Do any of your rabbits do this? Digging box behaviour.

[DaisyBinks]

So Bunny loves to dig at her cage corners and on the sheet/ pillow on the bed. She also tries to pull at the sheet as she digs, but I try to keep her from doing this so she won’t accidentally ingest the fabric. So, for over a month I have been trying to make her a diggy box that she will take to. The last attempt was a shallow cardboard box full of shredded paper bags. she will go in it, but not dig.

Until today, she was digging a lot on the bed, and when it was time to go back in her cage, the corners of the cage. so, I slipped the box in to where she was digging. She jumped right in, and instead of digging started collecting all the bits of shredding in her mouth! Fitting as much as she could with it sicking out each end as if she has a mustache. She then held it in her mouth and finally started to dig. 

Has anyone else seen their rabbit do this? Eventually when she started to eat what was in her mouth I pulled it out, but she immediately did it again. So, I took the box out for now. I took a video but I don;t know how good the quality is. 

[DaisyBinks]

not the best video, but here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCZv…ature=plcp

[RabbitPam]

Think of her mouth as a fifth hand. I think you have a successful diggy box there. In your video she doesn’t appear to be eating/swallowing it, just moving it around with her face. She’s having a good time.

Two suggestions: you could hide a few pellets in the middle of the pile in the diggy box, so her digging produces a little surprise reward to find. I would do too much because she will always expect it, and since she is using the diggy box now, it might not be necessary.

The other thing to try is to put in slightly larger sheets of paper, like a whole yellow pages page or a plain piece of white or brown newsprint. Crumple it so it’s not too flat, and she can grab it and shred it herself. It gives her a shredding activity that turns into digging. If she ignores it, then just shred it and add to the diggy box.

[DaisyBinks]

Yes, I was thinking this with the piece of paper. I had a phone book she liked to shred with her teeth, but then she peed on it so that is gone now haha

and in the video she is not eating it, but once i stopped she started to really chew it and began to eat. she eats everything she chews so I avoid plastics and fabrics as much as possible

I am glad what she is doing is okay though, she seemed really happy and when she looked up with all this paper in her mouth it was TOO cute lol

thank you

[Author]

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