how to get bunny to quit peeing on carpet

[lunavenus]

Until I can get my bunnies spayed, which I hopefully can do by the end of this month (April) or AT LEAST by the middle or end of next month (May), I need some advice on how to get Luna to minimize her urinating on my carpet… I’m a college student so I really don’t have time to constantly look after them 24/7 when I let them free range in my room. I follow a pretty good routine with them everyday. Let them out of their “home” (cage) around 2-3 pm everyday, refill their hay before I leave to class and before I go to sleep (more often if needed), herd them back into their “home” around 12 am and clean their litter box around 11 pm every night. I do pay attention to them as in I play with them throughout the day so please don’t blow up on me about me not being “responsible” or whatever. It may not be like 4 hours of me playing with them at once, but it is definitely at least 30min-1hr intervals periodically throughout the afternoon and evening, most often during my study breaks. I refuse to keep them caged up the whole day and only let them out periodically for only 4 hours while I keep an eagle eye on them because that is not within my philosophy of how bunnies should be treated. I just noticed that luna has been peeing on my carpet… She used to not do that but I guess them hormones are kicking in slowly. I have yet to see luna or Venus (her pair) humping each other or what not lol but I have a feeling by the end of next month I might see something like that. They seem pretty chill regardless of their impending age towards the dreaded “teenager months.” As in, they don’t seem temperamental or territorial and they like to hop on me and lick my jeans and all that fun stuff lol. They haven’t completely warmed up to me enough to lick my face or “groom” me often. I hope they end up as cuddly bunnies because that’d be super cool They do like to follow me around from time to time though. I just need some advice on how to control the peeing on carpet. If I leave another litter box out for them outside of their cage, would that help? or is it a lost cause until I spay them? >.<  

[Mikey]

You can try another litter box. Its always good to have more than one anyway, but if it is hormone driven, the only thing to stop her from peeing on the floor is getting her spayed

[vanessa]

How old are they? My bunnies naturally littertrained by 6 months. 1 had naturally trained herself by 2 months. They don’t groom me or lick me, and 2 of the 4 are otherwise very cuddly with me. I doubt I’d want them to lick me euther… I’d be worried about the proximity to those teeth… Anyway… Another litterbox is a good idea. If the pee is on one spot, the extra litterbox on that spot would help. If the pee is sporadic, then I would work at protecting the carpet, and then work at litter traingin after the spay. I started protecting my carpet untill I coudl trust my bunnies indoors, by taking 10mil plastic, the kind you use as crawlspace vapour barrior. I put plastic on the flor, then puppy pee pads, then a blanket. That was the only area the bunnies had access to untill I could trust them. No judgement here.

[lunavenus]

They are both about 3.5 months now since they were born early January. That is why I was hoping to get them spayed by the end of this month or at least by the end of next month. Venus doesn’t pee outside of the litter box, only Luna does I think Venus may be a week older, or maybe Luna is because I remember when I got them I had to wait for one more week so one of them was old enough to be sold to me by the breeder. Don’t worry the breeder was one of those certified/qualified ARBA people, so I know they are reputable people. They both are litter trained as in Luna pees 90% of the time in the litter box while Venus pees 100% always in the litter box. If I restrict them more in my room, they’d have too lil space to roam around and I don’t have the time to go get all those supplies like the plastic on floor and blanket stuff haha. I also don’t have the time to constantly wash those blankets whenever it gets soiled…. I really hope the addition of a 2nd litter box in my room would help with the peeing… sadly, luna likes to pee at random places so I don’t know how helpful the 2nd litter box is going to be…. Maybe she’ll be more inclined to use the 2nd one if I leave it out there.

[vanessa]

Hmmm…
Hey still no judgement! I got 3 of my rabbits from a meat breeder, and the 4th is an adoptee!
So at 3.5 months they are really young. I was fortunate that my 2.5 month old was already litter trained all on her own when I brought her home from the meat breeder. No-one put any effort into trainign her, she just figured out on her own to poop infront of her food bowl while she was eating, and she has always been perrrrrfect at her litterbox habits. Guinivere on the other hand… would pee in an “area”, not just a box. She would pee all around her litter box. So I geve her a really large box. 28 inches long, 20 or 22 inches wide. It’s a $7 mixing tub. It helped, but she still peed on randon spots. Her issue was getting used to a new rabbit, and it took her weeks to stop peeing. I had to just wait it out. Her other issue was she is one of those bunnies who likes to pee on soft carpet. So I took away the soft carpet, she tne peed on any other carpet around, and I added more litterboxes. She now has access to 3 litterboxes in her main room, and 1 litterbox in my room. She uses 3 of the 4. I leave all 4 there because if I take the unused one away, the random peeing starts up again. She is almost 3 years old. Can’t explain it.I think it is worth a try for Luna, although her age is tricky. Young bunnies aren’t easily litter trained. They figure it out as they get older, and after being spayed, it helps a whole heck of a lot. Another option is to diaper her while she is loose, but that might requirea butt bath at the end of the night. I used vet fleece bedding. The pee soaks right through the fleece stays dry, and I washed it once a week, and changed out the puppy pee pads once a week. Give the extra litter box a try. See how it goes. You might even try 2 extra boxes. They dont’ have to be expensive rabbit litter boxes either, which tend to be on the small side. I get cheap large plastic storage containers, cut them down to size, and then use my preferred litter material. The storage tubs from Lowes/Home Depot work great too.

[lunavenus]

She peed on my carpet TWICE today while I was studying my midterms I forgot to put the 2nd litter box out today until just now. I’m so glad I got those carpet urine and stain cleaners way ahead of time. Both litter boxes I use are really big Large sized cat litter boxes I got from PetCo and maybe I’ll add a third one in another corner of my room next week when I have the time to visit PetCo Again. I used to have 2 of those tiny bunny litter boxes and I realized it’s just waaaaaay too small for bunnies and unbelievably expensive compared to cat litter boxes, so as soon as I came back from vacation with them I switched them to a super big litter box a month ago. I feel like it’s her age that’s making her urinate everywhere. She was litter trained perfectly up until 2 weeks ago UGH!! I guess I’ll just try every preventive method I can until 2 more weeks pass and I can get them both spayed… I’m really hoping it’ll be sometime within the next 3 weeks because I’m getting very tired and frustrated with the urinating, but I can’t stay mad at them because they are sooo CUTE Give this college student a break you bunnies!! D:

[blubudgie]

Don’t forget to put out the litterbox, for sure that’ll help haha
Otherwise I think you just have to keep cleaning up after them until she understands that the box is the only place she can pee. My rabbit was perfectly littertrained in her cage. But once she hit carpet she found a nice corner and peed there all the time. I just kept cleaning and cleaning and one day she just got it. She stopped. Then I moved her to my apartment (she was originally at my BF’s). She never peed on my apartment carpet but started peeing on blankets. I did the same thing, cleaned as soon as I saw the pee. She eventually understood too. Now 95% of the time she’ll use her litter box, but every once in a while she’ll randomly pee on the carpet or on her blankets, usually it’s stray poops though.
The whole litter training process took me a couple months, so have patience. D:

I feel like mine has gotten better at it as she got older. then getting her spayed probably helped too. But she was well trained before her spay too. I got her spayed at around 1yr old.

[vanessa]

Age is a huhuhuhuuuuge factor. I have 4 bunnies at the moment, but I’ve cared for over 30 other bunnies, and I’ve seen bunnies get litter trained by themselves at 2.5 months, and bunnies that took 2 or 3 years to perfect the art. Of my current 4, Guin took the longest, but after almost 3 years, the peeing has stopped. Now she just leave (a lot) of strya poop everywhere… For the most part – I’ve seen bunnies litter trained by 6 months.
So for the moment – I think extra litterboxes, time, and user-friendly efficient ways of protecting the carpet – that don’t make it too time consuming for you – are what it might take.

[vanessa]

It is definitely crazy how tiny and expensive, rabbit litter boxes are. Even the “jumbo size”.

[Author]

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