Moving with a rabbit

mimosa · Aug 17, 2012

I am moving 2.5 hours away tomorrow. Harriet has made the move before (I lived there when I first got her, moved back home for a few months to work, and am moving back again) and she made the move easily with no signs of distress as soon as she was out of the pet carrier.

I know I'm supposed to keep her confined for 48 hours, but her cage is currently quite small. She is only in her cage at night while I'm sleeping and only because she likes to walk over my face when I sleep.

I'm planning on building a NIC cage in the next few days after I get all my stuff settled in.

How would you do this? Would the move and the new cage in less than 48 hours be too much? If not, should I extend the amount of time I leave her confined so that she's in in the new cage a full 48 hours?

Or should I put off building the new NIC cage until after she's settled into the new apartment?

I would have liked to have had Harriet in the larger cage sooner, but she had full range or my room so it was easy to keep putting off and I didn't want to build a NIC cage only to take it down.

ldoerr · Aug 17, 2012

Building a NIC cage should take less than 1.5 hrs. I have no advice on the moving thing. I travel each weekend with my rabbits. They have a cage at my parents house already set up. This weekend will be Shiny Things first trip (got her last Friday). I will just put the rabbits in their cages, give them food, water and hay and leave them alone for a day. Then they will be allowed to run around my bedroom.

Good luck with the move.

Imbrium · Aug 17, 2012

maybe you could do one day (or half-day) in the cage while you build the NIC condo, then the second day take the top off of the cage and put the base of it inside the bottom floor of the NIC condo - that way it has the familiarity of the cage plus a little extra room to roam

mimosa · Aug 17, 2012

Imbrium wrote:

maybe you could do one day (or half-day) in the cage while you build the NIC condo, then the second day take the top off of the cage and put the base of it inside the bottom floor of the NIC condo - that way it has the familiarity of the cage plus a little extra room to roam

I think this is what I'll do. I can't stand the idea of her in her current cage for too long so I'll just put together the bottom of the NIC cage on Sunday morning (maybe Saturday night if I have time) and let her go in that.

I'm just very worried about her getting freaked out by the move and wanted some extra input.

Blue eyes · Aug 17, 2012

I think it would be best to have the NIC cage ready to go in the new place. Upon moving into the new home, immediately place her in the NIC cage. That way she's not transisting multiple times -- it"s all at once. Drive to new place, place her in new home, and immediately she gets to start adjusting to the new place.
Of course, putting her same litterbox and same toys in the cage will let her take ownership right away.

Doing it in stages just prolongs the stress over a longer period of time.

Imbrium · Aug 17, 2012

I think the key things are that you don't want to overwhelm the bunny with vast expanses of new territory at once and you want her to recognize "her" territory vs "communal" territory (ie the areas she lets you humans use).

since the NIC condo will be her territory once you get it built, I think time spent there (as long as she's comfortable with that adjustment) before having the run of the house is actually much more important than time spent in the dinky little cage... hence my idea about giving the familiar sights and smells from just the cage base inside the condo to ease the cage transition

come to think of it, since she made the move smoothly the first time, you could probably go straight to the NIC cage and she'd do fine... couple of days in there, then let her have your room for a couple days, then let her roam the whole place if you want.