Hmmmmm, could he have clogged scent glands?  It’s a bit surprising he would have poop stuck on his with no signs of soft poops otherwise, so I’m wondering if it could be his scent glands.

Could you post a pic or two of what you’re seeing?

Also, does he dig in his litter box? My bunnies were driving me crazy because they kept digging in the box and staining up their paws. I recently went back to using a screen and their paws are getting cleaner again.

I use pine pellets under the screen, for reference.

Sorry we are still having issue with photos, but the work-around is if you add them to your profile, then they will stay in your media library and you should be able to add them to the post that way.

You may not smell the scent glands until you start cleaning them (they have a VERY distinct smell…. kinda skunky).

That said, since the staining on the fleece happens overnight, it could be that he’s a bit clumsy eating his cecals and smushes a few in the process.

The other thing is that some bunnies just have really sensitive tummies to greens or pellets.  Does he eat a good amount of orchard hay? If it seems like excess soft poops, you could try and elimination diet to try to figure out if a particular veggie or pellets are the culprit.

Hi! So I feel the need to respond to this since I had a rabbit who had issues that looked just like that on his paws but it was on my rabbit’s tail too. First, I want to inform you about flystrike. Flystrike can happen when urine or sludge gets on your rabbits paws. This can burn their skin and cause flies to, practically, eat at their skin. This is not meant to scare you but I feel that you should be informed that you have to quickly solve this problem. Next, I want to tell you that your rabbit could have a UTI. A urinary tract infection could cause sludge or (in the case of my rabbit) it could make it so that they can’t lift up their tail and pee — instead, their urine just dribbles over their back end. (Also called wet tail). I got my rabbit to the vet and it turned out that he looked EXACTLY like your bunny above and he was dribbling urine due to a UTI. He got antibiotics and a pain med and his tail was fluffy and perfect after. (The mats eventually got out after the vet got most of it out and we did gentle bum cleaning.) It could help to clean his litter box more frequently. I had rescued my bunny and they originally said to clean it every 1-3 days but I cleaned his everyday because he would sit, lay down, and dig at his litter box, loll.

I hope this helps and please update.

Thank you!!

To me that looks more like urine staining than anything from poop, but that could be because it was cleaned recently. If there is constant wetness from urine that could cause poops to break apart. Does he pee outside the box often or seem to be dribbling urine at all?

I use pine pellet litter, which is really good at absorbing urine. You might try using a set-up with pine pellets, a screen, and then scoop out the wet areas twice a day for a while to see if that helps. The screen makes it pretty easy to do this. Going to link to Wick’s post about their litter box set up, as it keeps things very clean and tidy, as well as another thread with lots of litter box set-up options:

Rabbit makes a mess of his litterbox!!!

Detailed description of litter tray preparation

It’s always good to rule out medical causes, and then once you are sure he’s healthy, you can experiment with his box set up until you find something that works. It might not be obvious immediately, because the staining won’t really go away until the new fur comes in.

My rabbit recently had an issue where he was wet all under and up his backside above his tail and everything. The underside looked a lot like that. I had to give him a butt bath and cleaned him up but still missed a spot above his tail! Anyhow it turned out that the way one of his litter boxes was arranged was causing him to sit in a puddle. I changed his setup and he has stayed clean so I definitely suggest checking for any areas where he could be sitting in a mess and fixing it. If changing things around doesn’t fix the situation or if you have any reason to believe he has fly strike or a uti or anything else though definitely get him into the vet sooner rather than later.

I have the same plastic mesh for a litter screen as Wick, I really like them. They’re super easy to cut to the right shape and I think they might be easier on their feet than metal screens (to be fair though, I don’t have any personal experience with metal screens).

I definitely agree that he should be checked for a UTI.