Spicy Hay?? What Is Spicy Hay??

Spicy Hay?? What Is Spicy Hay??

We may be slightly old-fashioned, but being hay lovers, we were bemused by the mention of Spicy Hay recently - it’s not a hay we are familiar with, which is odd, as we’re aware of quite a lot of hays as anyone visiting our website will be all too familiar with!

Is it hay with pumpkin, we pondered, or perhaps a hay with bell pepper - a bit of a stretch, but well, what else could Spicy Hay be? Wrong!

And then someone whispered, “Perhaps it’s something …… er ….. not quite legal?”.
Intriguing, but no, wrong again!

So we dug a little deeper.

And found the answer…

Rabbits love to gnaw, nibble and chew. Some love to chew anything, and some love to chew anything their owners don’t want them to chew. And, it seems most rabbits have a real taste for chewing cables (and, fyi, it's not just rabbits....)!

Spicy hay is the term for this love of cables - as there’s sometimes a bit of a kick with it!

We don’t know why - it can’t be because they think the cable is a stick or a tasty treat. Rabbits are way cleverer than that. We think it’s because most cables have an interesting texture and are an easy shape to chew. No pesky corners, just a smooth round and soft outer layer, with a slightly more challenging core. Think toffee bon-bon; sweet cover, chewy centre!

My own first house rabbit chewed through our telephone cable in about a hundred different places, and left the evidence like a sprinkling of confetti behind the phone stand! And it wasn’t discovered for several days…we did wonder why we’d had no calls! This is back in the day when phones were connected to a main phone line, and we had to call out an engineer to repair the damage. To add insult to injury, our beloved rabbit then proceeded to chew the engineers tools, cables and even the edge of his trousers as he knelt down to repair the damage!

Funny as these tales of destruction are, eating spicy hay, or chewing through cables, is actually extremely dangerous. Not only can it cause a rabbit serious injury as they chew through the live part of a TV or laptop cable, it can also kill them. In addition to the expense you’ll face to repair the appliance taken out of action.

With the increase in popularity of house rabbits in recent years, and the increase in electrical devices around the home, the need to protect your little one from injury or death, and to protect your devices from destruction is paramount.

Fortunately it’s easy to do, and low cost too! The two main options are to either prevent your little ones from accessing areas where there is a spicy hay cable danger, or to ensure all cables are protected against chewing.

We favour the cable protection method as, in our experience, however hard you try to prevent a rabbit from getting to a particular area, they will try even harder to get there. It’s better to ensure the cables are safe, just in case your prevention methods fail.

Cables can be protected with either cable tidies or cable trunking. Cable tidies are slightly more open in their design, so although very effective, may not be 100% bunny proof, unless combined with other measures. Cable trunking is more robust, and can be more of a permanent solution. And there are several kinds, including self-adhesive, so they can be stuck to the wall, skirting board or floor.

This trunking can be easily cut to any length, and there are also junctions and corners available for easy routing around corners or for running cable along a floor and up the wall. It’s so easy to install, you can cover a cable completely from the plug to the device and trunk it along the skirting board so it’s effective, tidy and looks good too!

There's a good quick introduction to trunking by a trunking manufacturer, D-Line, which can be seen by clicking the image below - it'll give a good idea of what we're talking about here! Trunking is readily available online or from most hardware/DIY stores.

So take a look around your home and where your rabbits could get to. Protect your cables for your little ones safety and don’t let them get to any spicy hay!

And a little ‘heads up’ .. If you’ve not yet learnt the hard way, rabbits love remote control button too.