Housing for an overweight Dwarf Hotot rabbit

An overweight Dwarf Hotot is a specific problem — and honestly, most rabbit housing makes it worse. The typical hutch gives a small rabbit zero reason to move: food, water, and a hiding spot all within a single sitting. Before I suggest anything, I need a couple of details. Is your rabbit housed indoors or outdoors? And what kind of space do you have available — are we talking a single room, a garden, or something more limited like a balcony or spare corner?

That's a really common pattern — more space doesn't automatically mean more movement if the layout doesn't give the rabbit a reason to travel. What's her current setup? Is it a cage she stays in full time, or does she get floor time as well? And has your vet given you any guidance on a target weight or said anything about her joints?

Good — no joint issues means you can push her a bit without worrying about ramps or hard landings. The key with a sedentary rabbit is to make movement the path of least resistance. You want her food, enrichment, and resting spots separated by distance and ideally by a tunnel or two, so she has to physically travel to get anything rewarding. Scatter feeding on the far side of the room rather than a bowl is one half of it. The other half is giving her a tunnel system she'll actually use — Dwarf Hotots are curious enough that a new route genuinely motivates them. I'd recommend the Zippi Rabbit Tunnel System by Pets at Home / Rosewood. It's a flexible, linkable tunnel set designed for rabbits, easy to reconfigure so it stays novel, and the dimensions are right for a Dwarf Hotot to move at speed rather than shuffle. You set it up so the only way from her sleeping area to her pellets or favourite spot is through the tunnel — she moves because she wants to, not because you're forcing her.

Cardboard tubes tend to get ignored because they're placed as optional extras — she can go around them just as easily. The trick is positioning: block off the direct route between two things she wants, so the tunnel becomes the only option. Place a small pinch of dried herbs just inside the entrance for the first few days and she'll start associating it with something positive. Once she's going through it confidently, you stop baiting it and just keep rerouting the layout every week or so. Novelty is the real driver with Hotots — a tunnel she's been using for three weeks gets ignored; the same tunnel repositioned in an L-shape suddenly gets investigated again. The Zippi system makes that reconfiguring genuinely easy, which is why it suits this situation better than a fixed wooden tunnel.

Two small things worth doing at the same time. First, switch from a bowl to scatter feeding — spread her pellet allowance across a wider area of the room floor so she has to forage rather than sit and eat in one spot. Takes thirty seconds and burns more calories than most owners expect. Second, if her sleeping area is against the wall, move it to one end of your dedicated space and put her litter tray at the opposite end — even that 1.5 metre walk several times a day adds up over weeks. The tunnel connects them and makes the whole space feel like a meaningful environment rather than a big empty room she happens to sit in.