My old bunny was free range, but my current bunnies are caged when we’re not home. In my opinion, it depends on the temperament of the bunny, as well as the safety of your home. I live in a rented flat, and there are simply too many things (sofas, tables, cabinets) that can’t be bunny-proofed for my chewy bunnies. But Sirius never chewed, so it wasn’t an issue.

As for how we decided to make him free range – he escaped two days in a row, and I was worried he was going to injure himself escaping, so just made him free range. But we’d had him for probably over a month at that point.

I would probably slowly expand the space you’re giving him. It sounds like you’re going about it the right way But it’s good to let him know that he has a safe area that is his, as well as access to a larger room. I would say keep going as you are, and he’ll start exploring more as he feels more comfortable. You could also put some cardboard boxes with a couple of holes cut in them in other bits of the room, so he has safe spaces to retreat to across the room.

I would be a bit worried about the guinea pigs – bunnies are naturally very inquisitive, and I wouldn’t put it past him to either accidentally jump in, or jump in to eat their veg/muesli. Is there anything you can cover the top of the cage with?

If he is litter trained, confident enough to explore, and the rooms he goes into are safe then he is ready. Just take it slowly as you seem to be doing anyway – give him a room to get used to, and go from there. Some rabbits are confident enough to explore the house right away and will go back to their litter trays as needed. I have had a bonded group of four for around a year now. One of them has explored the whole house from the start (and the back yard the time he escaped!). The other three won’t leave their room even for food bribes outside the open door. They are free range 24/7 in their room though.

If you don’t want your rabbit getting into your guinea pig cage, then perhaps don’t have it open when he is free range. See if you can alternate who is out and exploring, or something?

I did read somewhere that rabbits find it stressful to live in stacked cages, as thumping is how they communicate fear – so they interpret the bunny moving around above them as danger. That said, I don’t know how true that is, or how loud guinea pigs would be. I think you could probably give it a try and see how he reacts. It sounds hard for you to clean though!

I think it’s definitely worth a try, especially if the pigs have fleece or some other sort of padding on the floor, I can’t imagine they can be that loud!

And the cleaning part was just an observation, not a criticism! I’m sure it’ll be fine.

For Wick, he becomes curious about places and objects when he sees me interacting with them a lot. Potentially after witnessing you going up and down stairs regularly, this may spark interest for them. On a simple reasoning level, the stairs probably equate a mountain— currently, there’s no real motivation to go up them for your rabbit maybe!