Digging, chewing, shredding – these behaviors are second nature to rabbits, but can wreak havoc in your home! Rabbit owners are locked in an epic battle to protect their carpets, furniture, and flooring from their pets’ relentless digging instincts. But before you break out the bitter sprays and barricades, stop and consider things from your rabbit’s perspective. The good news is you can peacefully coexist with your rabbit’s digging behaviors with the right understanding and techniques. This article delves into why rabbits dig, how to curb destructive behaviors humanely, and tips to rabbit-proof your home. Get ready to look at rabbit digging in a whole new light and restore harmony to your home!
Why do rabbits dig?
Rabbits dig for a variety of reasons. In the wild, rabbits will dig burrows to provide shelter and protection from predators. Digging allows them to create nests where they can rest, give birth, and raise their young. Even domesticated pet rabbits retain this natural digging instinct for similar purposes, like creating nests and hiding spaces. Beyond that, pet rabbits often dig simply for fun, to relieve boredom or stress, or to get your attention. Understanding the motivations behind your rabbit's digging can help you address the behavior properly.
Digging is a completely normal rabbit behavior, but it can become problematic in a home if the rabbit starts destroying furniture, carpet, or flooring. Providing acceptable outlets for your rabbit's digging instinct is the best way to protect your belongings. This may include a dig box filled with shredded paper or other materials, cardboard boxes to shred and rearrange, and litter boxes filled with loose substrate that enables digging. Ensuring your rabbit has enough mental stimulation and physical activity can also curb undesirable digging resulting from boredom or stress. Lastly, spaying or neutering can reduce hormonal digging.
Digging nests
In the wild, rabbits dig burrows to create nests where they sleep, give birth, and raise offspring. The nest provides shelter, warmth, and protection. Even domestic rabbits retain this instinctual need to dig nests. Your house rabbit may dig in their enclosure, on your furniture, or even directly on you while lounging. This nest-building behavior spikes when a female rabbit is pregnant, giving birth, and nursing. However, both sexes will dig nests year-round.
Rabbits are most likely to exhibit nest-digging behavior in the springtime as breeding season starts. An unspayed female rabbit may dig nests while she is pregnant or nursing. She'll use her paws and teeth to dig at bedding material, furniture, carpeting, or anything within reach to create a depression. She'll also pull fur from her chest and belly to line the nest. This provides insulation to keep the kits warm. Once the babies arrive, she may dig more nests for them as they grow.
Even neutered males and spayed females may dig nests throughout the year. This is an ingrained instinct. Wild rabbits have multiple burrows and tunnel systems with specific nesting chambers. Pet rabbits may mirror this by digging nests in multiple areas of your home. Provide acceptable outlets like dig boxes, tunnels, cardboard boxes, and thick blankets your rabbit can rearrange into comfy nests. Giving them materials to dig in and burrow under can satisfy this natural urge. Monitor your rabbit closely for increased nesting behavior if she isn't spayed.
Fun
Rabbits often dig simply for fun and mental stimulation. For small prey animals like rabbits, digging behaviors would have served important survival functions out in the wild. They can't simply turn off these natural instincts just because they now live indoors as pets. Digging provides an enriching activity that engages their energy, intelligence, and curiosity.
Your rabbit may dig at bedding, carpeting, litter, or dirt just because it's an enjoyable way for them to pass the time. It exercises their paws, feet, legs, and lets them rip, tear, and rearrange materials. The texture, sounds, and motion of digging offers fun sensory stimulation. This playful type of digging is most common when rabbits are young and especially energetic.
Make sure to provide safe outlets that allow your rabbit to dig for fun. Plastic children's swimming pools or cardboard boxes filled with shredded paper, hay, straw, sticks, leaves, and pine cones make great dig boxes. Scatter treats in the materials to motivate digging. Rotate different elements to keep it interesting. Place dig boxes in areas where your rabbit already tries to dig for the best results. This gives them an appropriate place to dig to their heart's content without destroying your home.
Stress/Boredom
Destructive digging behaviors often stem from stress or boredom. Rabbits are highly intelligent, social animals that need ample physical and mental enrichment. If your rabbit is confined for long periods without stimulation, they can easily get bored, frustrated, and stressed. Digging becomes an outlet for these pent-up emotions and energy.
Signs your rabbit is digging due to stress or boredom include frequent destruction of flooring and furniture even when you provide other digging outlets. The digging may seem obsessive or anxious. Your rabbit may also display other stereotypic behaviors like constant bar-chewing or circling.
Make sure your rabbit has a sufficiently large habitat filled with interactive toys, changing puzzle feeders, tunnels, grass mats, bridges, and more. Let them enjoy daily exercise and playtime in rabbit-proofed areas. Increase their time spent interacting with you and any bonded rabbit friends. Consider clicker training to engage their brains. Offer new cardboard boxes, paper bags, and toilet paper tubes to destroy. Rotate toys to keep things interesting. Address any environmental stressors. Stay alert for symptoms of depression like appetite changes, low energy, hiding, and excessive grooming along with the digging.
Alleviating boredom and providing stress relief should curb destructive digging behaviors in time. If not, speak to your vet about medicating anxiety, OCD, or depression.
Attention
Some rabbits learn that digging captures their owner's attention. So they continue repeating the behavior. This form of digging for attention can happen with any rabbit. But it may be most common in young rabbits testing boundaries and intelligent rabbits who pick up on cause-effect relationships.
For example, your rabbit digs at the carpet. You quickly run over and scold them. Even though it's negative attention, your rabbit realizes their digging incites a reaction. They dig again, you react again. An accidental cycle develops where destructive digging earns your attention.
The best way to break this cycle is ignoring undesirable digging completely. Don't give any reaction at all. It may get worse before it gets better as your rabbit tries harder to get a response. But they should eventually learn destructive digging doesn't work. Pay attention to them only when they engage in appropriate activities instead. You can also try teaching a "go dig" cue to redirect them to a designated digging spot for positive reinforcement.
Why your rabbit digs on you
You may notice your free-roaming rabbit suddenly dashes over to dig at your pant legs, dig at blankets on your lap, or even dig directly on your chest while you hold them. This can be confusing behavior! But it ties back to the rabbit's natural instinct to dig nests.
When you sit or lay down on the floor, your rabbit sees you as an ideal spot to create a nest. Your body provides a nice depressed area for them to dig in. Loosely draped blankets also mimic nesting material for bunnies to burrow under. They may dig pits right on your stomach or legs the way wild rabbits dig nests in the ground. It's their way of making you part of their den.
While this behavior comes from a sweet instinct, you likely won't want your rabbit obsessively digging pits into your thighs. Provide them alternative "nest" spots to curb digging on you. Place mats, small blankets, and other bedding materials in corners or cardboard boxes for nest-building satisfaction. You can also gently block them or lift them whenever they try digging on you and redirect to a dig box instead. This teaches them to take the instinct somewhere acceptable.
How to protect your carpet from your rabbit
Protecting your flooring and preserving your security deposit is a major concern for rabbit owners. A rabbit with free reign will naturally be drawn to dig and chew carpeted areas. But you have several options to protect your carpeting without denying your rabbit their normal behaviors.
Alternate floorings
The easiest solution is using alternate flooring your rabbit can dig to their heart's content. Install inexpensive area rugs, grass mats, blankets, or interlocking foam tiles over carpet in key areas. These provide appealing textures to scratch and rearrange.
You can also replace broadloom carpeting in your home with more rabbit-friendly floorings. Tile, wood, laminate, vinyl, and linoleum stand up well to rabbit destruction. Just ensure traction isn't too slippery. Place area rugs over smooth floors for digging satisfaction and traction.
Covering the carpet
If you need to protect existing carpets, cover problem areas with surfaces that discourage digging. Try cardboard, hard plastic mats or runners, removable vinyl tiles, plexiglass, or corrugated roofing panels. You can secure them to carpet with tape or simple clips. Rotate coverings periodically to foil boredom.
Use bitter deterrent sprays on carpeting or furniture to limit damage. Vinegar, lemon juice, or silicone protectants create unpleasant textures. But supervise use closely. Avoid products with toxic chemicals if ingested.
Block access to irresistible areas with pens, gates, or exercise pens. Limit time in carpeted rooms until they are well-trained. Provide ample alternative digging spots.
Giving your rabbit other options
The most effective solution is giving your rabbit better places to dig. This redirects the instinct so they don't destroys carpets. Provide at least one corner litter box filled with timothy hay, straw, shredded paper, or compostable litter they can dig and tunnel in.
You can also make engaging dig boxes using plastic kiddie pools, large cardboard boxes, or small litter trays. Fill with earth, sand, coconut fiber, straw, shredded paper, pine shavings, or hay. Bury treats to encourage digging. Add tunnels, boxes, sticks, rocks, and textures to maintain interest. Continually refresh elements. Position boxes over problem areas.
Ensuring your rabbit has enrichment, exercise, bunny-proofed space, and bonded friends also prevents boredom and stress that contribute to destructive digging. Try clicker training them to dig on cue in proper spots.
Spay or neuter your rabbit
Hormones can fuel destructive digging, especially in unspayed females. Spaying or neutering your rabbit reduces these drives and makes training easier. This is highly recommended for all adult rabbits not intended for responsible breeding. Speak to your vet about ideal timing. Make the surgery a priority if your unfixed rabbit is obsessively digging due to mating urges and nesting instinct. It should curb hormone-fueled behavior.
Dealing with litter box digging rabbits
Some rabbits insist on digging in their litter boxes no matter what. This scatters mess outside the box. Try these tips to deal with litter box diggers:
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Use high-sided litter boxes or cement mixing tubs that contain mess
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Place a wire frame, rack, or grid over the litter to block scattered material
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Try pellet litters like yesterday's newspaper, aspen, or pine that don't track as easily
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Switch from loose substrates to mats, pellets, or paper-based litters
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Limit access to litter boxes until they are reliably using them
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Clean boxes more frequently to remove temptation to dig
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Add a dig box elsewhere so they can dig appropriately
With patience and providing ample digging outlets, you can redirect your rabbit's natural instincts and protect your home. Never punish or discourage digging outright, just guide it to suitable areas. With enough appropriate digging opportunities, your rabbit can happily dig to their heart's content!