... Chico. There seems to be less room and a fence. What the Hey?" - Zoey the Curious. "mrble, chew, slurp, crunch, say shu what?" - Chico the Oater.
"We cut down on these guy's space for awhile. They spread hay all over and pee on the floor. Yuk. Maybe less floor space and more litter area will help.' - RG the Desperate.
23 comments:
It won't help. I have tried more space, less space, more litter, less litter, assortment of litters...They still pee on the floor, which is why I put them in the breakfast nook area of the kitchen on the ceramic tile instead of in the dining room on the hardwood floor. My little lionhead and her honey bunny the Jersey Woolly have great potty habits, but Minnie the lop must have some French lop in her because she is noisy, a little neurotic and..just..nuts! She pees anywhere she damned well pleases, thank you very little.
Something I tried to help keep them from tossing their hay all over the universe is to give them smaller amounts throughout the day. I use a little ceramic planter to stuff full of hay and WILL NOT give them more until they have eaten all of it up, even the stuff they spread around the floor. And they DO finish it all, then get more hay. They LOVE getting a new pile of hay in their container. This has also made them better hay eaters. They never finished it before I had to clean up if I gave them unlimited hay for the day. Now they eat and eat hay and I can really monitor their eating and pooping. Three different sized rabbits, three sizes of poops!
Whooo, sorry this was so long! The subject of hay is fascinating...my life is so dull...I should rob a bank or something!
Oh, and peeing on the ceramic floor has its good side...you can monitor for urine sludge and pretty much tell how much calcium they are getting in their diet...so...there IS that! And here is a shameless plug here for Sherwood Forest Natural Rabbit Food, which I buy for my babies, but since they have been on it, there is NO ammonia smell from their urine, which kinda smells like green tea now. So, their urine doesn't bother me too much. Even if I don't clean it well, there is no stinkiness.
okokok I am done now...
Do the individuals in a bonded pair sometimes just want to mark out some individual territory sometimes? Is one or the other or both just being a little more defensive for a time? Could there be health issues? Is this new behavior? Let's figure this out, Bunny People. And, don't anyone say KB is hopping over and framing them. Could the each want their own litter box? RG, what you are doing sounds like a sensible adjustment. Maybe you can expand their space again later.
I have four bunns... two married couples. I call them the big bunns (Luna and Jamal) and the fuzzballs (Cooper and Ding). Cooper and Ding have wonderful litter box habits ... so good in fact that when Ding digs everything out of the litter box, Cooper will still hop up in the box to pee and then gets soaked with pee pee all over his fuzzy self (he's a very fine haired Holland Lop ... white of course ... which is now stained yellow on the bottom ... ugh!) Ding just started this horrible habit... So, I have no idea how to stop litter box digging ... any ideas?
Jamal and Luna have no litter box habits. They pee and poo wherever they want, too ... Jamal is a Fancy French Harlequin and Luna is a large white Himalayan.
What I did notice is that when Cooper and Ding are housed across the house from Luna and Jamal and Luna and Jamal have the entire sunroom, they don't pee and poo outside the box so much ... no territory marking.
When the two pairs are in the sunroom with fence down the middle... that middle fence is in bad shape ... it's peed and pood to pieces ... and there is pulled out hair everywhere ...
So, I'm not any help with the actual problem because I have more problems ... but at least you know you aren't alone!
By the way, Zoey and Chico are certainly not cramped up by any stretch... they look quite happy! And, cute!
6B, you can get a litter box screen. I think BinkyBunnyStore has them.
I would give them another litter box and put it where they pee the most that should sort it out as they are not liking teh current litter box spot as for digging well thats what bunnies do
No input here whatsoever. 9 buns=I clean constantly.
Well - so far I see that if we finds something that works I should write a book and become rich and famous!
Glad we are all in this together.
I have followed Jamal and Luna around with litter boxes and it doesn't matter ... they pee everywhere... They do favor certain places. I honestly thought of just getting a huge plastic child pool and filling it up with those wood pellets at the bottom and a bout a bale of hay and just hauling it out and dumping it once per week ... but it won't fit in and out of the door ... and they would find some way to pee over the edge or get in behind it and pee in the corner. I used to have two of those huge under the bed plastic boxes about 30 x 36 used for litter boxes ... they slept in them and peed on the floor. I would move them from wall to wall and corner to corner ... no luck. Crazy bunnies...
I did, however, just Friday of last week, buy a whole bunch of quality puppy training pads and lined their area with them. I fully anticipated a freakish fit of anger with bunnies ripping and tearing the pads to shreds ... but happily, they have moved a couple but for the the most part, they have chosen one or two and poo and pee on those and leave the others pretty much alone ... I am waiting to call a success because I haven 't been in the bunny room since Friday ( I hired Daughter to come home from college and stay with bunns this weekend )and do not have an eye witness report. Daughter said they pretty much left them alone ... but I want to see it with my own eyes!
I am going to our local farm supply and getting three of those 4x6 foot rubber mats for horse stalls and cutting them to fit the sunroom, this weekend. As, the concrete flooring is too cold and not bunny foot friendly. I have been putting blankets and towels over every inch to protect feetsies.... but my washing machine is complaining! So rubber mats it is! With puppy pads on top to absorb mistakes. I will report how this works. The rubber mats are about an inch thick and softy... so the bunns should approve... hahahahha... that last part about the approval was a joke ...
Be careful with puppy pads, if they start chewing, TAKE THEM OUT. Talk about a big blob of tummeh blockage! I have given up on using towels, linens, blankies...My washing machine was complaining, too. And Minnie can shred a rag to ribbons lickety split. So...I am using only boxes. IF they get cold, they have their boxes to snuggle inside.
I just refilled their water crock and I dipped my fingers into the pitcher and made it sprinkle for them. They love when it sprinkles!
Yeah... that's what worried me about the puppy pads. I think with the inch thick rubber mats, I won't need the pads... If a pee pee happens ... and it WILL happen, I can wipe it up... I hope with no residual odors ...
I am also considering trying the food you said made the pee smell less like a cat box ... Mine eat quite a lot of veg, too, though, and I'm afraid that might also cause the odor... but anything is worth a try.
I just need to find somebody strong enough to maneuver those heavy pads. My son is coming home tomorrow night... I'll put him to work cutting and fitting!
Oh dear, the golden couple causing trouble, hope you can sort it all out,
I don't think the veg has anything to do with the ammonia smell. My bunns eat greens, veg, fruit and oats, too. Something in the pellets makes the urine stinky.
I looked on the website for those pellets and there are an awful lot of breeders selling bunnies on that site ... doggone it!
Yeah, breeders suck bunny balls for sure. Or they should be made to, anyway. But I feel that way about ANY kind of breeder, birds, bunnies, dogs, cats, hamsters...All the homeless creatures and we allow people to just keep making more. Dumbassery abounds in America! But you can't count on folks to breed themselves responsibly, so what can we expect from people who let animals breed like, well, animals?
Thanks for taking care of bunnies. I know you all will eventually come up with something fantastic and that you will share with no expectation of remuneration. You all are too smart not to come up with something for the servants.
Good luck with that!! I used to wipe up the urine and then throw the paper towel into the litter box so the rabbit would get the idea.
We trained our buck to use the litterbox in 8 days with a clicker and treats. We used a plastic box with a folded soft towel in it. This is because our other bunn, an English Angora like Zoey, was older and her litterbox is the same, keeps her comfy and tidy. There were no other bunns, though, in the house. Both bunns are neutered. I washed the towels every other day after shaking out the poops, but refolded them daily. For the hay box, I lined it with a a puppy pad (they never chewed it) and a layer of paper towels over the pad, then hay. They used both the towel box and hay box for both poop and pee, exclusively. Hope this helps!
Folded towel sound s great. Folks, keep your ideas coming.
No input here. The "H's" are really good about going to the potty. Harrington will get a wild hare and dig out all the litter sometimes, but only when he's bored with the toy selection.
Good luck.
Mine have a HUGE cage on a tile floor. That way, it doesn't bother me if they pee as a little hot water with some vinegar in it (works like bleach but very safe for rabbits and the smell evaporates in 2 minutes( and it's cleaned up.
Personally, I give them as much space as I can as I think it's cruel to have rabbits in tiny spaces.
I have two rabbits and their cage is around 12 feet by 6 feet. It has 4 plastic chairs in it, which they LOVE to sit on, 2 big plastic boxes, an open cage with 2 storeys and a little box. It's in my bedroom so HAS to be cleaned daily but never smells if I do that.
They also are allowed free-rein of my apartment during the day, although they usually run around for a few minutes and then lie under the sofa for the rest of the day. Again though, I have tile floors throughout so cleaning takes a few minutes and I do it every day.
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