Over the last 2 days (literally) at bedtime I've been rattling the pellet bowl and got half a dozen or so pellets in the scoop and rattling them and then pouring them into the rabbits' food bowl in the hope that they'll learn to associate the noise with dinner.
We let them bomb around the garden tonight - perfect timing in between 2 heavy showers - and partial success! Rattled the food bowl/pellets in scoop and after a minute or so Coco came over to investigate and stole her reward by shoving her head into the scoop and pinching a pellet. After about 5 minutes' persuasion and a couple of false starts (i.e. going under the hutch and not into it and around the shed (like the hutch is too small to see)), she got her full reward of a small scoop of pellets in the food bowl in the hutch! 2 or 3 minutes later, Thumper followed, again being persuaded by the noise. So chuffed
I'm hoping that if I do this every night for about a week or so, they'll soon come running when they hear the food being rattled. Fingers crossed! They're only babies still (about 8 weeks old, definitely no younger) so perfect age to try and train them. I'm hoping they'll learn their names as well.
They are so cute!
We let them bomb around the garden tonight - perfect timing in between 2 heavy showers - and partial success! Rattled the food bowl/pellets in scoop and after a minute or so Coco came over to investigate and stole her reward by shoving her head into the scoop and pinching a pellet. After about 5 minutes' persuasion and a couple of false starts (i.e. going under the hutch and not into it and around the shed (like the hutch is too small to see)), she got her full reward of a small scoop of pellets in the food bowl in the hutch! 2 or 3 minutes later, Thumper followed, again being persuaded by the noise. So chuffed
I'm hoping that if I do this every night for about a week or so, they'll soon come running when they hear the food being rattled. Fingers crossed! They're only babies still (about 8 weeks old, definitely no younger) so perfect age to try and train them. I'm hoping they'll learn their names as well.
They are so cute!