I don’t have experience with bladder sludge, but I do believe this is inline with bladder sludge– that is a A LOT of excess calcium secretion.

I am curious about the diet, mainly the amount and type of hay your rabbit get. I think adjustments to reduce calcium intake and increase hay and water intake are important at this point. That may also mean cutting out high-calcium vegetables.

Does your rabbit have access to water all the time? Do you see him drink water often? Is it in a bowl or water bottle?

… also, I noticed that you change the litter box 2-3 times day. That’s a lot of work for you! What kind of rabbit-related supplies are available around you? There might be all-natural/chemical-free cat litters that would serve you better than sheets of newspaper.

There are other grass hays that rabbits can eat, if you can’t find timothy. Horse hay is good for rabbits unless there’s a lot of alfalfa in it. Fresh grass that’s pesticide-free can be an alternative to hay.

It’s very important that your bun drinks a good amount of water. Some of our members have reported good results from adding a little bit of cranberry juice to the bun’s water. Always serve plain water as well, some buns won’t touch water that tastes funny.

Junior rabbit pellets can have a lot more calcium in them because of the alfalfa (pellets are often the main source of calcium in a bun’s diet).

Kale, parsley, basil, and broccoli are high in calcium, so you could swap them out for a lower calcium veg (romaine, endive/chicory, or bok choy), or at least be sure they are in a rotation and not making up all of the greens. However, even high calcium veggies have a lot of water, which offset’s the calcium. So Dr. Francis Harcourt Brown doesn’t think that veggies are really an important source of calcium unless the bun has a known issue with calcium excretion. Drinking lots of water is very good.

Young rabbits do need one source of alfalfa, so if he is getting it in his pellets, he doesn’t need alfalfa hay as well (you can do just a grass hay, like timothy or orchard).

Can you post a picture of the urine without the paper, and maybe before it dries? To me it looks like the rest of the urine soaked into the paper, so it makes the calcium really stand out and look more dramatic than it might really be.

Sludge is very thick (sometimes even as thick as toothpaste), so if the fresh urine is liquid and doesn’t have a lot of sediment in it, I don’t think it is a huge problem.

Of course the best thing to do would be to have a check up at the vet. As a young bunny, it would be nice to have a check up anyway. 🙂 Vets will usually do x-rays to see if there is calcium building up in the bladder or elsewhere.

Bunnies have scent glands on either side of their genitals that can be pretty smelly, especially when they start to hit puberty (around 4-6 months of age), so that could be what you are smelling? Poops can also get pretty smelly when buns hit puberty. You can see a video about them here: https://rabbit.org/how-to-clean-a-rabbits-scent-glands/

Adding a fluffy layer of hay over the newspaper will create more of a barrier between him and his waste, so that should help keep him cleaner as well.

Here’s some more info on sludge: http://wabbitwiki.com/wiki/Bladder_sludge_and_stones

There is a picture of “thin” sludge that looks similar to your pictures. Some of the main recommendations are to increase water drinking and exercise, which helps suspend the calcium in the bladder and flush it out.

I’m interested to see if a few days with no parsley, kale, or broccoli make a difference!

A bump under the skin, “above” his genitals? Yeah, those would be his testicles.

I’m looking at the photo and it does look very dramatic on the newspaper. It looks thin though. I agree with Dana’s advice. Cut back on the calcium and increase water intake. See what happens.

If there are hard marble-like bumps on either side, then that probably means his scent glands are clogged. That stuff can become very hard and is difficult to get out. Sometimes people have to use a water-based lubricant on a cotton swab to ease it out.