Sometimes it helps to toss a blanket or sheet over the cage. Just make sure it doesn’t get too hot in the cage for your bun

What is her housing like? Can you attach an xpen for contained exercise space overnight?

Make sure her cage is large enough and she has lots to do. Make some hay-stuffed toilet paper rolls (with treats hidden inside) and toss them in at night before you go to bed.

Otherwise, you have to rely on extinction. Extinction occurs when a behaviour stops because of lack of reinforcement – basically, the behaviour serves no purpose, so the animal ceases it once this is evident to conserve energy. So, even shushing her is reinforcement, and is strengthening the behaviour (making it more likely to occur in the future, as well as padding it against extinction which is the exact opposite of what you want). If you commit to ignoring the behaviour and never reinforce (even looking over can be reinforcing to many animals) it will eventually extinguish, unless it is a self-rewarding behaviour which is possible but not likely as she isn’t achieving anything by shaking the bars unless you pay attention to her.

Note: with extinction, there is often an extinction burst. This tends to happen after the behaviour has reduced – suddenly, it comes back with a vengeance. It is more vital than EVER in this stage to ignore the behaviour. Once you get past this admittedly irritating stage, the behaviour is extinguished and will not occur again (except in the case of spontaneous recovery which sometimes happens, but you just ignore the behaviour again and it usually disappears much faster the second time around).

You can combine this with positive reinforcement, and reward her with a small treat after 3-5 seconds of quiet.

My bun did this for a long time, but I stuck through and the laws of learning took their course

The thing about it being your bedtime, its the time that bunnies are most active. So basically imagine that you slept all night, then woke up refreshed and ready to play only to find you couldn’t leave your bed. Thats just how I feel about it anyhow. I use xpens, plus Samson is free range most of the time.

Here we go, I just took this one today

Ladys is a little small, but she’s resisting being poop-litter trained so she’ll have to deal with it. She gets a couple hours of run time in my room before bed too.

Someone the other day with a similar situation mentioned that it’s helpful to leave a tv or radio going all day where the bun is and leave the lights on so that come bedtime, when the music or tv is turned off and the lights go out, the bun is only too happy to have some peace and quiet to sleep in the dark and in the solitude and uses the time to sleep. You could try that, as well. Petie used to take the bars of his x-pen (his habitat) in his mouth and rattle them also until I attached a grass mat to where he would shake the bars. He’s nibbled a hole out of the mat, but he hasn’t gone back to shaking the bars since I covered them with the mat. I left the mat attached to the bars lest he go back to shaking them again, which he hasn’t. That might be helpful to make the bars where he shakes them, off limiits.

I just feed them their pellets right at bedtime. They eagerly get into the cage and they don’t make a peep since they are a bit preoccupied. They usually don’t make any noise until early in the morning, when they start to stir. I usually ignore them though, at least until it is time for me to get up anyway. =p

Lots of people will use an xpen and leave the petstore cage door open all the time. Think of the cage as the “house”, but the xpen as the “front yard”. Still a part of their space, just additional room to move around. Depending on what your flooring is, you might need to have something protective underneath the pen too.

I just thought of something else. Classical music is known for it’s relaxing effects on the brain. I use it for one of my dogs who is severely reactive and anxious (so much so that after a year of behaviour modification and deliberation we had to put her on medication just to get her to be calm enough to acclimate). Anyway, I use classical music for her, as it’s widely used for anxious/reactive dogs with great results. She is immediately calmer – usually she panics and cries/screams at the tiniest sound despite hearing it a million times a day. With classical music in the background she is better able to stay in a calm state and small things won’t set her off. My bunny seems to love it too. He’ll run closer to the speakers and stand with his ears perked! Try putting it on quietly at night and see if that makes a difference.

Definitely try an xpen Your cage is far too small for bun to be stuck in for hours, they need room to hop and flop and play