Olive's Strange Behaviour

When I went out to feed this morning Olive came running up to the bars of her run with a very large mouthful of shredded newspaper all hanging out of the sides of her mouth (I have been using it as bedding for about 6 weeks now and she doesn't normally bother much with it). Even though it was breakfast time and she is food obsessed she didn't put it down but ran around with the newspaper in her mouth, back into her hutch and out again, stamped her foot a couple of times and pretty much ignored the fact that it was food time. Very odd! I started to panic that she had been eating the paper and couldn't digest it or something, frankly I had no idea what was going on with her. Even when I put her pellets in she carried on with this a bit longer (another circuit of run and hutch) before finally coming to eat and dropping the paper. I know rabbits are funny little things but I really don't understand this at all. When she was about 1ish (she is now two and a half) she had a plastic ring which was basically a piece of one of the green plastic tube things (Bunny Warren I think they are called) and she used to put it over her head and hold it in her mouth and run around very happily and this was similar to her behaviour today. Is she just bonkers? Any thoughts on what she was doing? She is spayed so don't think this was the start of any bizarre gathering/nesting behaviour!

twobunnies&apony said:

When I went out to feed this morning Olive came running up to the bars of her run with a very large mouthful of shredded newspaper all hanging out of the sides of her mouth (I have been using it as bedding for about 6 weeks now and she doesn't normally bother much with it). Even though it was breakfast time and she is food obsessed she didn't put it down but ran around with the newspaper in her mouth, back into her hutch and out again, stamped her foot a couple of times and pretty much ignored the fact that it was food time. Very odd! I started to panic that she had been eating the paper and couldn't digest it or something, frankly I had no idea what was going on with her. Even when I put her pellets in she carried on with this a bit longer (another circuit of run and hutch) before finally coming to eat and dropping the paper. I know rabbits are funny little things but I really don't understand this at all. When she was about 1ish (she is now two and a half) she had a plastic ring which was basically a piece of one of the green plastic tube things (Bunny Warren I think they are called) and she used to put it over her head and hold it in her mouth and run around very happily and this was similar to her behaviour today. Is she just bonkers? Any thoughts on what she was doing? She is spayed so don't think this was the start of any bizarre gathering/nesting behaviour!

Click to expand...

Many rabbits do still nest even once they've been spayed/neutered. They do it to keep warm!

This is the topic I first posted when I joined.
http://forums.rabbitrehome.org.uk/showthread.php?t=60239

Thanks for that Justine. Don't think she was stressed as far as I can tell and, as her behaviour with the paper was similar to when she was younger with the plastic ring thing (she always looked really giddy and happy then), I am going to put it down to bizarre bunny playtime!! I will keep an eye on her though as I always do anyway.