Are you tired of having your house chewed to pieces by your bunny? Bunny proofing is your solution to saving your personal items and your home from bunny destruction.
Bunnies need to constantly chew on things to wear their teeth down as they grow constantly throughout their lifetime. While we supply our bunny with all of their favorite toys, bunnies really love chewing on immovable objects. These immovable objects are often your house itself!
Bunny proofing your home will protect your belongings and the structure of your house. Here is a checklist:
- Corners of walls
- Doors
- Baseboards
- Cords
- Furniture
- Carpet
Before owning a bunny, you may not know what needs to be bunny proofed. This guide will walk you through everything you’ll need to bunny proof your home and the best methods to do so. It doesn’t have to be an expensive task as there are plenty of ways to protect your things and your bunny.
Bunny Proofing Your Walls
If you have owned a bunny before, you know the damage they can do to your walls. For new bunny owners, don’t worry, your flat walls will be fine. It’s the corners that stick out that will be the problem.
As you can see, our bunny has done a bit of a number to some of these stair corners. The easiest, low-cost fix is to cover them in clear shipping tape. The plastic tape should prevent your bunny from chewing the wall.
However, if that doesn’t work or you don’t want to put tape on your wall out of fear of ruining the paint job, you can buy screw-in or adhesive corner guards (link to Amazon).
If your bunny chews the wall, they’ll just be chewing the corner guard making it easy to replace if they do too much damage. Because they are see-through, you won’t notice them as much as a metal corner guard.
Bunny Proofing Your Doors
Sadly, you can’t use the same method as you would with your walls as your door won’t close. If you can fit clear shipping tape around the edge of your door and it still closes then that is your BEST solution to this problem
Other bunny proofing guides mention installing a metal kick plate on your door to stop it being chewed. However, we would not advise this unless you wanted every room to look like the entrance to a restaurant kitchen.
Instead, spray a bitter solution (link to Amazon) on the edges of the door to deter your bunny from chewing. That way, you get to keep your door the way it is.
If you don’t want your bunny in that room, you can use a metal door gate to block that room off (link to Amazon). It’s important that your door gate is not wood! It will get chewed and you may come home to your bunny having escaped through the gate into their favorite door chewing room.
If your bunny isn’t chewing your door, they may chew the door frame. This is a simple shipping tape job to change the texture so your bunny stops chewing.
Bunny Proofing Baseboards
Bunnies will destroy your baseboards. Some of ours have become fully detached! Other than putting tape all-around your boards, there are a couple of tricks you can use to keep them nibble free.
Firstly, buying a simple wooden plank to hide the baseboard is an easy solution. You may be thinking you don’t want to surround your whole room with planks of wood. Luckily, bunnies seem to just pick their favorite spots to chew and don’t stray too far from those spots. That means you can just cover your bunny’s favorite chewing spots and leave the rest.
Another option is to cover the chewed baseboards with a wire guard. It could be as simple as placing an exercise pen against it to block any access (link to Amazon).
Bunny Proofing Cords
We thought our baby bunny was an angel during her first couple of months with us. We left our cords out day and night and she never chewed them.
Until one day my laptop turned off while I was working. I pick up the cord to find the other end is missing! Yes, your bunny may not chew cords in the beginning (they most likely will), but you better be prepared for the inevitable.
Cord protectors are your best friend when it comes to protecting your cords and your bunny (link to Amazon). You don’t want your bunny to chew a cord and potentially get a shock from the electrical current. You also don’t want to have to replace your only charger!
Another simple and neat way of keeping your cords out of reach is to place them in a storage box. A box like this one on Amazon looks neat and tidy but also has a hole where a cord can be plugged in. This way if you are charging any device you can charge it in the box without having a bunny get to your cables.
Bunny Proofing Your Furniture
Furniture is almost like a staple bunny food. The real trick is to buy furniture that isn’t made of wood.
Sometimes this isn’t an option and you may not want to live in a house that feels like a science lab with everything made of metal. If you have wooden furniture, you can use the same method as mentioned in protecting your walls. Putting clear shipping tape on the legs of chairs and tables. It’s a very discrete option that no guest would even notice.
If you want to give a really cozy feel to your home, you can cover your chair and table legs with a sock. However, you’d need a lot of old, odd socks to do this and socks that are long enough to cover enough of the legs.
To protect your couches, you can buy waterproof couch protectors (link to Amazon). This way when you leave your bunny at home, you can cover the couch without having to worry about any mess or damage.
You can leave them on when you’re relaxing with your bunny as well as our bunny sometimes loves to start digging and pooping on the couch.
Bunny Proofing Carpet
Carpet is something you don’t want your bunny to chew not just because of the damage, but ingesting carpet can be potentially fatal as those fibers won’t digest.
Most bunnies will just chew the carpet and spit it out but it’s better to be safe than sorry. To protect against this, you can place a ceramic tile over the area your bunny loves to chew.
Generally, like baseboards, your bunny will have their favourite spot or two rather than chewing up the whole carpet. This makes it easy to stop the behaviour when you cover it.
The added benefit of the ceramic tile is that it acts as a cooling mat for your bunny especially in the hot summer. As you may know, bunnies don’t take heat well and the ceramic tile will help keep them cool.
Related: Top 11 Ways To Keep Your Bunny Cool During The Summer
If you don’t have a ceramic tile or don’t want to have something like that in the middle of your house, you can place another rug or mat over the same area that you don’t mind being chewed. That way, that mat will get destroyed by chewing and your carpet will be as new.
Keeping Things Out Of Reach
What you think you’ve put out of reach for your bunny, may not be out of reach. We have experienced this first hand! For months everything is fine on our coffee table as its quite tall, then the next thing we come home to is a chocolate wrapper on the floor (no chocolate was eaten luckily)!
Same thing with our books. We have had the edges of plenty of books chewed up because we thought they were out of reach. Make sure your books are stored away in bookshelves that don’t have space your bunny can jump onto.
A good general rule of thumb is if your bunny can stand on their hind legs and have their front paws on the edge of your table or furniture and can look over, they can and probably will jump up! Same goes with your food, don’t leave it lying around on tables that is easy access for your bunny.
House plants are another potential issue. Some can be toxic to bunnies so you really want to make sure they are well out of reach. Rather than placing them on the floor, you are better off placing them on a high table so there is no way your bunny can reach it. If you are really good at decorating, you could even hang your plants from the roof!
Finally, watch out for your shoes. Your bunny may not chew the shoes themselves but your laces are definitely enticing for your bunny. Simply place your shoes in a storage box like the ones for your cords (link to Amazon) to keep them away.
How To Discourage Chewing On House Items
Now, these tips and tricks are not guaranteed to stop your bunny chewing on things they shouldn’t around your home. If you have a very persistent bunny, your corner guards may get chewed right through!
So one option which has been mentioned already is to use a bitter spray solution. You can buy these off Amazon or you can make your own bitter spray.
Simply mix a 1:1 mixture of vinegar and water. If you want to kick it up a notch, you can add squeezed lemon juice. The more sour, acidic, and nastier it seems for you, the better deterrent it will be for your bunny! You can spray this solution on any of your bunnies favourite chew spots.
Secondly, make sure your bunny has plenty of chew toys. If they have no toys to chew, they will resort to your home as their only option. While providing adequate toys isn’t a solution to stopping a bunny chewing things around your house, it is important for them to have a variety of toys to keep them stimulated.
Related: What Can Bunnies Chew On?
A variety of toys provides some stimulation for your bunny, but if you have the option, let your bunny play outside. We’ve noticed a huge difference in our bunny’s behaviour inside the house when we let her play outside.
We will usually leave our door open to our enclosed front yard area where she spends most of her day running, digging, relaxing, and going back and forth from inside to outside.
She has plenty of old outdoor furniture she can chew on and gardens she can dig holes in. So when she does come inside, she doesn’t have the need to go chewing walls around the house.
Block Off Areas
There may be some areas around your home that you don’t want your bunny to go. It could be an office that has a lot of wooden furniture and books. Using a door gate as previously mentioned can be used to block off certain areas of your home.
This door gate MUST be made of a material other than wood otherwise it will get chewed. If you don’t use the room very often, just close the door. Bunnies won’t chew the door because it’s a flat surface.
Another option is using an exercise pen to keep your bunny in a closed-off space (link to Amazon). We wouldn’t recommend this for long periods of time as bunnies need space to play and it is cruel to keep them cooped up for long periods.
However, for short periods of time if you are out of the house it can be an option. We personally leave our bunny to do her own thing around the house when we aren’t home. She is very well behaved and will usually sleep in one of her favorite spots.
When selecting an exercise pen like this one, be sure to buy a pen that is tall enough. We own a 24-inch exercise pen which was perfectly fine when our bunny was a baby. But within a short period of time, she was able to jump over the pen onto the couch!
We would recommend a pen that’s at least 30-inches to make sure your bunny can’t jump over the top. If you’re able to place your pen where there is nothing around it such as couches or tables, then your bunny will have nothing to jump onto which should discourage escaping the pen.
When blocking off areas around your home, another important area to block is your fireplace. Especially if you have the fire going. Another area to watch is if you have a reclining chair. Your bunny could be relaxing under the chair so make sure she isn’t there before you recline the chair.
If you have a fan running in your home, make sure it’s extended tall so your bunny can’t put their ears in the fan. Ensure there is a large base so your bunny can’t tip the fan over.
How To Bunny Proof Your Kitchen
If your bunny is a free roam bunny (which what we would definitely recommend for a happy bunny life), then it is wise to make sure your kitchen is bunny proofed.
That means anything stored on the ground should be put away in cupboards. We have left a sack of potatoes in the corner which our bunny got into, luckily with no digestive problems.
Appliance cords should be stored away as well as if your bunny spends some time in your kitchen without you knowing, that cord could be chewed through.
How To Bunny Proof Your Bedroom
One thing you don’t want your bunny to chew is the base under your mattress. You can block access to this by placing a wooden board under your bed as you would against your baseboards to stop them from being chewed.
Your drapes are also prime chewing material for your bunny. If possible, have drapes that are not full length so they can’t be accessed. If you have full-length drapes, spray the bottom of them with your bitter spray solution to deter chewing.
Be sure to keep your closets closed. Our bunny sometimes likes to find her way into our closet and play with some of our clothes.
On our bed, we make sure we have an older blanket over our duvet or some towels. Bunnies will mark their territory, especially where their humans often spend their time. Having the extra cover will help protect your bedding.
Wrapping Up
It is in a bunny’s nature to chew in order to keep their teeth healthy. Training your bunny to stop chewing on unwanted items is just not possible. Instead, use these bunny proofing tips to deter your bunny from chewing important items around your home and provide them with plenty of alternatives to keep them stimulated.
