My two baby Flemish sisters, a little less than 7 months old and at the 10 pound size, have a 3 foot by 6 foot pen in our living room. The door to the pen is always open so they are free to come and go as they please. They can at any time of the day, hop out and sleep somewhere else in the house (the bedrooms are closed). They do spend a lot of time in their pen, but finding them asleep somewhere else is common..under the coffee table or under the dining room table. The dining room table has many large cardboard boxes under it for them to play with, hid behind, and EAT. I’ve been pretty apprehensive, but eating cardboard doesn’t seem to harm them..the cardboard is just a snack since they are overfed with hay, green veggies, pellets, and treats.
About outdoors pens/cages….I was naive to think that bunnies liked to be outside when we first got an adult rescue rabbit. I built an outdoor pen to keep her in during the daytime. I had to build up the chicken wire walls since she was trying to jump outside…I thought she was just confused as to where she was a new rescued rabbit. When she realized she could not jump out, she at first dug a trench in the ground. She would lay in it with her ears down, and she wasn’t that visible…THEN she started digging a bunny hole. An 8 pound rabbit. She dug a tremendous hole. The dirt she moved out would have filled up 1 1/2 wheelborrows!!! Astounding amount of dirt for an 8 pound bunny. When she finished her hole, she would not come out. She stayed in the hole basically 24 hours a day, with only brief excursions to eat. This told me she was very afraid of being outside. Catching her took time. I waited until she came out to feed, and then a threw a pillow on her hole to keep her from diving back in the hole. I caught her and for the rest of her life she lived in the house…cage free. She had excellent litter box manners. Her new home became sleeping under our bed. She lived as a free ranging house bunny for about 10 1/2 years.
A bunny hole aside. When she was in her bunny hole, the burrow hole was about 4 or 5 inches in diameter. When in her bunny hole, she would backfill the opening with dirt, leaving only an approximate 1 inch diameter hole to allow air into the burrow. For a predator investigating the burrow hole, it would appear as if the hole was essentially closed.