How much time to spend with bunny?

[Minty]

9mo desexed female who has a whole bedroom to herself with lots of toys and houses and wood to chew on. I am not sure I am spending enough time with her.

She sleeps 8am – 4:30 or 5pm everyday. I haven’t seen her sleep at night.

Hoping to free roam her. Until then, how much should I spend with her everyday? She’s quite active and frisky.

[Harveybunny]

Rabbits are crepuscular, which means they are most active at dawn and dusk. These are also the best times to visit your rabbit because she will be the most playful. If I lay down in my bunny’s area in the afternoon, he’s super chill – because he’s resting. At night, it’s a different story. he comes up to me and sniffs me, and we toss toys back and forth. The nice thing about free range rabbits is that they seek out attention whenever they want, so you don’t have to worry about not giving them enough.

In the meantime, I’d say start with 30 min. and work your way up. Just sit/lie down in her area, and read or watch TV on a laptop. Hold real still and she’ll come up to you and sniff you. She will eventually be confident enough to jump on your back! Later you can try petting her. But for now, let her get more confident around you. Generally it’s better to let her ask for petting because if a rabbit wants something, they’ll let you know! If she doesn’t want petting, she won’t ask. So don’t give it to her.

Wishing you all, (and your bunnies) bliss

[Sirius&Luna]

Bunnies are very sociable animals, and can get depressed and lonely without suitable interaction.

I believe the recommended minimum is 4 hours, but even then your bunny still spends 20 hours alone, which if you think about it, is quite a long time! I ended up getting a second bunny, because even if I spend all my free time with them (which just isn’t possible anyway!) there were still 8 hours where I was asleep, and 9 hours of work, leaving him alone for 17 hours which I just didn’t think was fair.

If you can’t manage to interact with her that much, it might be worth looking into getting a friend for her

[Taloan7]

My bunny is free roam, so I can’t give you much advice about how much time. It’s kind of hard to quantify. I don’t spend lots of time directly interacting with my bunny (she’s not super playful and doesn’t want to be pet much, but she’s a bit older) but she just spends lots of time around us and our cats that I couldn’t really replicate it in direct contact. Like when I have the front door open but the glass door closed the cats love to sleep in the sun and she’ll lounge with them for hours. I agree with what others say, just spend as much time as possible hanging out in her room, even when you aren’t necessarily playing with her. Just work on making your space ready for free roam once you can, because I think it allows you both to get a lot more out of the relationship. So much of the bunny/human relationship is on their terms and timeline and that’s harder when they are in a separate room.

[Minty]

Thank you for all the info. I agree with @Sirius&Luna more as I have no other pets. I only spend 1.5-2 hours with her daily. I think I will be comfortable when she is free roamed. The main problem is that when I walk she for some reason love to run across my feet, very fast and comes out of nowhere suddenly. I am scared i will step on her. So I have to walk v carefully – actually I shuffle. This would be a problem if I move her into my bedroom. I will have to figure out a way to coexist with her more!

The other thing I am thinking of is a safe robotic pet. But I do want to be closer to her.

[Author]

Messages