House Rabbit Society A wealth of information, including: Carrot Cafe (Laura Atkins excellent site for diet and nutrition FOOD (more information on food here) Treats (to be given sparingly) Carrots, parsnips, apple, banana, pear, blueberries, grapes, raisins, craisins, dried fruits. Be careful with sugary treats that make rabbits fat and are bad for their teeth. DO NOT feed corn, fresh or dried. It can cause blockage of the digestive tract.  In the litter pan you can use many products. Pelleted wood products such as FireMaster wood stove pellets, Woody Pet, Mountain Cat, Feline Pine and Horse Stall Bedding brands are very absorbent and control odour very well. Pelleted paper such as Yesterday’s News absorb well. Wood shavings (spruce or aspen) absorb but get soggy and do not control odour well. Corn cob is not very absorbent or odour controlling. Corn cob also has the drawback of being tasty to some rabbits. Watch your rabbit to make sure he does not eat any of the above litters you may choose to use.

Hay can be sprinkled over the top of any litter to encourage use. Shredded newspaper and/or hay or straw can always be used. NEVER use clumping cat litter. garage door insulation kit (8-piece)It is deadly if inhaled or swallowed. car window repair dudleyClay cat litters are too dusty and might cause respiratory problems in rabbits. made to measure bi folding doors internalDo not use cedar or pine shavings that contain toxic oils.garage door opener motor makes noise but doesn't move The bigger, the better. It should have a side opening door so the rabbit can come and go itself.

Large Dog cages make excellent rabbit pens. Hagen or Ferplast cages of wire with plastic tray bottoms are good. If cages have wire doors that form a ramp when open make sure you cover the ramp with something solid and permanently attached so the rabbit cannot get it’s legs caught in the wire. Never use harsh chemical cleaners around your bunny. White vinegar is good. Make sure you rinse well as rabbits have very sensitive noses. Never hit or slap your rabbit. A loud “No”, clapping hands or stamping a foot will generally do to discourage unwanted behaviour. Always remember that your rabbit is a rabbit and will exhibit rabbit behaviours such as chewing and digging. Provide places for these behaviours. Boxes of newspaper or hay/straw or grass mats are good for digging. Cardboard and some branches are good to chew. Some good branches for your bunny are, apple, willow, birch, alder. See the list of poisonous plants and avoid those. Make sure any tree branches are natural and unsprayed.

Never give your bunny anything unidentified.  Rabbits don’t really need a cage. A cage can be handy when you need to confine rabbits for their own safety. An excellent way to confine rabbits is to use an exercise pen (commonly used for puppies). These are very practical as they fold up and can be set up anywhere from bedroom to lawn to keep rabbits safe while you are away or not able to supervise them. (Always supervise if they are outside.) They are available at almost any pet supply store. (Please buy pet supplies from stores that DO NOT sell rabbits.) Buy one at least 3 feet high as many rabbits, even dwarf rabbits, will jump over a 2 foot barrier. Please review the article Beyond Cages: The Possibilities of Pen Living. If you do get a cage get one as large as possible. Large folding, wire, dog crates are good especially with a shelf or box in them so the bunny can jump up and down. If you get a regular rabbit cage choose one with a front opening door so the rabbit can come and go.

If the wire door folds down like a ramp make sure you cover the wire with something solid so the bunny cannot get his feet caught. Custom cages can be built quite easily. Here is a web site that tells you how build your own cage out of wire cubes. These kind of cubes can be purchased at Home Depot. Here is a terrific article about rabbit housing. Rabbits do not need expensive toys but they should have a variety of interesting things in their environment to keep them busy. They will get lots of enjoyment out of a cardboard box with some holes cut in it. They will like it even better if you get a really big box and put other boxes inside it with holes in them. Terrific tunnels can be purchased at Rona or Home Depot. Look for cement forms, cardboard tubes that come in 6, 8 and 10 inch diameters. They are about $8 for 8 feet and the stores will usually cut these to size for you. Rabbits love to run through them, hide in them and chew them. They are terrific things for behind the couch on top of wire you don’t want the bunny to get.

Wicker baskets and grass mats (100 natural) are great for digging on and chewing. More about rabbit toys. Other cheap toys are wire cat balls with bells in them, soda can with a pebble in it and tape over the hole, toilet paper tubes stuffed with hay, hard plastic baby toys such as key rings (rabbits like to fling these around). Please review the article More Than Just a Chew Stick for information about toys, houseproofing and understanding what play is for a rabbit.Their counsel: a few fairly inexpensive home modifications, at the proper time, can help pet owners save money, keep animals healthy and make the house smell and look a lot less like a zoo. Fortunately, most of those modifications can be done indoors during a heat wave. Unfortunately, many of them involve crawling around the primary battleground between pet and owner: the floor.I grew up in a house where a certain corner of rug triggered my dog’s bladder, no matter how much time he spent roaming outdoors.

Steam-cleaning didn’t solve the problem or reduce the stench, nor did any number of sprays.A dog diaper might have helped. For a home with puppies or kittens, my panelists suggested swapping carpet for hardwood flooring, or tile with dark grout that won’t show stains. Avoid natural stone tile, Ms. Britton said, because it can stain unless very well sealed.In my home, almost all the floors are wood or ceramic tile, so we suffered little during our animals’ early years. But those slippery surfaces could pose problems later in the animals’ lives if they develop joint issues, Dr. Korneich said, so he suggested putting down runners on rainy days for aging pets.As an alternative, Ms. Britton recommended carpet tiles like those produced by Flor. “If one tile is soiled and it becomes a problem,” she said, “you can take it up and put a new one down.”That sounded good to me, so I tried Flor’s House Pet tiles ($14 for a roughly 20-inch square), which are made of a washable polyester.

To install, you place sticky circles at the intersection of four tiles. In roughly 90 minutes, I had carpeted a 77-square-foot room.But the House Pet tiles look better suited to an office than to a home, and the fibers feel scratchier than those of other Flor tiles. Since the tiles can be removed without harming the floor, I may stow them until my pets get older. In the meantime, when they have accidents, I double down on cleanup, with a cleanser (Crypton Mess Eliminator, $10 for 32 ounces) and a deodorizer (Crypton Disinfectant and Deodorizer, $10 for 32 ounces).Another hedge against incontinence are dog and cat doors, known among the raccoon community as the Best Inventions Ever. (Search online for “raccoon” and “dog door” for home-invasion highlights.) To be fair, they work fine for people who remember to lock them, and certain models like the Ideal Pet Products Ruff Weather Pet Door ($120 for medium-size pets) can control the flow of traffic in and out of the home.The owner of my local pet store installed one on her garage door, turning the carport into a mudroom of sorts.

I would have jumped at that idea, if not for the fact that we have no fence outside our garage. Our only viable dog-door option is the front entryway, which is aesthetically out of the question.Putting small portals on our interior doors, though, made sense. An energy auditor last year suggested we put a cat door on the unfinished side of our basement, where we keep the litter box. That way, we wouldn’t be heating an otherwise unused room by leaving the door open.Installation is fairly easy if you have a jigsaw (Ryobi 4.8-amp jigsaw, $40). The PetSafe cat door ($17 for small cats) includes a template for tracing the outline of the hole onto the door. Mr. Carlsen suggested scoring the outline with a utility knife and sawing along the inside of those marks to prevent splintering. As he noted, “Any time you cut into a door, there’s an opportunity for wanting to buy a new door.” But his scoring idea worked nicely, and the entire job took 20 minutes.IF you’re handy enough with basic carpentry to build a box, you can save hundreds of dollars on items commonly found in pet supply stores.

As Mr. Carlsen pointed out, fish owners can easily build an aquarium stand, for instance. “Just be sure to overbuild rather than underbuild it,” he said. “I’ve used 6-by-6’s and 4-by-4’s for the frame, and nothing moves.”Neither he nor his fellow panelists had any suggestions for gecko owners. We (and by that, I mean my wife) tried building a big cage with screening and thin wood railing. But after Yoshi’s fourth escape, we broke down and spent $100 on a cage.Ramps are among the easier do-it-yourself projects, and Dr. Kornreich and Mr. Millan recommended them for aging pets.I found a handful of useful YouTube demonstrations on building pet ramps, then stumbled onto a project with more money-saving potential: a cat condo with a scratching post, to keep Kukio from tearing up our couches. A few years ago, we wasted $40 on a post that looked as if it took about five minutes and $5 to build; the cat would have nothing to do with it. We also tried claw covers, plastic sleeves that you glue onto each of the cat’s front paws.

Yes, we actually did this. They worked until she figured out how to pry them off.So why not shoot the moon with a luxurious cat condo?I drove to Home Depot and spent $15 on remnant carpet, scrap wood and a 4-by-4-foot post that an employee cut to spec. My plan was to build a cube and cut a portal hole with my jigsaw, then cover it with carpet and perch it on the post.Lastly, I would wind the post with sisal rope and pray for Kukio’s soul that she used it.The project was not exactly a home run, thanks to several boneheaded errors. The biggest was carpeting the cube after I built it, instead of stapling the material to each panel before assembling. I also had the wrong staples for the job (too long) and the wrong screws (too thick).After two more trips to the hardware store, I cobbled the thing together and beheld my masterpiece.It looked like a 9-year-old’s school project.I dumped a handful of catnip (Yeowww! brand, $2.80 for a 2.5-ounce package) into the thing and set the cat down near the entrance.

She sniffed once and sprinted away. I also tried a scratching board (Catit Style Bench, $7.50), which she ignored as well.Of course, if your cat tears up the furniture, simpler options exist. Cat-repellent sprays work for some people (Keep Off! cat and kitten repellent, $7.50 for a 6-ounce can), but when I sprayed a piece of area rug that Kukio uses as a scratching pad, she sat right in the center of the spot and glared at me.Double-sided tape applied to the couch (Scotch brand, $2.50 for 6.9 yards) repelled Kukio more effectively, but it was only slightly more attractive than a ripped couch.For dogs that damage couches, a cover (Crypton’s Throver, $100) works nicely to protect spots that your dog frequents when you’re not home. Fortunately, some pet modifications can enhance the look of a room, Ms. Britton said. She suggested cutting holes in a low shelf of an open cabinet and placing pet food bowls in them, to save kitchen space and hide food spills. A similar approach can be employed using a vintage dresser.