Yellow Pages: The House Rabbits’ Answer to Carpet Chewing
Rabbits love to dig! In the wild they dig burrows to live in and shallow scraps to rest/sunbath in. Anything in their way, eg tree roots, gets gnawed through. That’s great outside but no so good when the ‘soil’ they are digging in is your carpet and the ‘tree roots’ are your skirting boards.
You are not likely to come out on top of any attempt to stop your rabbit digging. Digging is what rabbits do. Instead you need to redirect the behaviour to a more appropriate outlet, are here is one solution…The Yellow Pages (or any other handy telephone directory). If you don’t have a spare to hand then a pile of newspapers might work as a stand in.
If you put the yellow pages in a box it will help to stop your rabbit just digging it out of the corner and caring on with eating your flooring. I’ve used a washing up bowl.
So, take one box/bowl, put it in the corner your rabbit digs, add one yellow pages and one rabbit:
Leave briefly unattended and return to:
If you prefer a little less mess then use a bigger box, a large cardboard box with just an entry hole might help keep some of the mess down.
One crate full of shredded paper for the compost bin, ready for growing rabbit greens:
Tags: behaviour-digging, rabbit-toys
I love it!!! So funny, your rabbit looks just like mine too.
I finally got the energy to get up and grab an old phone book, I placed it on the floor by my bunny. Let’s see if he attacks! 😀 Cute pictures too!
That is just crazy! He really did like that phonebook… Wonder if my rabbit will like a yellowpage?
Give it a go and see, Scamp’s already shredded a few more. He loves burrowing through the paper afterwards too!
Love this idea, love Scamps adventures…the after picture is so funny “sorry Mum but you did give me the yellow pages to dig” 😉 thanks for sharing with us x
My rabbit LOVES digging through paper like this! I’ve made her a “dig box”, but unfortunately she’s mistaken it for litter box #2. Any suggestions on how to change this behavior?
Hi Haley,
What do you use in your litter box? If you use paper there too it might be she sees them as the same thing and swapping to something like paper/wood based cat litter for the litter box which make the difference clearer. Does she only go in the digging box now? If so you could swap them over – she might just like that location for pooping better!
Unspayed rabbits are more likely to mark territory and that could be a factor – she might just like it so much she wants to make it clear it is hers.
Tamsin
That looks like a familiar site! I give Gandalf a yellow pages in his cage sometimes and after a day or two it’s hard to see the actual cage floor any more.
I want to try this with my digger 🙂 bunny but the ink in the yellow pages can be harmful for her, right?
I think yellow pages is quite a commonly used toy and I haven’t heard anyone having an issue. Most bunnies do shred rather than eat – I’d be more cautious if your rabbit ate paper. If you’re worried, I imagine you could create the effect with a nice thick wedge of plain paper in a box. A cheap/budget pack of plain paper shouldn’t cost much and still make a lot of mess 😉