New Habitat Training?

[LilBuns]

Hi all!

I’m a new lionhead bunny owner (he’s about 9 weeks old) and am working on making a comfortable cage/ play area.

My question mainly has to do with training/ adjusting the bunny to his new habitat.

He has a medium sized cage that he is comfortable in (we’ve put in a grass hut for him to hide in, and wood platform for him to perch on) and he is pretty much trained to use the litterbox. 

When we first got him home we of course were guilty parents and wanted him to run around, so we let him out in the small room we keep him in and kept a close watch – aside from nibbling and occasionally going to town on the carpet, he’s pretty good, and still went back to his cage to use the litterbox.  He got pretty comfortable with his surroundings in a couple days, running laps and doing binkys all over the place.

However, I can’t always be around to watch him in the whole room… so I wanted to make a “fenced-in” enclosure out of the wire cubes around his cage that he could play in during the day so he has more space than just his cage.  I did this (with plenty of toys and cardboard boxes inside) but he seemed to be very confused as to why he was in another “cage” once he was let out of his actual cage.

Is this too traumatic a change for him since we used to just open his cage door and let him run free?  I don’t want to ruin his current good cage habits.

Or is it ok to let him get used to this 2nd enclosure, and occasionally let him out to run the whole room?

OR am I overthinking the situation and he’ll be just fine?

Thanks for any advice, I’m very glad to have this forum as a resource!

[Monkeybun]

He’ll be fine with a pen attached to his cage. Thats the setup mine have, and I never close the cage door anymore When I rebuilt a cage for one, I even just took the door off

[Sarita]

He’ll be fine. He might even like it better!

[Beka27]

At his age, an extended pen is a great idea to expand his space while not allowing him to get into (too much) trouble. Still try to let him out to the rest of the room every day for more exercise and interaction with you, but while you’re not around, it’ll be nice for him to be able to stretch his legs. Be conscious of how high the pen is. Little buns can jump extraordinarily high.

[Elrohwen]

Mine have a cage attached to a pen, though I haven’t closed the cage door since the first week I had Otto home. I think it’s a great set up.

Like Beka said, just make sure he gets time to run around the whole room (or even more space, if possible) while you’re there to supervise.

[LilBuns]

Thanks for all your thoughts! I’ve committed to trying out the cage attached to a pen… and I think he’s getting used to it already.

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