wire chewing..

[bestmom]

I am so upset, I feel like crying. I am so mad at Pepper I don’t even want to look at him. He’s up in his cage in a bunny time out. I can’t get Pepper to stop chewing on wires or stuff he’s not meant to. The thing that broke the camels back was today he chewed through our internet wires! So we have no internet, no wifi, no Netflix. I’m at the library using their internet now. We don’t have data plans out our house. I don’t know how my kids are supposed to do their homework. In the 3 months we’ve had him he’s chewed through

-telephone wire

-VCR wires

-2 pairs of shoes

-ipad charger

-nook charger

-alarm clock cord

-internet wires

-vacuum cord (1/2 through)

-skylanders portal (1/2 through)

-2 cords to a set of ear phones

The internet wires were covered and we thought we were good! They were covered about 3 wks ago, well it took him 3wks but he managed to chew threw the hard cover to the wires and chew through them! Seriously i’m surprised he hasn’t gotten a good shock yet. I offer him chew things (willow balls, willow tunnel, cardboard tubes with hay) he wants nothing to do with them! He won’t chew on anything I offer.  I’m afraid to let him out of his cage now.  This is probably why the people who had him before us, got rid of him!

[Sarita]

I have never met a rabbit who would not try to chew on a wire….you just have to be smarter than your rabbit and either not allow them in the areas of the house where there are wires or do a very very thorough job of rabbit proofing those areas.

Honestly, no rabbit is going to know that chewing on a wire or anything else is a no-no – they just don’t have the capacity to understand this.

[bestmom]

so that would mean keeping him in a cage, because we have wires in all our rooms. And we “thought” we did wire proof. We bought a cover for wires, and he chewed through them . Thanks for telling me i’m stupid. I appreciate it.

[Sarita]

Nah, I’m not telling you that at all…you might consider an exercise pen to keep him in though if you are concerned he doesn’t have enough space.

[The Law Bun]

I don’t believe she was referring to any lack of intellectual capacity on your part, but instead was giving a general tip regarding rabbits. As a graduate student, my house is surrounded in wires, whether it be PS4, phone cords, tv cords, computers, the list goes on. But you are not required to keep the rabbit in a cage by any means. Instead I have set up a rather large pen from NIC storage cubes that gives my rabbit a lot of space when I am not home. After purchasing 2 sets of the cubes from Amazon, I was able to make a very nice 2 story condo and she probably has a 8×3 “front yard as well.” Honestly, every bit of literature suggests this is more than enough for a rabbit to live in permanently. Sure, I still let Lilith out when I want to pay attention to her, but I just cannot trust her otherwise. So I have set up this large pen for her to hang out in when I am not home. Not only does this keep her from having to stay locked up in a pen, but it allows me to feel better about leaving the house for several hours a day.

I would also suggest taking a look at available literature online. Many people and websites say that most rabbits cannot be left to free roam a house all day every day. The ones who I see online who do it have older rabbits, and all of my research seems to suggest that older rabbits may be less inclined to chew through all sorts of wires. Thus, I have no intention of trying to give Lilith more run space until she hits at least the one year mark. Not sure how old your bunny is, but quite frankly no younger bunny should be left to free roam a house without some reasonable expectation of destruction. The user AndHenry who has a free roam rabbit is a good example of this and has compromised in that she now has ugly boards up all over her house to block the many potential naughty spots. I frankly don’t want to compromise that much, but its all individual preference.

One last suggestion would be to instead of constructing one large pen is to create small crates that block the wired areas off. Most room have wires in concentrated areas (i.e. TV stands) so you might try making one 2×2 NIC cube “wall” to block off each area of wires or something.

Either way, I really do not believe Sarita was calling you “stupid,” instead she was suggesting that you cannot let your rabbit just roam freely. I mean all of the literature suggests enough that if you let your bunny free roam then 9/10 you are going to have these destructive issues, its just whether or not you want to accept those consequences or block off the rabbits run space (as I have). Bunny proofing is a trial and error process, at least now you can fix it . I mean, if you had a young child you probably would not let them into a room that had scissors and markers left out .

[kirstyol]

I empathise with you because Bramble is a terrible chewer. I cant allow him to free roam unsupervised, instead he has a giant pen for when he cant be supervised and when we are here he gets out. I have all wires as hidden behind furniture as possible and just try my best to stop him from going into areas where I cant block off the wires.

All bunnies are different, my last few have been great at free roaming and to be honest I still hope Bramble will one day, he is only a year old just now.

I don’t really have any advice for you, I just wanted to let you know that I empathise with you. Bramble can beat all bunny proofing measures I have tried other than physically blocking an area off to him and even then he tries to climb over whatever I use to block the area (he clearly thinks he can climb, he cant)

[emm_renn]

Bestmom- We’ve all been there. Chewed wires comes with the rabbit territory. And it sounds like right now your rabbit is merging into puberty! A good neuter and better rabbit proofing skills you will be good to go! Once you approach a year you should notice these behaviors to subside.

[Flopsie]

the thing is, bunnies will chew. This is probably part of their inherent behavior. Why this is necessary for survival, i’m not sure. But it is a part of them. The chewing is no different than their thumping, it is part of their repertoire.

Also, bunnies that chew things that they are not supposed to is something common. They are mischievous, its part of their charm, as well as a source of our frustration.

I think to be helpful, we want to avoid extremes. What I mean by that is, giving them full run of your home is on one extreme end. Having them locked up in their cage is on another extreme end. Let’s meet in the middle. I would suggest, making one room available for them to be in that is either full chew proof, or absent of anything that is available for them to chew. If you have a TV, consider blocking off behind the TV stand so that they cannot get in. This way, you can have a compromise, instead of having to bunny proof the entire house, you just have to do one room. What are your thoughts?

[Little Lion Head]

My two are actually not chewers….unless there is a cord or wire in front of them.

We have our exposed cords covered with this: https://sewelldirect.com/Critter-Cord.asp?utm_medium=pla&utm_campaign=connexity&utm_source=bing
We have a lamp behind the couch and the cord sits on the floor. The buns are back there constantly and have never chewed it. Doesn’t mean Pepper won’t (determined little bun!!!) but I think these have a scent they don’t like. Worth a shot?! We got a good deal on Amazon.

[So Fluffy Bunny]

We’ve not had the same problem, ours has been an old suitcase that our house bun seems to love to chew on but we also attributed the chewing to her ( bucky is a her) coming into her wild teenager days!

We did one dedicated room to the bun, in fact once she is spayed and we cut down the door some so that whenever one of us in the room, we can hear my fiancees  mom when she needs one of us, it most likely will be blocked off to the dog (whole another story) since we plan on bringing in a friend for her.  

I would suggest something like the cord protector that LLH is suggesting, it seems from what I read of the reviews that the citrus scent  will fade and maybe with some time after Pepper has been spayed and the hormones calm down, you could try to give it a go again on the free-roam.  

[Megan143]

It’s normal, my two bunnies chew through many important/expansive wires. Don’t take it personal. Besides limiting his free-roaming space as mentioned above, I’d like to add two more points:

1.
I found it’s more about where you put the wire (if they can’t be hidden). If it’s location and shape is in a way they have to jump over it, they’re more likely to chew it (they treat it as a tree root blocking their path if they live in the wild). So If I sit on the floor with my laptop, the cord sometimes is not perfectly flat or it crosses a door way, they often want to get rid of the ‘barrier’ by chewing it; when I sit by a table and have my wires positioned as closed to the wall as possible, they have no interest in chewing because they got plenty space to play, they don’t need to pass the wire.
2,
Another finding of mine, don’t know if anyone mentioned it yet, is to take advantage of your bunny’s love to you. You know when your bunny accidentally bite your finger during hand-feeding, if you make Ouch noise and sounds like you’ve been hurt, they learn the boundary and never bite your finger that hard again? I use that method on wires too. When they take their first test nibble (I don’t wait for it to happen, just when I spot it they’ve already started), I make a hurting noise as the wire is my body, it actually works for my bunnies

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