A Donation for the Shelter Bunnies #chewyinfluencer

This month's Chewy.com Influencer "free product for an honest review" Program's list also had a nice bag of Oxbow Essential's Adult Rabbit Food. It has been a while since I made a donation to the shelter for the bunnies, something I like to do from time to time so I asked if they would be okay with my asking for that product and donating it. Chewy was fine with the idea.

Rabbits should eat mostly hay and dark leafy green veggies but adding in a bit of rabbit food each day makes sure you hit all of their nutritional needs. I found it quite interesting that I saw this particular brand being sold at my vet's office when I was just recently in there, so you know it has my vet's approval.

Rabbits also need to chew constantly to help wear down their teeth.I thought using the Chewy Box to make some chewy toys would be a great idea.  I bought a bag of Timothy Hay to make the toys more interesting.

I checked out Pinterest to find some ideas for DIY cardboard rabbit toys.  There were some really amazing projects but I wanted to keep it simple. I used this pin and this pin for inspiration.

Since I had just acquired myself an empty roll of toilet paper, I thought I'd make the simplest of rabbit chewies first. Shove timothy hay in the tube.

Done! Wasn't that simple? The bunny that gets this can eat the hay and chew the cardboard to reveal more. They can also "nose" the roll around the cage for something to do.

Creating cardboard Xs is another simple toy for rabbits. They can chew them, pick them up and toss them around and dig at them with their feet.  I cut the short sides of the Chewy.com Box off and cut them in half.

For the longer sides, I had wanted to create more stuffed chew toys like the toilet paper roll one, but I could not place my hands on my natural twine.  If I had found it, it would have looked a lot like the one below with the pink ribbon.  I probably would have put two or three ties on it to give the bunny something to investigate and chew on as well. I made sure all of the tape was off the box first.

But alas, no twine, so I decided to shove hay through holes in "cards" of cardboard. Jack thought he needed to help me at this point and his distraction led me to not get any photos of the final project. I cut both long ends into four squares and then cut holes in the middle.  For several of them, I kept the simple approach and just shoved a tuft of hay in one card. For others, I used two or three cards to make the toy a little more 'challenging"

I piled everything up in the base of the Chewy.com box. I decided to not deconstruct it and make more toys for two reasons, one it made an awesome carrying case and for another, it might be a nice for the shelter to have the box to give to a rabbit to chew on.

I then called the shelter and spoke to Peter (no, the coincidence did not escape me) and asked him what they might like for some goodies for the rabbits. Shelters will often get large donations of greens so I wanted to make sure I wasn't buying anything they didn't need. He asked for some apples, some dark leafy greens and some cilantro because it helps them wake up from surgery (which I had never heard of before). I stopped at the grocery store on my way to the shelter, and thought a few boxes of popciles for the staff would be nice because it was such a warm day.

All told, the donation cost me just under $20 and it was very much appreciated.

Peter let me feed some craisins to the rabbits and I had to be mighty careful that this little girl (above) didn't try to nibble on my fingertips which still smelled like them. You can almost hear her asking "Hey, Lady, you got any more of them craisins??"

The small animal area consists of two rooms and in the 'office' area they leg the rabbits run around for some exercise. Here is another cool cardboard box craft. The two bunnies in the box really love the green tube and seemed to prefer to use that enterence.

Peter and I talked bunnies for a few minutes and he let me pet a few of them. Sometimes it still really hurts that I feel can't have a rabbit right now due to what happened with Bri (she came down with a URI which I believe she caught from Skippy) Rabbits do make wonderful pets if you are prepared to deal with their unique needs.

Thank you to Oxbow and Chewy.com for being the inspiration for this donation. I hope it leads to other people thinking about supporting nontraditional shelter animals.

Oxbow is currently having a giveaway until August 31st. Nominate your favorite shelter to win $5,000