Bunny proofing for house rabbits, preventing damage to furniture

Furniture

In this article we show you how to bunny proof furniture such as tables and chair legs, Bunny proofing can prevent house rabbit damage from chewing.

Rabbits like to leave there mark on everything

It's easy to tell if someone has a house rabbit as a pet when you know what they can do to your furniture. The tell tale signs they invariably leave around the home include the nibbled off corners of chair and table legs, the shredding of upholstery that dangles down to floor level. Rabbits like to leave there mark on everything as they try out the materials of your furniture with there teeth. Soft wooden furniture can receive quite a significant amount of damage leaving unwitting guests wondering why you keep such tatty furniture. You can’t stop this attack and eventually its something you learn to live with but you can go a long way to slow down and limit the damage with some simple bunny proofing techniques.

A matter of perspective

The reason rabbits seem to find furniture irresistible is easy to understand if you see your furniture from it's point of view. This is entirely differently to you not just from their physical perspective on the ground but more fundamentally as they would behave around obstacles in their natural environment. These objects, useful to you do not appear useful to your rabbit. In fact they are likely to be directly in the way of the paths your rabbit wants to use to move around and because of this they are likely to become a target of constant attention as they strive to maintain these paths as they would in the wild by cutting them back. What's more in addition to there normal diet your rabbit needs to have small amounts of non-digestible fibre pushing through their digestive track continuously which means they very much see the soft wooden furniture as a food stuff. As well as wearing your furniture out this also helps them ware there teeth out which grow continuously throughout their entire lives.

Bunny proof by design

If you are looking form new furniture is well worth choosing something that will avoid these problems. Modern furniture constructed out of materials such as glass and steal will be ignored by you bunny and will survive with little damage. Wooden furniture with soft rounded edges will also avoid attention as they prove hard get a small bite around.

Making furniture safe

Always make sure you don't leave gaps or awkward spaces behind or between furniture that a rabbit can crawl into as these spaces are likely to become a focus of attention and could ultimately be dangerous if your rabbit gets stuck in them and hurts itself in a panic trying to escape. Either move items of furniture up against another object or away from it. If a space is left unavoidable then find some way of filling is in or blocking it off. Try and also avoid narrow spaces under furniture as this can cause problems if your rabbit forms a habit of sitting under it as this can leave them unexpectedly under foot as they can see you but you wont see them till its to late.

Safe alternatives

The best strategy to keep a rabbit away from your furniture is to provide it with lots of safe alternatives for them to gnaw on instead. Ultimately they would much rather chew on willow sticks or wicker objects then the treated materials your furniture is likely to be made of and these are a lot cheaper to replace. Card board boxes and cardboard tubes from paper rolls are also a free and indispensable source of distraction. Try and avoid cardboard with a lot of print on its surfaces or lamination as your rabbit it likely to ingest this want to eat this material and this could cause problems with its digestion.