my rabbits pickie

[wittlebunny]

All the toys a get my bunny sit in his cage. He dosnt play with them no matter what i do.Any ideas of how i can get my bunny to play more? I dont want him to be bored.

[LizzieKnittyBun]

He’s probably still getting used to his surroundings. Give him some time. Also, sometimes bunnies don’t really like conventional pet toys and are far happier with more ordinary items.

Here are some ideas:

Stiff paper that crinkles
Phone book to shred (remove the covers and colored pages first)
Cardboard paper towel rolls
Cardboard boxes with holes cut in them
Blankets to burrow under

Our buns ignore many of the toys that I impulsively bought for them. We joke that they’re more for me than the buns, since the the toys are so cute. The buns spend most of the time shredding cardboard, burrowing under blankets, and tossing paper napkins that I leave on the floor for them lol

[wittlebunny]

i’v had him for more then a year now and i’v tryed most of those items but thanks

[lashkay]

I worry about my bunny, Petie getting Bored, too. Especially as he’s taken to busying himself chewing the pen wires, I think he’s trying to get out or maybe he likes the taste of them – ugh! Nugget rigged a parrot bell on a chain in oliver’s enclosure and she said whenever he’s bored he goes over and twirls the bell above his head! So that might be one stone unturned for you, i’m going to get a parrot bell and rig it inside Petie’s pen. He also has one of those ‘wiffle’ type hard plastic balls with a bell inside and every once in a while I hear him ring it. The dried grass hidey hut is great for nestling in and chewing on. too.

[RabbitPam]

Many bunnies ignore the toys you buy at stores, unfortunately.
A good way to find toys he will like is to watch to see if he likes jumping, digging, hiding, going under things, tossing things, or chewing on things. Then try toys that are what he normally tends to do. So a jumper likes a constructed thing, like boxes or stacked mazes, with ramps and height. A chewer will like willow sticks. A chewer and tosser will like a willow ball to toss, then chew apart. A digger will like a diggy box filled with shredded paper. A hider will like a tunnel or a box with a hole to go in and out.

[Kate Monster]

I’ll share my experience with my bunnies and toys, without knowing your bunny and what all you’ve tried it may not apply or help much, but maybe it will help some!

When I got Kate and Spence I don’t think they were really accustomed to having toys, they’d spent several months in a shelter where they didn’t have anything but each other and a litter box, and I suspect that they hadn’t been treated all that well by previous owners (they’d both been adopted and returned to the shelter a couple of times). When I gave them toys they sat on the ground of their pen for quite some time until one day I picked up their straw ball and tossed it a couple of times very lightly and a few times a day. Spencer got the idea after a few days and started picking it up and throwing it. I held up a willow chew toy in front of his face and he grabbed it, chewed it and threw it. Eventually he started playing little tossing games by himself. It took Kate a bit longer, but she eventually warmed up to the idea and now they play little toss games with eachother and when I’m really lucky (and have given them yummy bananas recently) they’ll play with me. They also play bunny soccer, and bunny basketball (somehow they throw a ball inside a straw mini tunnel that they turn upside down!) They also get really crazy if I toss one of their toys inside the little straw hidey house they have in their pen. That usually leads to a game I call “one of these things is not like the other” as they attempt to pull a round ball out of a square opening in all kinds of crazy ways. So it took a bit of time but they are now very creative with their game playing.
It usually takes them a little while still to decide that new toys seem like fun things to have, but after a week or so they have a grand time with most things that I get now that I have a sense of what they like, and they know what they like to do with toys. They are very picky, they don’t like small things so little willow sticks, small pine cones, even treat cubes go pretty much ignored. They do however very much like baskets, bigger toys made of braided sticks, straw balls, tunnels, jumping on and eating their straw house, and my boyfriend’s DVDs (but that’s a whole ‘nother issue!) They actually seem to prefer some of the toys I’ve bought, in fact they often pee on things like cardboard toilet paper/paper towel tubes. So I guess my story comes down to that my bunnies needed some encouragement, time, and very specific toys.
I hope that helped a little bit, obviously my story is pretty specific to my bunnies, but maybe something in there can be altered and applied to your bunny!

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