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Forum HOUSE RABBIT Q & A Do your buns smell?

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    • Emmie
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        I’ve had Thane for two years now and never really noticed a smell from him or his litter tray. Now I have Siha in the living room with her and her litter tray is right next to his. My sofa is right next to their cage and boy!! These guys work up a smell in no time! I have scrubbed the area around them and their litter trays, but they still smell bad.

        I am using absorbable wood pellets for both if them, but I don’t think it’s doing the trick. Will the smell die down as Siha’s hormones settle? What kind of litter works best for smelly buns?

        Now when I say smelly, it’s really not that bad. I have a really sensitive nose and I like to try everything to make my home smell amazing!


      • NewBunnyOwner123
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          I am the same way Emmie! I scheduled for Harley’s neuter like 3 days after getting him because I could smell him and I am the type of person that TRIES to smell bad things so I can fix it… I have this thing where I have to have my house not smelling like animals… I don’t remember how long it took him for his stank to die down.. I want to say 2-3 weeks post neuter he quit smelling up the place! Sally never smelt bad pre spay or post spay it was just my Harley boy.

          How often do you clean her box? Or maybe her glands need some good cleaning out!


        • Emmie
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            Possibly!!

            The litter trays are cleaned every day, sometimes every 2nd day. I have a vet visit in a week, I might ask her to help me clean her up!

            I am the same too. I’ll sit there smelling the room poking Matthew saying “do you smell that” lol!


          • Monkeybun
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              Unaltered buns definitely do have a stronger smell. It will die down after her hormones go away


            • NewBunnyOwner123
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                YES! That’s exactly how I am with my husband! I’m like *sniff, sniff snnniiiifffff* *poke* “can you smell that hun?” and he’s like, “ummm…no?” and I will even go outside to get some fresh air and walk back in quickly to see if I get slapped in the face with any odors :p

                But yes at the vet ask her to check her glands or something and she can even show you how to clean them


              • Sam and Lady's Human
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                  Lady stinks sometimes, I don’t know if bunnies can fart but that gal can stink up a room. It’s her marking scent, getting her spayed made it less frequent at least.


                • Eucalyptus
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                    I have never smelled Java or his box normally. Honestly, it’s not until we dump it, so it stirs up the smell in the garbage can, that I actually smell anything. We clean it everyday or every other day, and we are using WSP for litter. And actually, half the strong smell is just the wood itself, so it’s actually a weird spicy smell? Hah.

                    Aside from that, the only time there’s ANY smell coming from Java’s enclosure is during salad time, and it’s because his munching fills the apartment with an herbal smell (all the mint and arugula mainly). Otherwise, there’s a very faint hay scent on him or in the closet (where we store it) and sometimes his face will have the same herbal smell for a couple of hours after he eats.

                    When my mom and grandma visited us for the first time, I asked if they could smell anything, and they literally said “not a thing, your place has absolutely no smell!” and we always ask any new visitors. No one has said there’s a bunny smell, and most don’t even smell the hay which is surprising!


                  • Emmie
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                      I think it could just me me then!

                      I do think the woodchips aren’t really a good brand, they don’t last two long and crumble when the buns pee on them. Siha still doesn’t really understand the whole litter tray idea either :s

                      Her last owner would use her cage as a litter tray instead of just putting a tray in her cage for her. She seems to pee around the tray so come payday we’re going to buy a high back corner tray for her to walk into instead of hopping into, I think it will help


                    • Deleted User
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                         Oohoo!  You don’t know rabbit stink till you’ve smelled an active Flemish buck!  They have a STRONG musk!.  But once they’re neutered they do fine in the house.  I don’t know if it is true of the commercial small bags of feed one gets at pet stores, but if you go to feed stores and get the big bags of rabbits feed, some of them have yucca extract which is supposed to help reduce the smell. Yucca is not expensive– it is a common herbal for arthritis pain, too.  You could always try a little of that. . . . .

                         

                        .My big issue is the smell of hay.  But there’s not getting around that I guess/


                      • Roberta
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                          I have some stinky bunnies… But there are still a neuter and some spays pending which is why Pascal is relegated to the lounge room. The smell is strong but not necessarily offensive.
                          I love the smell of the hay mine have, it almost smells like honey some days.
                          The bunnies themselves do not smell of anything but fluff and cuddles.


                        • bunnygirl
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                            Apollo doesn’t smell, unless his litter tray is left for more than 2 days. Then I might get the occasional waft of bun pee. But a quick empty and fresh refill of the litter tray and were fine! I only use newspaper and hay in my litter tray, so you can understand why it smells relatively quickly! He’s neutered too!


                          • Elrohwen
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                              Hannah smelled awful when I got her. I’m still not 100% sure why, but it mostly went away after the first two weeks and I have only smelled it a few times since. I think it was from her anal glands, and related to her stress of being in a new place/marking. She was spayed at 6 months and I got her at 3 years old, so it wasn’t that. She has always been extremely clean on her underside, so it wasn’t related to poor hygiene either. Another time I smelled it very strongly was when the bunnies had recently moved in together and had a scuffle, which makes me think it might be related to stress.

                              Otto has never smelled.


                            • Emmie
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                                Interesting stuff, thanks! Today I can’t smell anything so it must just be an odd day or two with her. I think she has been marking too, getting the last of her hormones out!


                              • Eucalyptus
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                                  I use wood stove pellets and they are awesome for odor control. I wonder if it’s the particular brand, which I actually can’t get the name of right now because we toss the bag immediately. I can tell you that the pellets are made from Douglas Fir – maybe different types of wood will make a difference. Like I said, the smell we get when we dump the box is actually the wood. You get this weird spicy aroma from the wood mixed with the burning scent from the ammonia in the pee, but you don’t actually smell the pee. It’s not pleasant, though, hah. At least it’s literally ONLY when we dump the box, never when it’s just in his house.

                                  We’re pretty on top of the cleaning though, we pull his house apart, sweep up all lone poops that didn’t make it into the box, wood shavings from all his shredded sticks, excess hay, and fur, then I wipe it all out, etc. etc. etc. And we do this everyday unless his box is surprisingly clean that night, we’ll put it off until the next day. So maybe we’re just super tidy about it. Still, I’ve sat down next to Java’s box while he’s in it (my face is level with the box because it’s on the second floor) and had my face right up near it, almost resting on the side, and I only smell hay. *shrugs*

                                  I wonder if it’s a diet thing, just because of how different everyone’s responses are. Java peed on our pillows one time, and I smelled it before I cleaned it – it had a VERY faint smell of something that reminded me of the hamster I had when I was a kid. That being said, cleaning was easy – the smell was so faint that after a hardcore Nature’s MIracle cleaning and extreme washing in the washer, there was no scent or stain. But some people say their bun’s poop and pee is horribly smelly. So it could just depend on the bun, or living conditions, diet, etc.


                                • Emmie
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                                    I’m going to try and get some of those kind of pellets. In Ireland, it’s hard to find a lot of the things you guys talk about. I am doing research and trying to find stove pellets with no accelerant.


                                  • Eucalyptus
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                                      I can’t promise that they’re anything special, but that’s what we use.

                                      I think Java might just be less smelly. He does get a ton more fluids from all his veggies, which probably helps filter out his urine more and lower the odor. *shrugs*

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                                  Forum HOUSE RABBIT Q & A Do your buns smell?