Tips for Bunny Proofing
By: Cait Reizman and Matt Cummins
The more space you can give your rabbit, the better. Think of every time you’ve seen an animal in a cage and thought “oh that poor thing, if only they had more space to roam.” Of course, not everyone is in a situation where they can give their bunny full reign of the living space. If you have to have them in a penned off area, they need a minimum of 16 square feet and daily opportunities for supervised exercise outside the pen.
An X-pen setup with a waterproof tarp and fleece blankets protecting the floor.
When bunny-proofing whatever space you’re allowing your furry loved one to occupy, packing tape and C&C grids are your friends. Rabbits love to chew on wood, cords (“spicy hay”), books, carpets and other fabric. One of ours will even chew on plastic bags. After you’ve taped or blocked off things like baseboards and the edges of cabinets, you’ll want to move any of your possessions you don’t want chewed out of reach. Eliminating small spaces that they can crawl into that would make it hard for you to get ahold of them in an emergency is also very important.
Packing tape works wonders for baseboards without being too obtrusive.
We thought our board game collection was out of reach, until we learned it wasn’t.
We’ve found that no bunny is perfect when it comes to litter box use, so limiting free-roam spaces to ones with easily cleaned hard flooring and low/no-pile rugs is ideal if possible. Your bunny may also appreciate having fleece blankets strewn about. However some rabbits take this as an invitation to dig them up and/or pee on them. If your bunny is a particularly voracious digger, you may want to protect your couches or chairs with covers or blankets you don’t mind getting torn up—or simply accept the fact that those items are temporary while your love for your rabbit(s) is eternal.
We use a blanket as a barrier layer to protect our couch cushions.
The biggest challenge we’ve faced in bunny proofing so far has been blocking our bunnies from accessing the underside of our couch. After one surprising morning work meeting in which my partner felt a bunny booping up from inside the cushions during a Zoom call, we found that they had dug a hole straight through the bottom and climbed in! Thus began a many months long battle to block off the area with attempted solutions that balanced aesthetics and practicality. Take it from this mechanical engineer who thought he knew what he was doing: as clever as you think your rabbit is, you’re probably not giving them enough credit. Metal products work best as their teeth can’t get through them, while a determined rabbit can eventually chew through plastic.
Our bunnies recreated their favorite scene from Shawshank Redemption with this plastic fence.
Bunny proofing is a battle of trial and error. The fewer options for mischief they have, the better, and sometimes you will have to make trade-offs between style and function. That being said, every rabbit’s personality is different, so hopefully you don’t have to sacrifice too many items before you learn the limits of what your particular companion is willing to nibble on just a little too much.
