# HOW TO STOP BUNNY FROM RATTLING HIS CAGE



## Justabox (Nov 19, 2018)

My 4 month old bunny is constantly chewing the metal railings of his cage. It seems to occur more often when I'm not in the room. We have not conditioned him to think that rattling gets him food or attention. Rather, we have tried to discourage the rattling by squirting water, stomping our feet and even putting him into confinement in the "naughty carrier " for a short period of time. As a last resort we put diluted peppermint oil (which we have researched, is deemed safe for rabbits) on the railings which seemed to deter him only for a little while. It is driving us insane as the rattling is loud and prevents us from getting decent sleep!

Bun has plenty of play time outside of his cage. He is only put in his cage at night as our place cannot be 100% rabbit-proofed. He also has loads of toys to chew on and has plenty of hay to munch on through the night and beyond.

He has not been neutered yet as his testicles have not descended, but we noticed this behaviour developed after we first let him out his cage to explore. Not sure if he had too much space and freedom all at once and now wants out!

Please help advise us! Suggestions welcome as putting up with it and sound-proofing are not options in our small city apartment! Thanks very much!


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## Blue eyes (Nov 19, 2018)

Hormones can cause excessive chewing desires. This may stop once he's neutered. He should be ready for that very soon. (allow 6 weeks for hormones to dissipate after surgery)

Chewing on the bars isn't just a nuisance, it can also cause his teeth to misalign. You could try using zipties to attach cardboard to the areas of the pen he usually chews. Plain cardboard is fine for him to chew and it can be replaced as needed. 

I would discourage using negative actions (stomping, spraying) because it only makes you "the bad guy." Rabbits typically don't respond in the long run to such techniques. 

Using the carrier for time-out is also counter productive because it trains him to hate/fear the carrier. That's not a good thing when you have to get him in there when he's sick (for a vet visit) or for any other reason. We want them to view the carrier positively. 

Rabbits aren't inclined to respond to negative behavior correction techniques that may work wonderfully with a dog. Rabbits just don't have any innate desire to "please" their human the way a dog might. They do what they want to do. Training a rabbit is more about _us_ adapting to _their_ behaviors. This might mean blocking off or moving an item we don't want them to chew rather than expecting to be able to teach them to leave it alone.

Hopefully the cardboard will do the trick. You can also try refreshing that hay right before he's put in for the night.


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## JBun (Nov 19, 2018)

Plastic pet mesh(pet screening for windows) zip tied to the inside of the cage is an option as well, provided your bun doesn't try to chew through it. If he does then metal mesh may be needed, though be cautious as it can have sharp edges if they are not cut correctly.


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## Justabox (Nov 20, 2018)

Thanks for your suggestions and advice. Really appreciate it and will look into fixing some sort of barrier in front of the railings that he can't bite through or grip. Wouldn't want him to have misaligned teeth :/

Just hope all this excessive chewing behaviour settles after his neuter!


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## Cheese nibbles (Dec 7, 2018)

My rabbit does the same thing. she will back up and then ram into her pen. its very annoying at night. I've had her only one and a half weeks 
now. she is 7 months old and she has a pen not a cage. should i also change to a cage or leave it as a pen. I NEED HELP CAN'T SLEEP


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## Mz_Mala (Dec 7, 2018)

One of my rabbits (our mini lop Oreo) does this. He's very smart and does it specifically when he wants attention, food, water, etc. We've used the spray bottle in the past, too, and it's worked for us. Now I just have to show it to him and he recognizes what it is and stops for a while at least. If I give him what he needs (food, etc.) he'll stop usually, even if this means giving him something for his boredom. I like to save toilet paper rolls, put a few blueberries or some other small treat inside, then fold the ends in on both sides and give it to the buns. It keeps them entertained for a long while, and they really love the treats inside.


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## Blue eyes (Dec 7, 2018)

Cheese nibbles said:


> My rabbit does the same thing. she will back up and then ram into her pen. its very annoying at night. I've had her only one and a half weeks
> now. she is 7 months old and she has a pen not a cage. should i also change to a cage or leave it as a pen. I NEED HELP CAN'T SLEEP



Pens can make fine "cages." I don't see why you'd need to change. Could you post a photo of your set up? Maybe we can see something that could help. 

Does she have plenty of hay at night? She may (as Mz Mala suggested) need some toys or such to occupy her. Does she have a hidey area? A cardboard box with doorways cut out can make her feel safe (in case she is ramming her cage looking for a place to hide). Just be sure the box is not against the pen wall or she may use it as a step to climb over the pen wall.


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## Popsicles (Dec 7, 2018)

You could also try hanging a sheet up in front of the pen when you go to sleep, as a “signal” that it’s bedtime now and time to be quiet. My bunny used to be the same - I originally had her pen about a foot away from my bed, and she used to stare at me all night and rattle the bars for attention, once I got a sheet she realised she had to entertain herself until the sheet came down and she got breakfast.


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## Liung (Dec 8, 2018)

Ultimately the problem with punishment is that it has to a) be more deterring than whatever reward they’re attaining through their behaviour, and b) not be associated with a discriminative stimulus. Also c) punishment prohibits a behaviour but it doesn’t provide an alternative acceptable behaviour. 

Delilah came to me badly neglected, and would rattle the bars of her cage for HOURS at a time, incessantly. Or dig at the floor of her cage. Or thump her foot. For HOURS. It was horrible. We too tried water bottle spraying. 

But ultimately, as Mz_Mala noted, it’s a bid for attention. Delilah spent much of the first year of her life trapped in a tiny rabbit cage with little to no interaction from people, and so she began to solicit interaction however she could. Justabox, you may think you haven’t conditioned your bun to associate rattling with attention, but in fact you have. When he rattles the bars, you inevitably come over to tell him to stop. That’s attention. And for Delilah, being yelled at was still better than being alone. Like a small kid acting out, negative attention is better than no attention at all. Should you bun be having the same lonely mindset as Delilah, your punishment isn’t working because it’s not punishment, it’s a reward. 

Delilah’s previous owner’s solution was to move her cage to the basement where she wouldn’t bother anybody, isolating her further. Please don’t do that. 

Being both a bid for attention and also a boredom behaviour, by the time I got her it had developed fully into stereotypy, and even after I had her integrated with Lahi and Picca, in a huge 4x8 enclosure, she would sometimes spend hours at a time, rattling the bars of her cage. 

Rattling the bars of the cage that was sitting there with the door wide open, as she stood OUTSIDE the cage. It wasn’t about wanting out anymore, or wanting attention, it was simply something she did when she had nothing else to do, almost compulsively. 

Today she doesn’t rattle the bars of her cage, mostly because she doesn’t HAVE a cage. She and Lahi have the spare room of the apartment to themselves, and their main living space is a condo made from a storage cabinet. The wire mesh of the doors is a chicken wire dense enough that she can’t get her mouth around a bar without the wire pushing at her nose, so it’s not pleasant for her to try and bite it. She still digs in the litter box sometimes, and will chew on the metal hinge of one of the doors—again, she’s developed a compulsive behaviour and probably isn’t going to stop for anything. But it’s not nearly as loud, and as she can get all the attention she wants any time she wants from Lahi, and she can run around the condo or come out and run around the room anytime she wants, she does it only rarely. 

That might not be an option for you, but do consider that a bun’s most active hours are dawn and dusk, which for mine seemed to be from 9pm-2am ish, and then 5am-8am ish. Right as you’re trying to go to bed, your bun is AWAKE AWAKE TIME TO EXPLORE!!

So really keep in mind boredom causes. If he has nothing else to do in his cage, he’s going to find something to do. I found the EcoTrition Snack Shak really helped, it’s not exactly healthy but it’s tasty enough that they like chewing on it, and it lasts a good long time. Mind you them chewing on that is ALSO very loud, but not as disruptive and rather easier to sleep through. 

Finally, allow me to explain discriminative stimulus. Essentially the issue with punishment is that you run the risk of making yourself a condition for when the behaviour is or is not allowed. Dogs, for instance, are highly oriented toward context. You can tell a dog they’re not allowed on the bed, but as far as they’re concerned they’re only punished for being on the bed when you’re there, therefore they’re only not allowed on the bed when you’re there. They don’t have the ability to generalize the punishment to mean all situations, not just the one they receive the punishment in. And so people seem convinced that their dogs are “disobedient”, and “defy” them by being “sneaky” and trying to do things when they’re not looking. 

No, it’s simply that you looking and being present is the dog’s understanding for when they should and shouldn’t do the behaviour. 

Rabbits definitely do have a better ability than dogs to generalize what they learn, from what I’ve observed. But they still tend to make punishment into discriminative stimulus. Delilah has a quirk of, instead of grooming Lahi, grabbing his fur in chunks and ripping it out! Don’t ask me why. I’m writing it off as neurotic behaviour stemming from neglect during her formative months. 

The problem when I tried to punish her for it: every time I caught her doing it, I would give her a little flick on the nose, or poke her bum. The result: to this day, Delilah only yanks Lahi’s fur out when I’m not around. 

Rattling the bars is the same thing: if you have to be present to administer the punishment, you’re only punishing rattling the bars:while human is in the room. 

Mz_Mala has taught her bunny that the presence of the spray bottle means he shouldn’t do the thing. She hasn’t taught him that he shouldn’t do the thing at all. 

And that’s why punishment is so hard. Punishment can’t be seen to come from an external, occasional condition in order to effectively suppress the behaviour. It must be seen as a consequence of the behaviour itself. My sister’s horse kept trying to bite my dad, so he’d smack him on the nose with his glove. Soon Ben was biting my dad and then immediately jerking his head away in anticipation of the smack. Only problem was, Ben is so tall that when he jerked his head up, he smacked it himself on the ceiling. Because that punishment happened every time, without obviously coming from anyone in particular, the biting stopped. However, Ben could have learned to only bite people outside, or to bite but then moderate how high he jerked his head, if he’d realized that what was being punished wasn’t the biting but the jerking his head up. 

Thankfully Ben is not the brightest bulb. 

Finally, the problem with punishment is that it doesn’t provide acceptable alternative behaviour. Nobody does something “just because”. Behaviours are developed for a reason, and in our pets those “bad behaviours” happen because the animal is getting something from them. 

Punishing a dog for growling just creates dogs who “bite without warning”, because you haven’t taught the dog how to acceptably express their discomfort and fear. This is why rewards-based, positive training is considered the best for dogs. 

Even as I was punishing Delilah for trying to yank Lahi’s fur out, I was also trying to reward her for grooming him properly, by petting her when she licked nicely to make it a groom-session. I’m not sure how much it actually worked as a reward, but I like to think she does actually groom him properly more often than not. 

But in a different example, Delilah used to rush my legs for food, and completely crowd me. So I started shoving her into her hidey box, and only putting the food bowl down when she stayed inside. Very quickly, instead of rushing my legs, when she was excited for food she’d make a beeline for the box. That’s called “reinforcement of alternative incompatible behaviour”. She couldn’t rush my feet AND stay in the box. 

Hope you enjoyed this short psychology lecture, good luck figuring out how to apply it. Essentially, you must: figure out what reward your bun is achieving through his behaviour, then see if you can remove that reward. I’m willing to bet that your attention, even though it’s negative, is the reward, both for social gratification of a bun housed by himself and for mental stimulation of a bun without much else to do. Then, you must provide him with acceptable alternatives to the behaviour, such as the cardboard Blue eyes mentioned. You can also address his motivations for the behaviour by giving him more space and toys, and make the behaviour impossible by making his housing something that doesn’t have bars.


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## Liung (Dec 8, 2018)

Also to quickly clarify: the tenants of operant conditioning maintain that we can’t actually know what a being considers to be punishing or rewarding. Therefore a “reinforcer” (or reward) is simply something that results in an increase in the frequency or duration of a behaviour, and a “punisher” is something that decreases the frequency or duration of a behaviour.

If you are attempting to punish a behaviour, but the behaviour is not decreasing, then you are wrong about what you are doing being an effective punisher, simple as that. If the behaviour is increasing or is resisting punishment, then there IS a reward occurring, and it’s then up to you to determine what it is.

But that doesn’t negate the issues with positive punishment. Much more effective than positive punishment (applying something bad) is negative punishment (removing or denying something good). He thinks rattling the bars gets attention? Don’t give it to him. Wait until he stops rattling, and hasn’t rattled in some time, before going to see him, and showering him with love and praise and treats. Negatively punishing the undesirable behaviour, and positively reinforcing the alternative desired behaviour.


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## Björnmor (Dec 18, 2018)

In the beginning I tried to keep my bun in a cage at night, it was a really big thing. He seemed to have as mission to get out and woke me up several times. Only lasted for two days and after that I will never ever put him in a cage again, if not totally necessary.


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## Imbrium (Jan 1, 2019)

Liung said:


> Ultimately the problem with punishment is that it has to a) be more deterring than whatever reward they’re attaining through their behaviour, and b) not be associated with a discriminative stimulus. Also c) punishment prohibits a behaviour but it doesn’t provide an alternative acceptable behaviour...



Ok, that's the sort of wall-of-text I'm prone to type (the few who remember me from years ago can surely attest)! What a wonderfully eloquent explanation of the psychology of punishment. I'd like to emphasize the part about them being crepuscular, which technically means animals which are most active at dawn and dusk... but realistically means "rabbits bounce off the wall at 2-3 am."

Honestly, if he's really got his mind set on rattling the cage and letting him out at night (ie giving him what he wants) isn't an option, you're never going to be able to convince him (through reward or punishment) to knock it off so you can sleep. Especially if it's getting him attention (even negative). Your best bet is, as others have suggested, some sort of thwartation device - something physically stopping him from doing what you don't want him to do. As a rabbit owner, you'll find yourself coming up with more and more creative solutions to thwart their naughty side, lol.


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