Introduction
With their gentle nature and playful personalities, rabbits can be adorable pets. However, while many people keep pet rabbits in an outdoor hutch and run. Indoor rabbit care offers many more benefits to rabbits and their owners. As a rabbit owner. I know that caring for a pet rabbit indoors requires careful preparation and knowledge. So, let’s explore everything you need to know about providing the best care for your indoor rabbit. Therefore, in this post I will walk you through, the basic indoor bunny care, you need from the start. From space, habitat and health, to making them part of your family and living in harmony with them. However, I suggest reading my guide to owning a rabbit, if you haven’t already done so, before continuing.
Table of Contents
Benefits of Keeping Rabbits Indoors.
For rabbits, living indoors allows them to thrive, safe from predators and the extremes of hot and cold weather. While spending more time with them, will give you an appreciation of their needs. As well as, allowing them to develop a stronger bond with you. Which in turn will lead to a happier, more social pet. Rabbits are easier to care for, as part of a family and living a routine life. Whereas, the important regular checks to support them increase in the winter, when they live outside. But, are often forgotten or ignored altogether in bad weather. Which causes suffering and can result in their death. While, caring for rabbits indoors better serves their needs. As they are protected from the changes in climate and require little extra attention.
Preparing Your bunnies Room.
Creating a comfortable living space for your indoor rabbits is essential for their happiness and welfare. Rabbits are instinctively curious and active animals. Therefore, providing a home that caters to their needs, and ensures their safety is essential to indoor rabbit care. Start by choosing a quiet room in your home for your bunny to roam, play, and relax. With a shaded corner away from any heat source, i.e. a radiator. Preferably with a soft nonslip flooring and little or no through traffic. However, the perfect room rarely exists. But the more boxes you can tick, the easier it will be to prepare.
indoor rabbit care: safety.
Start by making the room rabbit safe. All high and low voltage electric cables must be inaccessible to house rabbits. So, secure cables behind furniture, or protect them using plastic trunking. However, this is not always as difficult as it may appear. I just move my furniture around, making sure not to leave any gaps. Thus, blocking the rabbits access to most of my electric cables. Those not behind the furniture I protected in self-adhesive plastic trunking, which sicks to any smooth surface.
To care for pet rabbits indoors you need to consider all your house plants as toxic. Because the majority are. So, make sure your house plants are well out of their reach or preferably remove them altogether. Because, rabbits are past masters at getting to things we think are safe! For example, I had a plastic ornamental Bonsai tree on my sideboard I thought was safe, and it was. Until I moved a dining chair while cleaning under the table forgetting to replace it, before going shopping. Hence, on my return, the tree’s foliage was all over the floor, along with the trunk in its pot.
Rabbit nutrition
Wherever you care for a pet rabbit, indoors, outside, or free to roam, its diet needs to be strictly controlled! Because failing to feed rabbits the diet they need to maintain gut health will kill them. However, information on what rabbits can and should not eat and how to monitor gut health. Is covered in my post on understanding their digestive system and feeding.
Indoor rabbit care: essentials
To care for a rabbit indoors you will need: –
- A Sturdy and spacious, rabbit safe sectional pen, at least 600mm high. Large enough for your rabbit to hop around, stretch out, and stand on its hind legs.
- A rubber backed mat to protect a carpet, not needed on waterproof flooring.
- A small dogs ceramic food bowl for drinking water.
- Suitable Hay rack for rabbits and feeding hay.
- A high back litter tray for rabbits.
- White vinegar in a spray bottle and a roll of kitchen towel.
- Rabbit safe litter. Paper based litter is the best, But, wood shavings can be harmful to rabbits and should not be used.
- Boredom breakers, things they can throw around, chew and destroy. Such as, hay tunnels, chill and chew mats, apple sticks and rabbit safe wood and carboard toys.
- Chew stop spray.
Setting up your bunny corner.
Start by erecting the pen in the corner. Then fill the hay rack and water bowl and place them on the mat one end of the pen. But leave room in the corner for the litter tray, which needs to be prepared before your rabbit will use it.
However, as rabbit care to keep one or two rabbits healthy, indoors or outdoors, requires six square metres. The pen is only to keep your new pet from chewing everything in the room, when left alone. While it adjusts to its new environment, and with training, learns to control this unfortunate trait. Because, confined to a small space for long periods, they can become stressed and difficult to handle. For this reason, I do not recommend using cages! However, your goal is to remove the pen. Once your bunnies are trained and ready to live unmanaged in the room.
Although, this may seem difficult, it’s not, but rabbits are individual’s, and some may take longer to train than others. Hence, one of my bunnies hardly needed any training. While the other took a month of perseverance on my part. As a result, they enjoy the freedom of my home.
Introducing your bunny to its new home.
Changes in environments and keepers are stressful for rabbits. So, after placing your bunny in its pen. Leave it in peace and quiet, with food, water and regular checks. But no handling, for up to 24 hours. However, rabbit do not like being alone. So, if on a regular check it comes to you. Or after 24 hours it’s time to make friends! Now, open the pen and sit on the floor offering a treat and let the rabbit come to you.
When and if it does, slowly try gently stroking between its nose and ears, using one finger. Whether or not it lets you, it now needs closely managed exercise, and time to explore the room.
Rabbits live life to a routine, times for feeding, cleaning, exercise and play. But will happily adapt to a care routine that suits your lifestyle. However, from this point on, indoor rabbit care requires bunnies to have. At least four hours of closely managed free roaming exercise a day. During which you should train it not to reshape wooden furniture, or chew holes in your soft furnishings. But teaching rabbits not to chew takes time and patience.
Indoor Rabbit Care – Training.
An essential part of indoor rabbit care that keepers bond with their long eared hopping house guest. Once bonded, choose a control word that should be short, “No”, for instance. “Don’t chew that bunny-kins” will only go in one long ear and out the other. However, rabbits have a short attention span, so when they start chewing. Gently move their head away using one finger while firmly saying, “No”, and offering an alternative (i.e., a stick).
But do not shout or offer them anything they could consider a reward for chewing. Repeat the exercise if your bunny takes the offered alternative and throws it away to return to chewing. This playtime may only last a minute or two before your bunny moves away. However, don’t lose your temper! Remember you are training, so do not terrorise your bunny. Eventually, your rabbit should respond to, “No”, but do not expect a quick fix. Or, as rabbits appear to have selective hearing, “No”, working every time. Therefore, I recommend combining training with a chew stop spray on their favourite chewing areas.
Litter Training.
Cared for indoors, pet rabbits prefer to pick where they relieve themselves. Usually, a corner close to their food and water. Hence the rubber backed mat! So let it because you need it to pee. Soak up as much as you can, using a sheet of kitchen towel. Then spray the spot with white vinegar, and leave it to soak in and remove the rabbit’s scent before cleaning. Take the pee-soaked towel, and keeping it flat. Rub it around the inside of the litter tray, before laying it flat in the bottom.
Next add a thin layer of small animal litter covering the bottom of the tray, and pee-soaked towel. Then, because rabbits like to eat while relieving themselves, add a layer of hay covering the small animal litter. Once you have finished cleaning, place the litter tray with its food and water, where your rabbit peed. When your rabbit returns for a pee, it will smell the litter tray and should start using it.
However, if it relieves itself outside the litter tray, repeat steps one and two. But only rub the kitchen towel over the exposed inside of the tray. Once your rabbit’s using the tray, for odour free indoor rabbit care it will need refreshing daily, or it will start to smell. However, if you need to change its location, you must gradually move it to the place of your choosing. Along with the food and water. However, I recommend keeping a waterproof layer under the litter tray if it’s on your carpet!
indoor rabbit care: Socialisation
Rabbits need to socialise and build a mutually trusting relationship, referred to as bonding! This bond with you or another bunny is essential to their physical and mental health, without it they will suffer. So, a lone rabbit is more demanding because it needs your company all of the time. Whereas, rabbits kept in pairs helps fulfil most of their social needs. However, pet rabbits love human company, and will still need to socialise with you. Which is essential to spotting signs of illness! After all, they’ll want to keep you happy, they know you’re their life support system.
Conclusion
Caring for a pet rabbit indoors may seem problematic, and it can be at first, but I found most problems easy to solve. But, keeping rabbits outside, for me, had far more problems, and they would not be part of a family. My rabbits were young, and quickly adapted to life in my home, becoming the pets and companions, I wanted. However, it took putting their welfare first, by creating a rabbit safe space and habitat. As well as, creating a routine that included long periods of freedom for exercise, socialising and training. All of which helped build strong bonds and my family.
I had no plans to get a rabbit and was completely unprepared for her arrival. However, after creating her a home in the garden. I soon realise she had other ideas about how she needed to live. Hence, she taught me that all I thought I knew about keeping rabbits was not how they need to live. Read more about my new pet rabbit experience.
