biting and scratching cage

[EdgarsMama]

I have a 4 month old holland lop cutie pie. I’ve had him for a little bit over a month and he stays in my room. Well every morning from 5:30 to about 7 he aggressively bites (practically eats) one part of his cage and scratches another. This is messing up my sleep a lot. I think he does it because the sun is coming up and it’s bothering him and he doesn’t know what to do. I was thinking of putting a blanket over his cage so maybe he wouldn’t see the sun? Does anyone else have any other advice?

[manic_muncher]

That’s actually a very normal time for buns to be active. Many BBers here often talk about their buns waking them up with cage rattles or even jumping up on their faces! My Bumpy used to rattle to come out, but now that he’s a bit older, he’s adjusted to our schedule and doesn’t ask to come out anymore. He just waits, cuz he knows I’ll be opening the door up as soon as I’m good and ready.

The blanket may help you extend his “nighttime” and allow you a bit more sleep, it may take a bit of time for him to adjust though. Do you call out to him when he’s doing this? He’s still so very young, and he might be also starting puberty so may be slightly more assertive!

Bumpy is just over a year old now, he’s never really listened to me when I’ve told him “no” or “stop” before, BUT! yesterday he was doing something I didn’t want him to be doing, and all I had to do was say his name in a stern voice, like I was warning him, he immediately stopped what he was doing and ran over to me. I was shocked!

I guess the best thing I can tell you is that in time he’ll adjust to you, and as he gets older he should calm down. If you are planning on neutering him (if not already done) that may help some of his frustration with the violent cage biting that you are seeing.

[Pipje]

I think this is just his wake up time!
I know for mine that when the sun goes down and when the sun comes up then all hell breaks loose and they do their crazy running and binkies! Putting a towel over may stop it but his internal clock might still know!
However I think the actual problem here is that he is frustrated, does he have enough room in the cage to run around a bit and do binkies? Did you get a pet store cage when you bought him there? It might help if it has space to run and levels to jump on and off. My Pip used to rattle the bars and dig at the sides of his xpen when it was smaller, now he has a big NIC condo for nighttime and he has stopped doing that completely as when he gets hyper he can run and jump off the shelves in there!
If it is on the smaller side then maybe you could expand the cage with an xpen onto it or something so he can use his energy on positive things rather than rattling Check out this page https://binkybunny.com/BUNNYINFO/GreatHabitats/tabid/229/Default.aspx

[EdgarsMama]

Thank you both. The blankets have helped during the night. And I do believe he hates being in his cage. It’s the biggest one we could get at the pet store, and I would love to and prefer to have him as a free roaming bun, but we also have a shiba inu. The dog mostly stays on the first floor while Edgar and I are on the third, but if she ever gets a sense of Edgar and comes up here and he is not in his cage it could be very bad news. (she has killed wild baby rabbits before). So I don’ t know what to do about the cage situation. I let him out a lot and give him play time, but at night with no one watching him or the dog i cannot do much.

[JackRabbit]

Do you have space for an xpen? If so, you could either attach the xpen to the cage or punt the cage and just use the xpen as your bunny’s home.

BTW, I have a similar situation. Dog downstairs and bunnies upstairs. I have baby gates at each room the bunnies are in plus a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs for added “protection”. I went baby gate crazy after the dog came upstairs one time (she normally won’t even try to go up the slippery wood stairs). I don’t know what all went on while she was up there (it was only a few minutes), but she scared the crap out of the buns — litter was everywhere and they thumped for a solid hour.

[Pipje]

Sadly pet store cages are never big enough, I wish they’d stop selling them… they are pretty much only good for being litter trays in a larger rabbit environment
Definitely try and get an xpen to attach to the entrance of the cage (this was my set up for a while) and try to block off the stairs with a baby gate for the dog as suggested. If he has the space to use up energy then he wont take it out on the bars of the cage (binkying and running is much more fun than rattling!)
If you can then look into building a NIC condo out of the wire storage grids. They can be built very quickly and easily and are sturdy and safe, so the dog can’t get the rabbit, and they can be made as big as you want with extra levels!

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