Nonstop thumping

I have seven rabbits, they are rescues and some of them have medical problems. One of the healthy ones (he is a year old, neutered and lives with a girl spayed) and he escaped from his cage last night :roll: thankfully they live inside so they don’t hurt themselves or get anywhere. He was behind a bed when I woke up and wouldn’t stop grunting and thumping. I got him out but by that time another girl has started. I tried giving treats, lights on, lights off, towel covering the cage, moving boxes in my room incase it scared them and giving fresh hay but they didn’t stop. Moving him into my bed with me, he jumped off and ran under my bed and is sitting there thumping. The girl thumps every once in a while but not so much now that he is gone. I have a very sick rabbit who needs to be sleeping and he is not able to. I can’t sleep either. I’ve been up for two hours and it’s four am. Someone please help?

I'm late answering you, but if the thumping continues tonight, I suggest you do less to try to distract him. The thumping is a warning call and likely started because he was nervous being out of his cage. Once they get worked up it can take a while to settle down.

Rabbits in the house can be noisy. Seven in the house is a lot, especially if one is very sick. I'm sure your kind heart means you want to save them all, but be sure to consider your own needs too. Perhaps you can find homes for some of them, so you are not so overburdened.

:good-luck:

Unfortunately you can't instantly make them stop. The more you change things the more it's likely to continue and likely to upset your sick rabbit more than listening to thumping of another rabbit for a short time. With animals (and often children) you have to lead by physical example and then have the patience for them to realize they have no reason to keep reacting to things. Remain calm, don't make a big deal about their behavior, and no matter how much you are bothered continue as normal in order to make them understand nothing bad is happening. Occasional sleepless nights are a trade off to having animals indoors and with insomnia already sometimes that can be a devastating blow to my entire week but everything else just makes them think they do have a reason to be upset. Put them back in a familiar environment, make sure they aren't hearing or smelling anything new or potentially concerning that you might not normally notice, and probably you'll just have to wait for him to calm back down. If there is something they like to chew on, take awhile eating, or play with it might distract them and calm them down sooner but constant interruption to their routine is only going to keep them on alert so try only some minimal distractions. Bags of tasty "treat" hay like the stuff they add herbs to or oat hay that is still green but with the start of grain heads can be useful to keep around even if they can't be fed all the time because they will go digging through it all night instead. Sources of low level sound that can be used like white noise can help make everything less noticeable like a quiet radio or you can load white noise and nature sounds on a computer. I've left my laptop playing things in various situations of new stressed animals or when we had to be gone for longer than usual. When we had a downstairs neighbor that even called the city and police when the condo association didn't think rabbits drinking out of water bottles at night was enough for a noise complaint I put those furniture leg pads between the cages and wood floor. Not that anything short of sticking a note on our door saying we would not answer the screaming neighbors downstairs and would pursue a cease and desist order actually worked to stop someone who's solution to her child waking up crying was to scream at him to shut up and go to bed for hours before slamming doors half the building could hear and coming to yell into our condo about our rabbits now being active. Her lack of common sense made it less useful to try to reason with her than the rabbits.

I learned a new piece of advice for preventing thumping tonight:

Don't play the ocarina for them...

My herd may just be a tough crowd... but it's probably more likely that most rabbits may not be into new and unfamiliar noises. (And if another rabbit thumping causes a scary noise, maybe you get a feed-back chain. My two bucks started that with each other tonight)

At least, I'll pretend it's that, and not a comment on my musical skills. :laugh2: