Jumping/climbing obsession and breed question - update biting question

[sillyrabbit]

A couple of these questions I've meant to ask on here for ages, firstly does anyone know what breed my girl is? Someone mentioned on Scarlett's rainbow bridge thread that she is a white agouti, I don't know a lot about rabbit breeds to be honest but I thought agouti was a colour rather than breed, so if there is anything else that's obvious to you guys I would really appreciate if you could let me know. I've tried to post some pics of her at different angles

Second question is she seems to be obsessed with climbing, jumping and trying to get higher. I'm a bit worried she is going to hurt herself! She is very highly strung, I've never shut her in a cage or hutch, but I get the feeling it wouldn't go down well as she is constantly charging around and jumping and climbing. She will jump onto my kitchen counters, but she won't stop there she will then be looking to try and jump up higher, which she hasn't been able to try because I'm always there to stop her. She just runs across the room and will try to jump up the walls, and she easily gets to the height of the door, but obviously there is nothing up there for her to climb on so she falls back down. She tries to climb the blinds, we have to keep the blinds all the way up as high as they will go now, but she still tries to go for them. The way I go about managing this is one of us just has to follow her round and try and stop her from doing it. Her bedroom set up is an empty room with a dog crate, which she has a bed on top of now as she likes to sit up there, then she has steps and boxes etc to jump and climb on down on the floor. Then downstairs she has a cat tree with like steps so she can get to the window ledge, not that she uses the steps! She has plenty of toys, all different types

Someone at the rescue mentioned they thought she had wild in her, she is also very timid and like I said just has a massive amount of energy. Then someone else on here said too that she looks part wild. I have always wondered but I'm not sure how to tell for certain

We live in a really small open plan cottage, so when we have her downstairs we can't shut her off from say the kitchen, and I think even if we did she would just jump up the walls more. She will come over for attention and like jump at my head or try and climb up me

She is my fifth bunny, and I've never seen this behaviour before. It's not a problem, I will think she is amazing no matter how she behaves, I'm just wondering do other rabbits do this? And how do you manage it?! All I'm worried about is that she will hurt herself

 

[*lily*]

I don't have any answers to your questions BUT she is gorgeous!

 

[lenslady]

I am not experienced with breeds myself but after having my own bunny, I've researched quite a lot of different breeds lol. She looks like an English Spot x to me. She has the line going down her spine, although it is broken it is definitely there. She of course has the spots too. She sounds like a Free Spirit!

My Continental is the most daredevil out of the all mine and yes he can certainly climb and jump but I haven't experienced him jumping as high as the doors, that must be a world record lol. She is very beautiful

 

[joey&boo]

She is a stunner. She does have a lovely narrow face like a wildie but I'm no good with breeds. I thought I had problems with Boo scaling great heights. Boo worries me because she is also deaf & therefore spooks easily, fortunately she plays at height but rests on lower levels. I kind of go with though & it doesn't sound like you have much choice in that either. Getting on the worktops!! that is so sweet

 

[keletkezes]

Lopsy jumps and climbs, and Aboleth's not afraid of doing it either (although climbs less). Lopsy's also an accident-prone idiot so he falls off things a lot :roll: Aboleth is also not immune to stupidity :lol: Lopsy's favourite weird trick is to try and jump up in the hutch when the tray has been taken out: we have a tiny hutch we use as a waypoint/extra space but they have a litter tray, water bowl and hayrack above the slide-out metal tray above the mini-run-type area. When I take the tray out, sometimes he will jump up in one corner as if to sit on a non-existent ledge! He falls on his backside/back legs and hasn't damaged himself yet but it's really worrying. They also like to jump through the hole that usually leads to the upper level when I've taken the tray out: at first I thought Aboleth had just not realised the tray was there and done it by mistake, but then she was doing it repeatedly and she's not THAT stupid I have no way to stop them but I do try and provide safe multilevel spaces they don't have to do anything dangerous to get on and off of.

 

[sillyrabbit]

Aww thanks, obviously I think she is beautiful but I'm biased :lol:

It really worries me the way she jumps up walls, as there is nothing that she is aiming for so I'm not even sure what she is trying to do, and she just falls straight back down. It's like she always wants to get higher. We tried penning off the kitchen because I'm so scared she will launch herself off a counter and hit the ceiling, but she cleared the puppy pen with no effort at all so it's a case of just following her around :lol:

She hasn't played in the garden for ages because we are scared she will climb the fence in the same way she climbs the blinds, our fence has like that wooden ladder type stuff covering it for flowers to climb. We chose this house because the garden is all patio and there is no way out, so we were like this is great we have a completely rabbit proof garden, then we got Binky and were like maybe not!

She is very different from all the other bunnies I've had. She is so destructive and hyper, and not motivated by food at all :shock: when I feed her she will just leave the food there until she is hungry, and if I give her a treat it can sit there for hours before she actually eats it

 

[Jack's-Jane]

Aww thanks, obviously I think she is beautiful but I'm biased :lol:

It really worries me the way she jumps up walls, as there is nothing that she is aiming for so I'm not even sure what she is trying to do, and she just falls straight back down. It's like she always wants to get higher. We tried penning off the kitchen because I'm so scared she will launch herself off a counter and hit the ceiling, but she cleared the puppy pen with no effort at all so it's a case of just following her around :lol:

She hasn't played in the garden for ages because we are scared she will climb the fence in the same way she climbs the blinds, our fence has like that wooden ladder type stuff covering it for flowers to climb. We chose this house because the garden is all patio and there is no way out, so we were like this is great we have a completely rabbit proof garden, then we got Binky and were like maybe not!

She is very different from all the other bunnies I've had. She is so destructive and hyper, and not motivated by food at all :shock: when I feed her she will just leave the food there until she is hungry, and if I give her a treat it can sit there for hours before she actually eats it

I suspect she has some Wildie in her. Just ask Tamsin about Wildies and their climbing skill !!

 

[Bramranzel]

I don't know her breed but she is a stunner. I had a Castor Rex who always wanted to be up high, she would climb the bookcases and I had to stop her before she reached the top. I was worried she would fall off as she was a rather large bun. We once were decorating the bedroom so had our mattress downstairs leaned up against the wall, she loved running up it and sitting on the top to have a wash. It was a game getting down too she would slide the whole 6ft or so! :lol: None of my bucks have been climbers just 3ft or so to observe the world. My rex girl stopped climbing when we moved her outside for summer. My current bun Alice is also a climber indoors and out :lol: Maybe it's more of a doe thing!:lol:

 

[joey&boo]

Sillyrabbit it would be lovely to see a gallery of photos of her jumping and climbing antics. Hope she is coping ok

 

[Babsie]

She is stunning! I had a half-wildie who was quite into climbing etc, but nothing compared with that! Going the other way, I wonder if she would like a digging box, although indoors that would be quite difficult to manage, as my Sutton was a great digger and tunneller.

 

[Tamsin]

How much does she weigh? She's roughly the right shape to be a wildie cross, but they don't usually get snazzy markings so it might be she's a 1/4. Or she could be a mix of breeds - polish springs to mind as they are meant to be a bit high strung and have a similar shape to wild buns.

Agouti is the colour, I think the pattern would be called 'broken' but both of those can apply to many breeds.

If you take Scamp as a model, as a young bun he didn't so much need toys as purposeful activities. So basically I'd aim for several hours a day worth of foraging tasks - shredding boxes to get food, digging through a box full of paper, greens dangling just in reach when stood on his backlegs at full reach etc. It had to be difficult - so a few bits of dry food in a tough box, mixed with hay and then hung up. Lots and lots of branches - I'm not a good armful and a constant stream of replacements - they get tucked all over - in his box so he can spend time removing it from his box, in a spot he's digging/jumping/sitting in so he has to clear it out, wedged in areas he wants to walk through so he has to spend time removing them, hung up and swinging about right in his way etc. Lots of boxes and tunnels that he could sculpt etc.

Find food, shaping their living space, making the resting spot comfortable, watching the perimeter - those are all good bunny tasks

 

[Zoobec]

My Dandy and Beano (brothers) were suspected half wildies, they were very wild in behaviour, extremely active rabbits. Dandy was agouti and Beano was agouti and white in a broken Dutch pattern I think. They were small rabbits - Beano was 1.4kg and Dandy was 1.5kg. Dandy would climb up the weldmesh of the run to a height of about 4ft and then jump off backwards, I was always worried about him hurting himself. They were fantastic hay eaters, terrible chewers, loved wild forage more than any other bun I've ever had. They loved their runaround tunnel. They liked to sleep in a little hidey box. They tolerated humans as they were the bringers of food!

I miss them

 

[Hoppla]

How much does she weigh? She's roughly the right shape to be a wildie cross, but they don't usually get snazzy markings so it might be she's a 1/4. Or she could be a mix of breeds - polish springs to mind as they are meant to be a bit high strung and have a similar shape to wild buns.

Agouti is the colour, I think the pattern would be called 'broken' but both of those can apply to many breeds.

If you take Scamp as a model, as a young bun he didn't so much need toys as purposeful activities. So basically I'd aim for several hours a day worth of foraging tasks - shredding boxes to get food, digging through a box full of paper, greens dangling just in reach when stood on his backlegs at full reach etc. It had to be difficult - so a few bits of dry food in a tough box, mixed with hay and then hung up. Lots and lots of branches - I'm not a good armful and a constant stream of replacements - they get tucked all over - in his box so he can spend time removing it from his box, in a spot he's digging/jumping/sitting in so he has to clear it out, wedged in areas he wants to walk through so he has to spend time removing them, hung up and swinging about right in his way etc. Lots of boxes and tunnels that he could sculpt etc.

Find food, shaping their living space, making the resting spot comfortable, watching the perimeter - those are all good bunny tasks

My half wildie, mother white and father wild, had exactly the same markings and was the spitting image of her.
With little mouse I knew 100% the mix as I caught the mother as a stray and 2 days layer she had 3 babies under my bed. 2 agouti coloured and little mouse. If all three had had little mouse's markings I would have never known that she mated with a wild rabbit. I would have probably been very surprised by their wildish behaviour .

Little mouse is the rabbit popping out from the hay container in my signature.

If you pm me you email address I will email you some pictures of little mouse, like I said he was the spitting image.

Little mouse was also a very keen climber. With half eildies you meed to have eyes at the back of your head.
He once jumped into my old fire place which had not been used for yrs, he looked upwards and luckily I knew immediately what he was up to and caught him just in time and just before he was able to disappear upwards into the chimney.

They tend to be very curious constantly exploring things, but their curiosity is also what will get them into potentially life threatening situations.

They can get very tame if you spend lots of time with them but will somewhat always retain that slightly wild personality.

 

[sillyrabbit]

She is actually overweight at the moment, Scarlett was underweight so Binky got a bit chubby in the attempt to get Scarlett's weight back up. I'm aiming for back to her normal weight in a few weeks so will post her weight then

Thank you, some great ideas there I hadn't thought of! And yes, she used to have a digging box but didn't pay an awful lot of attention to it, but I will try again

I have another question. Now Scarlett isn't here she is spending more time with us, she used to avoid is and I never pushed it other than trying to sit next to her on the floor etc, which she ignored! She has become a bit more confident now and is interacting with us both which is great. She keeps biting me, and it really hurts :lol: I've never had a biting bunny before. What she does is she jumps up and digs all over me, which also hurts, and then just nips me. I've been saying ow, not screaming, but loud enough to make her jump, and she does hop off me, but then she comes back and does it again minutes later. There has also been a few times where she has just come over and bit my leg without the digging first

Also, she keeps like launching herself at my face or trying to run up the front of me :lol: which is a little scary because she is quite strong! I've got claw marks all over my boobs :shock: any suggestions very much welcome

I'm still heartbroken over Scarlett, but it has been so nice finally getting to know Binky a bit better, she has amazed me over the past couple of weeks with how much she has interacted with us

 

[sillyrabbit]

Sillyrabbit it would be lovely to see a gallery of photos of her jumping and climbing antics. Hope she is coping ok

I think I need a better camera! I have hundreds of photos of a white blur

Thanks for all the advice guys it's been very helpful x

 

[Tamsin]

It sounds more like she's trying to boss you about than aggression. You may need to work out what she's doing and make sure the behaviour doesn't get her way. So she might be attention seeking or trying to get you to move out her way etc.