Housing for Indoor Bun...newbie question

Hallo again

I'm starting to prepare for my (yet to be found) house bunny - it's ever so exciting!

First things first, what kind of house do you lovely folk recommend? I've looked through some of the threads and elsewhere & like the idea of getting a dog crate for the bunny to sleep in etc... do you all find this a good idea? What do you line it with?

I'm also liking the look of 'NIC' cubes... would you use these as well as or instead of a crate?

Also, what do you find is the best way to protect wires & cables from nibbling?

Thanks so much for any advice you can give

F

We keep our bunny in the spare bedroom, as keeping her in the living room in a cage wouldn't go down too well with out landlords, and also if we have noisy visitors she can be safety shut in her room. Also useful if I have hoovering. Might be worth considering if you have a box room or spare space.

We have covered the carpet with board and she has rugs on top of that, this prevents her digging and chewing the carpet.

We have one unit in her room which holds her food, fan, radio etc etc and all the leads are hidden behind it.

To stop her chewing anything else in her room, she has plenty of cardboard boxes, litter tray's full of hay, willow toys and tunnels. When we are home she has access to our bedroom (in the mornings and last thing at night), the landing, stairs, hall way and living room (she has never ventured to the kitchen). We have covered all leads, and she is supervised when she is out of her bunny proof room.

firstly thanks for the advice
and secondly, Biscuit looks gorgeous!
did you have her as a baby?
we do have a spare room although I don't know what my boyfriend would think if I turned it totally into a bunny room!
I was planning that my rabbit's sleeping quarters would be a crate/pen in the sitting room and that they would have free run of the downstairs as much as possible (depending on my success as a trainer I expect!).
You mentioned that you cover wires etc, what do you use to cover them?
back to looking enviously at Biscuit...

Hi and eeek for the new bun

We use 'trunking' to encase wires running along walls and block off areas of multiple wires, like behind the TV which is blocked by the TV unit.

You can get adhesive trunking in homebase...genius stuff.

fionik said:

firstly thanks for the advice
and secondly, Biscuit looks gorgeous!
did you have her as a baby?
we do have a spare room although I don't know what my boyfriend would think if I turned it totally into a bunny room!
I was planning that my rabbit's sleeping quarters would be a crate/pen in the sitting room and that they would have free run of the downstairs as much as possible (depending on my success as a trainer I expect!).
You mentioned that you cover wires etc, what do you use to cover them?
back to looking enviously at Biscuit...

Click to expand...

Hi there :wave:

A lot of people have NIC cubes, do a search on the forum and lots of posts will come up with pics of people's set ups.

You can get plastic cable organisers, which the wires slide into, in her room there are no wires on show but in the living room, we have put a small fence around the edges of the room to stop her getting at wires, behind units etc(see pic, of it being used at Xmas time)

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=10154847&l=7c0f55e2db&id=716085393

We are lucky she is not a great chewer, a lot of other people would need a much bigger fence.

We got Biscuit two years ago (fully grown) from a work colleague who at the time was going to Australia.

Your plan sounds really good how exciting, you are about to become another nutty bunny mummy.

thanks both for that advice - love the pic of Biscuit with the Christmas tree fencing! it's nice to see that you can get fences in different colours rather than just metallic...

now to do more research on NIC cubes and trunking

I think I'll cope ok with becoming known as a nutty bunny mummy! I like that term!

Once I get the housing all sorted, I really will feel 'ready' for my bun to find me... then literally as soon as he/she makes herself known, I can put my hand up and say 'here bunny'

x

I have a Nero 4 indoor cage for Mooch, and the door is off while we are home so he can come and go as he pleases. He is put in it at night when we go to bed though.

I have a large dog crate attached to a nic cube arrangement. I used the dog crate so I didn't have to fashion a seperate door. The floor and about a foot up the wall are lined with plastic (I think it was pvc sheet about 6mm thick but I am a qualified engineer so tend to overdo things). This is sealed to prevent any leakages onto the carpet (I rent at the moment).

It is sort of a a big L shape. Catkin has constant run of the flat as he is recovering at the moment, plus he has no front teeth so the worst damage he can do is wee on things.

Daz and Molly have the nic-cube arrangement but are only shut in there if I am out. They have plenty of room to run up and down, they have a big litter tray, cardboard boxes to destroy and blankets in their sleeping area etc.

I think your setup will depend on what space you have and where you want the new bunny to roam. My design started from the fact that it was all going to positioned by the bay window so they can spy on people.....

Also a babygate is useful to stop bunny straying into unwanted areas. You can pick them up cheap second hand from the newspaper or the freead things.

Good Luck!!!:wave:

Hello! :wave:

Setting up is exciting isn't it? I'm glad it's not just me that gets excited over things like that, lol!

We got our first bun' yesterday. He has a 48" dog crate as a 'base' and a den for him to go in and sleep etc. but it is always open and he has access to the room he's in 24/7. I've used fleece to line the dog crate tray with a microfibre towel underneath as a bit of padding / absorbent layer.

I plan to move him and his hopefully-future-wifebun' outdoors in the Spring though so it isn't a permanent arrangement. (Having him indoors for a while will hopefully allow us to get to know him properly!) For a permanent set-up if you can't give access to a room 24/7 I'd say you'd need a good sized pen attached permanently to the dog crate for when you're not there as I don't think it's big enough to shut a rabbit in for more than a couple of hours. As a 'safe' place to go Jack loves it though.

If I had planned to keep Jack indoors permanently I'd probably have invested in a large cube set-up as some have suggested as they are much more flexible in terms of layout and you can make them much bigger - as big as you want to really to fit the space you have.

Oh and the baby gate is a great idea too - I have one on the room he's in so that he isn't shut off from us altogether when we're not in the room with him.