House rabbits and wooden furniture

Hi,

My OH and I are having a 'debate' about whether or not we could have/want house rabbits.

3 years ago we bought a house where the decor in every room was over 30 years old and threadbare due to a series of tenants. We have slowly been doing it up - and becoming a bit house proud and enjoy the whole interior design kind of thing, making it homely etc. We bought a nice oak bookcase and cabinet in the sale for our lounge.

I'd love to have house rabbits and am thinking about how to bunnyproof the lounge, considering buying a book, looking at bunnies that are house-trained etc for ideas/info.

But we both want to know how do other people balance having a lovely house bunny, with having nice furniture? We would be "happy" for other furniture to be chewed, weed on etc, lol but not the nice oak.... is it possible?

How do other people manage? Are we being unrealistic?

Helen

My kermit chewed things when he was a baby, and i did have to change my wooden coffee table to a matal & glass one.
You could pen off the areas round the furniture you dont want them to get to, or just let them out in certain rooms. I have Inca & Herbie in my spare room and i dont have any chewable furniture in there!!

Chester liked cables...Surprised he never electrocuted himself! We now have the protector stuff around them, so he leaves them be.

To keep bunnies away from chewing and scratching things they aren't supposed to towels and cardboard boxes work a treat

it depends on the rabbit a lot too.

My Lola has always chewed everything but has calmed down recently (she is now 2.5 years old). Whereas Desmond chews nothing at all (he is 1.5years old).

To stop lola we:

- have wire covers
- spray her with a water spray whenever she chews (which really works)
- block the areas i would be really upset if she chewed (nice victorian mahogony side table)
- lots of toys that she is allowed to chew
- in her NIC setup whenever we are not around or rooms are blocked unless we are in there with her.

Hi :wave:

My house bun Dylan (should i even say this) has been quite good with our furniture. He sometimes tries to have a sneaky bite, but a nice loud clap and a firm NO! soon stops him. I have had Dylan over a year now, he was a baby when i got him so understandably could be naughty when he wanted to be but now he really is a little angel . I love having him in the house, he has free run of the house at all times and lives just like a cat, no cage or anything, he is such a little star .

Good luck :wave:

My wooden furniture hasn't been a problem at all for any of my bunnies. Lola my oldest bunny is 3 and the only issue I used to have with her was wallpaper shredding. She didn't touch wires or wood! Now she settles for shredding up my newspapers and magazines and opening my post for me :lol:
Max (2years) on the other hand- well wooden furniture again no problem but wires...omg lets say my modem was hmm in about 5 pieces in about the space of 5 seconds Still love him though. So with wires Ikea do fantastic cheap cable covers, which work a treat! Also I block the back of the TV when Max is about with about 7/8 cushions ...he doesn't even try to get behind anymore

Brian hasn't done anything yet apart from being a poo-firing machine gun. The poo's are almost as big as his head too! :shock:

Lenny is a cable chewer too, so cable covers ftw!

Jemimah I haven't had her that long, she does nip a little probably because of her age, she's quite hormonal I think she'll be a wire nibbler too.

Ok, My brothers rabbits however are complete and utter monsters.
Destroyed the living room curtains, should probably add the curtains were very very expensive.. now the bottoms are in tatters. All curtains when i look after these two are nowhere near reach. Harry one of the rabbits also made me buy a new phone 3 times after eating through the cable on each consequtive phone! :lol: he also ate a massive hole in my leather three piece suite sofa...go Harry!

So to avoid such catastrophies! Keep floor length curtains away from your floor when the bunny is about, buy cable covers, use throws on furniture like your sofa and block off dangerous or precious areas! Also wrap cardboard around wooden furniture i guess just to minimise risk..though hmm with lola she'd be more tempted to the furniture with cardboard on it! oh and have plenty of newspapers/magazines laying about for your bunny to happily chew. To prevent wallpaper chew-fest maybe put the bunny/bunnies in a painted room at first.

Good luck!

Have you thought of giving a lovely home to a rescue bun with no front teeth?? Quite a few buns end up with such mal-aligned teeth due to either poor breeding or poor diet when young that they have had to have front teeth removed - I know it sounds heartless but giving a loving home to one or preferably two buns who are special needs like this means you can have your bun and your furnishings!

They also get to have lots of loving care and attention and all their veggies grated!!

parsnipbun said:

Have you thought of giving a lovely home to a rescue bun with no front teeth?? Quite a few buns end up with such mal-aligned teeth due to either poor breeding or poor diet when young that they have had to have front teeth removed - I know it sounds heartless but giving a loving home to one or preferably two buns who are special needs like this means you can have your bun and your furnishings!

They also get to have lots of loving care and attention and all their veggies grated!!

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Ooh, great idea!!

Twinkle was our first housebun, and a chewer, she was especially partial to the new leather sofas we bought, the tv unit, and the playstation controls, she never had any "accidents" on the carpet though:roll: She also liked to terrorise us by jumping onto the sofa when you were just nodding off. She was a climber too, and would think nothing of jumping onto a chair to get onto the glass topped dining table
When Twinkle moved into the shed, Basil came into the house, he wasn't a chewer but a digger:roll: Basil's now in the shed with Twinkle, so they can happily chew and dig away.
Chester is now indoors and he's a good old boy, he doesn't dig or chew, and likes to lounge around but he does have an occasional accident with his poos.