Rabbits are curious, and intelligent, active pets that love to chew, dig, forage and explore. Not giving them a chance to these instincts will make them bored. Did you they can be trained to respond to names, use their litter boxes, and can bond well with their owners making them a perfect companion?
It is not all about giving them the required health care, food, and housing hutches or cages. Enrich their lives by providing them with toys that will help keep them enchanted, reduce boredom, better their health and happiness. Bored bunnies tend to be and destructive.
Besides being destructive, bored and idle bunnies often have a higher risk of being depressed, obese, or suffer from ileus.
Contents
- Choosing the right toys
- Deciding on which ones to buy or make
- Best toys for chewing: Willow Branch Ball for Small Animals by Ware Manufacturing
- best tunnel rabbit toys: Prosper Collapsible 3 Way Play
- Best logic bunny toys: Living World Teach N Treat Toy
- Best rabbit exercise toys: Rosewood Pet Bunny Fun Tree
- Best hanging rabbit toys
- DIY rabbit toys
- Other recommended toys for rabbits
Choosing the right toys
It is a fact that bunnies love toys and textures. However, care must be taken to ensure they are safe since they will want to chew them. For instance, some brittle ones or ingestible may choke them.
Also, unless they are using a rabbit run or playpen, ensure their play area is free anything they can damage. Bunny-proof your house and ensure the outdoor environment does not have anything toxic or dangerous.
If you go for little rabbit toys, ensure they are safe and cannot be swallowed. Imagine the agony of your furry friend consuming something they can not digest.
Deciding on which ones to buy or make
When deciding on the best rabbit toys to build or buy, you need to consider their roles in boosting natural behaviors such as chewing, tossing, exploring, digging, jumping, hiding, chin marking, and so on. Some of the typical roles they play include the following:
- Some designed to encourage your furry critters to be involved in physical activity. These types encourage them to play, hop, fling, or jump and they will make them physically fit.
- Chewable toys will help wear down their overgrown teeth or ensure they do not overgrow.
- Some will help in mental stimulation which will boost their general health and intelligence.
- There are those designed to achieve some of the above roles while rounding up as food.
- Finally, some will encourage digging and tunneling.
When you are deciding on which toys to get, consider all these roles, and ensure you get those that will perform the functions. Let us look at some of the best bunny toys to buy.
Best toys for chewing: Willow Branch Ball for Small Animals by Ware Manufacturing
It is normal for a rabbit to chew other things besides her or his food since it is an enjoyable natural behavior. Furthermore, it will help prevent overgrown teeth, reduce boredom (boredom may make your furry friends destructive), and boost fiber ingested.
There are many brands of rabbit chew toys in the market. However, our vote goes to Willow Branch Ball for Small Animals by Ware Manufacturing.
This brand serves not only as a chew item that promotes natural chewing instincts, wear down their teeth and ensure they have clean and healthy teeth, it will also be a great play toy. Your bunnies will enjoy nudging or rolling it as they chew it.
Don’t worry about its safety as willow branches are safe to your furry friends, i.e., they will not cause any harm even if ingested in larger amounts.
If you prefer something else, then Kaytee Perfect Chews for Rabbits, Peter's Woven Grass Ball and mat, Rosewood Boredom Breaker Small Animal Activity Toy Chill-n-Chew Mat, Kaytee Carousel Chew Toy Carrot, eCOTRITION 3 in 1 Snak Shak Chew, Treat and Natural Hideaway, among many others will serve you well. We have a detailed review of the best rabbit toys for chewing – commercial and homemade.
best tunnel rabbit toys: Prosper Collapsible 3 Way Play
Bunnies are curious animals, and they love exploring, digging and tunneling. These toys will also give them a perfect hideaway place for their privacy or sleeping. Therefore, you shouldn't one or two for tunneling where Prosper Collapsible 3 Way Play stands above the rest.
Prosper Collapsible 3 Way Play is a versatile, long-lasting quality brand designed for rabbits, kittens, cats, and dogs. It has tear-resistant polyester spun around steel frames that have protective ends to ensure they don’t injure your pet.
Furthermore, it features three spacious tunnels making over 50 inches of a tube, “built-in crinkle crackle paper, peephole & bell toy; this popular tunnel chute gives your kitty more ways to have fun.”
Finally, should you want to store it, you will only have to collapse it and firmly secure it with an elastic band that is sold with it. Don't worry about colors since it comes in an array of different colors.
Besides the above brands, other great brands include Ware Manufacturing Fun Tunnels Play Tube for Small Pets, Ware Manufacturing Hand Woven Willow Twig Tunnel Small Pet Hideout, Prevue Hendryx 1098 Nature's Hideaway Grass Tunnel, Living World Hagen Pet Tunnel, Snugglesafe All Weather Flexible Bunny Warren, among others. See more on the best rabbit tunnels and rabbit tube toys hideaways
Best logic bunny toys: Living World Teach N Treat Toy
These are designed to help stimulate their mind as well as exercise and entertain it besides providing nutrition. You can go for both homemade as well as commercial ones.
If you need on to buy, look no further than the Living World Teach N Treat Toy. This toy is an educational, stimulating, and interactive rewarding toy for your bunnies that will help them learn optimally and stay alert. Once you buy it, all you have to do is to let your rabbit see where you hide the treat and try to find it out.
Within no time, your rabbit will have better learning, listening, and observational skills besides providing an excellent chance for you to bond with your furry critter.
Apart from the Living World Teach N Treat Toy, the Trixie Snack Board Toy for Rabbits, Guinea Pigs, and Other Small Pets, BUNNY BLAST Yucca Chew Toy, Niteangel Treat Ball, Snack Ball, Kaytee Toss, and Learn Carrot Game, Rosewood Boredom Breaker Loofa Toss N Treat Roller, among others are equally good. Read more on best puzzle or logic toys for rabbits and DIY including their reviews.
Best rabbit exercise toys: Rosewood Pet Bunny Fun Tree
While in their natural habitats in the wild, a hare can travel as far as five kilometers looking for food or escaping from predators. This makes them physically fit and well-exercised.
Those in hutches, cages or sheds might not have a chance to exercise much even if you let it go to their runs or playpens. However, putting a few exercise toys will help exercise them. As Rabbit.org notes, they need to “climb on, crawl under, hop on and around, dig into, and chew.” Otherwise, they will divert the energy to destruction.
Therefore, you need to give them toys to act as rabbit exercise equipment as well as help break boredom. Here are some of the best brands to purchase.
Rosewood Pet Bunny Fun Tree is a rabbit-safe since it is made of corn leaf and seagrass. As Business Insider notes, it features “woven grass carrot toys hang from the branches, and the wide base provides enough stability that your rabbit can reach the top without tipping it over.”
Expect your bunny to eat the hanging chew toys eventually. Afterward, you can buy a replacement or string treats. This tree will encourage stretching.
The Rosewood Pet Bunny Fun Tree is durable, has quality construction, satisfies your bunny’s instincts to chew and can work for different rabbit sizes.
Other excellent exercise bunny toys include:
- Original and X-large Activity Zone
- Maze Haven
- Giant 12-inch Kaytee Silent Spinner Exercise Wheel – suitable for mini and dwarf breeds
- Smartkitz Large Cardboard Pet Castle
- Rabbit Dumbbell
- Critter Castle (Knight's Castle) and Smartbedz Cardboard Pet Castle
- All logical and some chew toys.
Best hanging rabbit toys
These types will keep your bunnies entertained for a long time and help them stretch as they explore their different instincts including chewing.
1. Kaytee Perfect for Chew
It comes in a variety of colors, textures, and shapes and will keep your bunny entertained while bettering its instincts to chew.
It has wooded balls, logs, carrots, and blocks arrange in green, orange and purple colors making a perfect chewable colorful kabob with a metallic attachment. It is all safe since it is made from non-toxic wood.
Also, it is inexpensive, can be replaced once they finish chewing it, and will make your furry friends happy.
2. Rosewood Pet Bunny Fun Tree
It is made from seagrass and corn leaf which are both bunny-safe. Its broad base will ensure it is stable and will encourage stretching and will help satisfy chew instincts.
Other good brands you can buy include the following:
- Hanging Sisal
- Fun 'n' Forage Foraging Cylinder
- Hanging Floral Basket
DIY rabbit toys
If you are a DIY guru, you do not need to buy commercial ones for your furry friend. You can make some at your home with the various stepwise guide and ideas we have. See some of the greatest DIY rabbit toy ideas.
Other recommended toys for rabbits
Mirrors - The UK’s RSPCA recommends in cases where “rabbits have to be kept singly. A mirror may offer some comfort, particularly for females.” However, this effect won't last long, and it should only be provided when you notice it feels lonely.
Also, ensure they securely attached to avoid any injuries, especially if they break.
Digging toys for rabbits
Digging is typical behavior among bunnies. Therefore, provide them with large plant pots, litter tray or cardboard boxes filled with earth, shredded paper or use sandpits that have sand that is children-friendly. Note that females love burrowing and digging than males.
Territory marking places and objects
It is common for these furry friends to mark areas using urine, dropping and chin secretions by chin marking, i.e., they will run their chin on objects gently as a means of “transferring secretions from their scent gland onto the item, marking their territory, making it smell familiar and reassuring,” notes RSPCA.
Therefore, prove them with objects they can use to mark their territory.
Cardboard boxes
Boxes will make a great hiding place and something to chew. Ensure they have two entry points. They can also be stuffed with healthy treats or hay to break the monotony of always eating from their feeders (feeding bowls or hay racks).
Objects to roll, manipulate or throw
Maize or sea-grass baskets and mats, balls, wickers, untreated straw, plastic flower pots will be ideal for throwing and manipulation. Also, given them old baby toys made of plastics such as rattles, stacking cups, and key rings. Parrot toys, and some cat toys (such as Batta balls) and others can also be ideal.
Ensure they do not have parts that are small or that can be easily detached since they might swallow them.
Paper
Shredding paper, removing handles from paper bags, giving them telephone directories with their flossy parts removed and wrapping their most preferred food in brown papers for them to get it will also keep them enchanted.
Where to jump onto or climb
Always, find elevated places where they can hop or jump on to and relax. You can also go for toys that have ramps for them to climb and look around.
This is not all, see more suggestions on enrichment rabbit toy Ideas and Accessories
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