What Do I Need for a Pet Rabbit? A Full Checklist

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Before your rabbit comes home you need six things: a large enclosure, unlimited grass hay, a litter box with rabbit-safe litter, food and water bowls, a hiding house, and safe things to chew. Everything beyond that is refinement.

The list isn’t the hard part. The hard part is that a surprising amount of what’s sold in the rabbit aisle is useless, and some of it is actively harmful. So here’s what to buy, what to walk past, and why.

The essential rabbit supply checklist

The enclosure: how big does it actually need to be?

This is the single purchase people get wrong most often, for a simple reason: the cages marketed as rabbit cages are sized to fit a shop shelf and a price point, not a rabbit.

Two reference points from welfare organizations:

The Rabbit Welfare Association & Fund recommends a minimum of 3m x 2m of floor space (about 9’10” x 6’7”) with a 1m minimum height for a pair of average-sized rabbits. They specifically note the 3m length matters because it lets rabbits actually run rather than take a couple of hops — and that this space must be available at all times, not just during supervised playtime.
The House Rabbit Society suggests at least 8 square feet of enclosure per 6 lb of rabbit, plus separate exercise space.

Practical options that hit these numbers without buying a “rabbit cage” at all:

Exercise pen (x-pen). The most popular solution. Cheap, expandable, easy to reconfigure, and gives far more usable floor area than a commercial cage. A 24-inch panel exercise pen is the usual starting point, and you can add panels rather than replace anything as you expand. A clear acrylic playpen is an alternative if you’d rather see through the walls.

A rabbit-proofed room. Free roam within one room, with the litter box, hay, and hide set up in a corner the rabbit chooses.

Condo-style setups. Multi-level enclosures made from storage cube grids. Vertical levels add enrichment, but remember that only floor area counts toward the minimums above.

Whatever you use, it needs solid flooring. Wire-bottomed cages cause sore hocks — painful ulcerated pressure sores on the feet. Our full guide covers this in more detail: what kind of cage should I get for my rabbit.

Litter box and litter

Get a box big enough for the rabbit to sit in completely with room to spare. Rabbits eat and eliminate at the same time, so most of the box will be taken up by hay. A large stainless steel litter tray is worth the extra over plastic — it doesn’t absorb odour and rabbits can’t chew the edges.

Litter choice matters more than people expect, because rabbits nibble what they sit in.

Safe	Avoid
Paper-based bedding	Clumping or clay cat litter
Aspen shavings	Raw pine or cedar shavings
Kiln-dried pine pellets	Scented or deodorizing litters
Paper pellet bedding or hemp	Corn cob litter

Why raw pine and cedar are a problem: softwoods contain aromatic compounds called phenols — the “fresh” smell — and prolonged exposure has been associated with changes in liver enzymes and respiratory irritation.

But kiln-dried pine pellets are fine, and this trips people up constantly. The kiln-drying process drives off those phenols, which is why compressed pine stove pellets are one of the most popular and economical rabbit litters. “Pine bad” is too blunt a rule: it’s raw pine shavings you avoid.

Why clumping litter is dangerous: it’s designed to form a solid mass when wet. A rabbit that ingests it risks an intestinal blockage, and the fine dust is a respiratory irritant.

Hay and a hay feeder

Hay is the single most important thing you’ll buy, and you’ll buy a lot of it. It should make up the large majority of your rabbit’s diet and be available at all times — it’s what keeps the gut moving and wears down continuously growing teeth.

Buy grass hay: timothy, orchard, meadow, or oat. Avoid alfalfa for healthy adults; it’s too high in calcium and protein and is intended for young, pregnant, or underweight rabbits.

Buy it in bulk. Small pet-store bags are dramatically more expensive per pound than a bale or a large box from a hay supplier.

A hay feeder or rack positioned over the litter box is the single best setup trick in rabbit keeping — it puts the hay where the rabbit already sits, which does most of your litter training work for you. A wooden hay manger mounts at the right height for this; a heavy-duty combined feeder and hay holder works if you’d rather keep pellets and hay in one fixture.

Food and water bowls

Get heavy ceramic bowls. Rabbits tip, toss, and dig at lightweight plastic dishes — an anti-tip ceramic bowl or a ceramic bowl in a removable stand both solve that.

Use a water bowl, not a sipper bottle. This is one of the clearest evidence-based recommendations in rabbit care: research has consistently found rabbits drink more from open bowls than from bottles, and one study of group-housed rabbits found higher aggression when water was provided by bottle. Drinking from a bowl is also closer to the natural lapping posture and doesn’t require craning the neck sideways at a metal spout.

Hydration matters a great deal for rabbits, since low water intake contributes to gut slowdown. Make it as easy as possible for them to drink.

For pellets, buy plain timothy-based pellets — Oxbow Essentials is the standard example — not the colorful muesli mixes with seeds and dried corn. Rabbits selectively eat the sugary bits out of those and leave the fiber, which is exactly backwards. Pellets are a measured supplement, not a main course; see what should my rabbit eat.

A hiding house

Rabbits are prey animals. One without a place to retreat is a stressed rabbit.

The key detail: give it two exits. A hide with a single opening can feel like a trap, and many rabbits won’t fully relax in one. A cardboard box with two doorways cut into it works perfectly and costs nothing.

If you’d rather buy one, a seagrass hideaway doubles as something to chew, and a two-level wooden hideout gives them a lookout on top as well as somewhere to retreat inside.

Chew toys and enrichment

Chewing isn’t a bad habit to train out — it’s a biological necessity, because rabbit teeth grow continuously. The goal is redirecting it.

Good options:

Untreated willow, apple, or hazel branches and balls — a mixed bundle of natural chew sticks covers several woods at once
Plain cardboard (boxes, tubes, castles)
Seagrass and untreated straw mats, like these woven grass mats, equally good for lying on and shredding
Compressed hay cubes
A digging box — a container of shredded paper or hay

Enrichment prevents most destructive behavior. A bored rabbit with nothing legitimate to chew will find your baseboards. See why does my rabbit chew everything.

Grooming supplies

A brush suited to the coat — a silicone grooming brush is gentle on skin and works well on short coats. Rabbits shed heavily several times a year, and because they groom themselves and cannot vomit, swallowed fur has to pass through the gut. Regular brushing during a molt genuinely reduces risk.
Nail clippers. Nails need trimming roughly every 4–8 weeks.
Do not buy shampoo. Rabbits should not be bathed. Wet rabbits can panic and injure themselves, and immersion is a genuine shock risk. Spot-clean with a damp cloth instead.

Rabbit-proofing supplies

If your rabbit will have any run of the house — and it should — buy these before day one, not after the first chewed cord:

Cord protectors or split-loom tubing
Baseboard guards or clear corner protectors
Extra pen panels to block off problem areas
Mats to protect carpet corners from digging

A carrier — and a vet before you need one

Buy a hard-sided carrier that opens from the top as well as the front. Top-loading matters: it lets you lift a rabbit out without dragging it through a small front door.

More important than any product: find a rabbit-savvy vet now, while nothing is wrong. Rabbits are exotics and many general practices don’t treat them. Save both a regular clinic and a 24-hour emergency option that sees rabbits. When a rabbit stops eating, you do not want to be searching for a clinic — see how often should rabbits see a vet.

What to skip

Pet stores sell plenty of rabbit products that are useless at best:

Muesli-style food mixes — encourage selective feeding and dental disease
Yogurt drops and honey treats — rabbits are herbivores with delicate gut flora
Salt or mineral licks — unnecessary with a proper diet
Exercise balls — stressful and unsafe; never appropriate for rabbits
Harnesses and leashes — high risk of spinal injury if the rabbit bolts
Small “starter” cages — the core problem this article is about
Cedar bedding — see above
Wire-bottomed cages — cause sore hocks

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to set up for a rabbit? The enclosure is the biggest one-time cost, and an exercise pen is usually cheaper than a commercial cage while being much larger. Budget separately for spay/neuter surgery and for the initial vet visit, which are often larger expenses than all the supplies combined.

Do I need two rabbits? Rabbits are social and many do better in bonded pairs. It roughly doubles food and litter costs but not space, since a pair shares an enclosure. Adopting an already-bonded pair from a shelter skips the introduction process entirely.

Can rabbits live outside? They can, but indoor housing is safer — no predators (rabbits can die of fright alone), no temperature extremes, no flystrike risk, and far more human interaction.

What bedding do rabbits need in their enclosure? Rabbits don’t need bedding across the whole floor the way small rodents do. They need a solid, non-slip surface, litter in the litter box, and a soft mat or resting pad. Deep bedding everywhere just makes the enclosure harder to keep clean.

Do I need a water bottle as a backup? Not required. If you’re worried about spills, use a second bowl rather than adding a bottle.

Get the enclosure, the hay, and the litter right and the rest is detail. If you haven’t already, read things to know before getting a rabbit — the commitment is longer and larger than almost anyone expects going in.

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