Behaviour Change in a very picky new baby bunny

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BINKYBUNNY FORUMS

This topic has 3sd replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 7 months ago by Vulpeste.

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- 07/31/2017 at 3:38 AM
  Vulpeste
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  2 posts
  Hi there,
  
  I am new to the forum and acquired my first baby bunny (holland mini lop) about two weeks ago, he is now almost 9 weeks old, and his name is Nilsson.
  
  Being my first bunny, I read a lot about the needs and got him a big big cage, plenty of hay, pellets and veggies, but to help our bonding, I endend up giving him way too much greens and pellets and after about a week he started having cecotrophes droppings everywhere, and was also constantly itching. After a visit to the vet and a diet adjustement, he is now on unlimited hay, and two table spoon of good pellets a day until I can no longer spot any cecotrophe and very slowly and gradually integrate veggies. She also was suspecting him to have Coccidia as he was young, dull coat and a bit too skinny (plenty of energy and appettite though), so we took a fecal sample and are waiting to hear from the vet and he is already on antibiotic for 10 days, he also received mites and flea treatments. His itching has stopped, but since a few days his behaviour is very different and I am a bit puzzled:
  
  – For starters, from day one Nilsson was very good at litter training, his litter has newspaper on the bottom, wood pellets and a bit of hay. He also has several hay racks around the litter. But since a few days he started becoming very fussy with the litter. He started pooping everywhere, that it is my room or his cage, and peeing constantly on the same carpet spot even though I soaked it in vinegar and placed towels above it. He’s also wanted to poop and pee constantly on the bed but that has been here since the beginning so now he is just forbidden of bed times. I realised that it is due to his litter not being squiky clean, because as soon as I change it he goes straight back to it. The issue is that since two days, the time lapse between me changing his litter and him deciding that it’s already too soiled is getting shorter and shorter. To the point that I find myself cleaning it twice a day and wasting a lot of expensive untouched litter :/
  
  Any idea why that could be? I am aware that until he’s older and neutered that can always happen, but what is surprising is the fact that he used to be very good at it (would hop around the whole house only to come back inside cage, inside litter to relieve even one poop) and that all of a sudden now he’s just messy. I am being careful to clean all beddings from smell and use vinegar but that doesn’t seem to stop him. This is really bothering as I want him to be able to run around as much as possible but if he keeps on leaving trails of feces and pees I will have to retrain his time out.
  
  – Another issue is the hay. Since the vet placed him on the new diet, he definitely eats more hay, but it feels like it’s really not that much… Don’t get me wrong, he eats at it all day, and has energy and lots of poop so no CI matters, but he’s also super fussy with it. He seems to get very uninterested in many “distribution” ways. Neve uses his rack or the ball with hay hanging above litter, he rather eats directly a bunch fresh that I would have to put in the litter, but he ends up soiling it and then I have to throw it away. He seems like he is starving all the time too, for example, it was such a battle to get him to take his oral medicine at first, and I am talking a reaaal battle, kicks like crazy and it would take me 15 min just to get him to have it. But I would always give him a table spoon of pellets right after, to not destroy our bond and as a treat. With 2 medication a day that makes it one table spoon of pellets after each take. Since he understood that, he takes his medicine super fast and then goes bonkers because he knows the pellets are coming, and he goes at it as if he was famished. After he finishes (in 10 sec) he is restless for a half hour trying to get me to give him more… He only ever goes to the hay as a last resort, and only seems to want to eat it if it’s straight out of the bag. But if I leave him the bag on the ground then it’s poop galore, so I’d really like to try and find a way for him to use his hay racks so he HAS to use the litter and so I don’t have to vaccum twice a day because of the different spot I had to try and place stacks of hay to get him to eat it…
  
  – Last thing, I am at home a lot and he has plenty of free times out of the cage during the day, even with all those issues. His cage is pretty much open from 10 am until 8pm with little breaks. Yet when I put him in his cage at 8pm of for a break more than half an hour, he starts biting and lounging at the cage to try and get out… Restlessly too. Will just keep on lounging for the longest time until he gives up and goes to finally munch on hay or sleep.
  
  Anyways, it’s a lot and a very long message! Sorry about that, but I would love to do things right, and it seems that I have a fussy bunny on my hands… He’s very sweet and we are extremely bonded already, he licks me, comes for pets on my lap all the time, follows me around, seems very happy, run and does binky, but won’t use any toys and would rather eat my shoes or the only cable I haven’t yet protected…
  
  Thanks for any advice!
- 07/31/2017 at 8:01 AM
  Deleted User
  Participant
  22064 posts
  Instead of replacing all the litter, is it possible to just scoop out the pee soaked parts, and pick out the poop (as much as you can) and then just add some more fresh litter? I found that my bun Ophelia would sit outside the box and eat over the edge if it was “too dirty” for her. She didn’t poop or pee outside of it, but I was afraid that she might so I started scooping out the “dirty” litter daily, and adding fresh litter to compensate. She appreciates the cleanliness
  
  Since you are home most of the day, could you just give him smaller amounts of hay? Instead of a heaping handful, try giving a small handful every few hours (obviously don’t let him run out), but this way he would eat for a bit, then when he soiled it you could remove that and add some fresh hay, hopefully repeating the process. My mini lop buck is so bad about digging through his hay and then peeing on it!! Unfortunately, I work 9 hours a day so I just have two litter boxes set up, so when one source of hay is soiled he can go to the other box. I waste so much hay
  
  It’s totally normal for him to freak out about pellets! They are very yummy for buns. If I am taking too long to get Quincy’s pellets in his treat ball, he will dig at my feet to make sure that I know he is waiting then he runs around looking for more when they are all gone. And the lunging when he is back in the cage, that is totally normal as well, considering that he gets out of cage time. He would rather be free and roaming around, so if you could come up with a situation that allowed him to have free roam of a room at all times, I think he would be happy about that
  
  About the peeing on the carpet, do you have a litter tray outside of the cage? It may be that he doesn’t want to go into the cage because he knows that sometimes the door is closed and he won’t be able to get out! My bun avoided her cage at all costs lol. I would try having a litter tray outside of the cage to see if that helps with the peeing problem.
- 07/31/2017 at 1:14 PM
  Deleted User
  Participant
  22064 posts
  He could also be spraying or marking his territory with poops. Asriel was very good with the litter training, then around 10 weeks his hormones kicked in and he would constantly spray in one spot and do the poops everywhere to mark his territory. He just got neutered and is in his post neuter craze. He still does his territory poops, but the spot spraying has become more infrequent. My husband and I keep a blanket around every area out buns go, that way we only have to clean the blanket and not worry about the carpet.
  
  As for the biting the cage, both my buns do it when they want to get out or get my attention. I could have given them a million nose rubs and had them out for 3 hours, but as soon as they go in the cage they want to come right back out.
- 08/07/2017 at 5:41 PM
  Vulpeste
  Participant
  2 posts
  Thanks for the answer, honestly the problem is getting worse.
  He sort of stopped pooping around the house which is good, but now he poops all over his cage instead. Every morning it’s a bomb field. I change towels (he doesn’t have bedding, just soft fleeces and towels) every time, I clean cage with vinegar and bi carb, doesn’t help, he established he wanted to poop all over and transferring, cleaning cage and litter don’t seem to stop him.
  The wasting of the hay is a reaaal problem, I feel the rack, and in the morning almost the whole rack is inside the litter box, stamped on and soiled, and he won’t touch it anymore. As soon as I let him out, he rushes around the cage to jump inside the hay rack to eat straight from it…
  Should I change the spot of his litter? I feel like he will continue to soil the whole cage anyway. He still does the occasional poop around house but more infrequent now.
  For the lounging he stopped which is good. The vet confirmed he had Coccidia and we finished the treatment but he’s still having lots of soft poops, she said it will take a long time to stop. It seems to get worse every time I feed him pellets but I couldn’t just leave him on hay.
  I’m planning on neutering him but jeez, I feel like this is not related to territory marking :/
  Would there be a way to wash the soiled hay? It’s honestly such a waste.
  I can try the technique mentioned, little amounts at a time, but it will be very annoying and I can’t keep up with that for 10 years, surely there’s another way? Has anyone tried a grid above the litter? So pee and poop go through and the hay stays unsoiled?
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