Rabbit Toys
Why is it important to provide toys for your rabbit?
Rabbits need regular mental stimulation, physical exercise, and entertainment–just like any other animal. Provide your rabbit with plenty of toys that they can safely chew on, throw around, and run through to keep them happy and healthy.
Toys are important because they provide:
- Mental stimulation. Without challenging activities to occupy your rabbit when you’re not home, your rabbit, especially a solitary rabbit, will get bored. This could lead to depression and or excessive destruction. The creative use of toys can extend your rabbit’s life by keeping him interested in his surroundings, by giving him the freedom to interact with those surroundings, and by allowing him to constantly learn and grow.
- Physical exercise. Your rabbit needs safe activities to keep her body in shape as well as her mind. She needs things to climb on, crawl under, hop on and around, dig into, and chew on. Without outlets for these physical needs, your rabbit may become fat or depressed, or may create jumping, chewing or crawling diversions with your furniture.
- Bunny proofing your home. As is clear from the above descriptions, toys are not just for your rabbit, they also help to keep your house safe. By providing your rabbit with a selection of toys you have fulfilled part of the requirements of bunny-proofing your home.
What are good bunny toys?
If you find your rabbit ingesting plastic or cardboard toys, switch to a different type of toy that the rabbit is not interested in eating. Some good toys to start with:
- Paper bags and cardboard boxes for crawling inside, scratching, and chewing. Bunnies like them much more when there are at least two entry points into the boxes.
- Cardboard concrete forms for burrowing.
- Untreated wicker baskets or boxes full of: shredded paper, junk mail, magazines, straw, or other organic materials for digging.
- Yellow pages for shredding.
- Cat toys: Batta balls, and other cat toys that roll or can be tossed.
- Parrot toys that can be tossed, or hung from the top of the cage and chewed or hit.
- Baby toys: hard plastic (not teething) toys like rattles and keys, things that can be tossed.
- Children’s or birds’ mobiles for hitting.
- “Lazy cat lodge” (cardboard box with ramps and windows) to climb in and chew on. Also, kitty condos, tubes, tunnels, and trees.
- Nudge and roll toys like large rubber balls, empty Quaker Oat boxes and small tins.
- Toys with ramps and lookouts for climbing and viewing the world.
- A (straw) whisk broom.
- A hand towel for bunching and scooting.
- Untreated wood, twigs and logs that have been aged for at least 3 months.
- Untreated sea grass or maize mats.
- Things to jump up on as long as the rabbit cannot use the item to launch himself over the top of the pen.