANYTHING as i got out of bed she only gets attention or food when she is quite and I’ve been up for a while. So that was my cure. Hope it helps if anyone else has this problem.