How to litter train if bunny doesn’t like being picked up?

[thegreenjudy]

Hi guys, I am new here

2 weeks ago I adopted a rabbit on a whim as nobody wanted her (we also have a rescue cat).. should really have planned it better.. oh well..

She is only about 4 months old, not yet neutered (but soon) and hates the cage..lol.
We want to keep her as a free roaming bunny and that’s what she currently is, in our bedroom. I had to put off putting her in the cage anyway – I got a huge dog crate for her but unfortunately had to buy a new tray as I stupidly thought it would be a great idea to paint the rusty bits with high VOC metal paint Because the smell didn’t go away she quite happily settled in our bedroom.. lol

now she comes up to me to sniff me, happily takes food off my hands and climbs on me to reach it but the few times I had to pick her up she wasn’t happy at all and got really panicky. I avoided to pick her up since but even trying to touch her she runs away (she let’s me stroke her while she is munching on a cabbage leaf though). I also wake up to her sleeping by my feet. She chases my cat and wants her to groom her and jumps for joy when she sees her. Cat is a bit daft, has never caught an animal in her life and generally looks very bemused when she sees the bunny.. my only worry is that she sometimes gets annoyed by too much fuss and lashes out (without claws at first, but bunny is quicker). So we don’t keep them together unsupervised.

Since she keeps pooping and weeing in our walk-in wardrobe I bought her a litter tray. Now the big question is how to train her if she doesn’t even let me pick her up. Should I wait till she is neutered?

[Cocoa]

When I got my two bunnies I put a litter box in their cage immediately. I didn’t put towels or blankets in the cage for the first few days so that they weren’t confused. Rabbits typically go to the bathroom in one spot so put the litter box in that place. If you put the hay in one end of the litter box that helps too. They normally go to the bathroom while they’re eating hay. My two bunnies normally shove their litter box around and rearrange their cage, so your bunny may do that too. I hope this helps

[Alex&Clary]

You don’t need to lift your bunny to litter train them, they tend to do it themselves, with little prompting because they are very neat animals, so I would put your litter tray where she is using the bathroom.

[Rio and Buns]

You might want to limit her to a smaller area until she’s fully litterbox trained. Sweep up any poop she leaves outside of the litterbox and dump them in there, and soak up any pee with paper towels and put those in the box too. Make sure her hay is either in the box or in a rack that she can reach while in it, that way she can eat and poop freely at the same time.
Try and make sure that any spots she’s previously peed on no longer smell like pee so that she doesn’t keep thinking the whole room is her litterbox.

[thegreenjudy]

well at the moment she doesn’t really let me touch her much, so what would the prompting look like?

The smaller space is a good idea, just that our rooms are quite big. The new tray won’t come until Monday probably so can’t use the cage. I can see if I could pick up a play pen somewhere. I definitely want to get her out of the little wardrobe lol.. we don’t have anything on the floor so it’s not a biggie but it’s not ideal either.

Has anyone got any experience if spaying is a must before litter training?

[Sirius&Luna]

You can litter train before spaying, but it gets easier after.

Limiting space is definitely the first thing to do – if you train them in a small space then they’ll generally continue going back to that space once they’re given more, but it really is so much harder to train a bunny in an entire room. It might feel cruel, but limiting space while you’re litter training is an established method and won’t hurt him (when I say limit, a space 1 metre by 2 metres would be totally fine).

You can also put litter trays in places where she insists on peeing, like the wardrobe.

[Sirius&Luna]

You can litter train before spaying, but it gets easier after.

Limiting space is definitely the first thing to do – if you train them in a small space then they’ll generally continue going back to that space once they’re given more, but it really is so much harder to train a bunny in an entire room. It might feel cruel, but limiting space while you’re litter training is an established method and won’t hurt him (when I say limit, a space 1 metre by 2 metres would be totally fine).

You can also put litter trays in places where she insists on peeing, like the wardrobe.

[LovelyLouis]

I didn’t need to pick up Louis to litter box train him, all I did was take his poops put them in the litter box then I would take a paper towel wipe up the pee and put the paper towel in the litter box, you will need to confine your rabbit from peeing on her favorite floor spots it took my rabbit about 1 1/2 weeks and he wasn’t neutered.  I hope this helps 

[thegreenjudy]

Thanks for all your advice! Ok we can finally sort the cage out, replacement tray got delivered today. Turns out she didn’t like the tray or the newspaper on the floor so she started weeing and pooping everywhere else.. sigh.. so complicated… I took it away without being sure how to approach the subject again. She will be spayed on 1st March so I guess I will have to keep her in the cage anyway.

[thegreenjudy]

Thanks for all your advice! Ok we can finally sort the cage out, replacement tray got delivered today. Turns out she didn’t like the tray or the newspaper on the floor so she started weeing and pooping everywhere else.. sigh.. so complicated… I took it away without being sure how to approach the subject again. She will be spayed on 1st March so I guess I will have to keep her in the cage anyway.

[Sirius&Luna]

She shouldn’t be permanently in the cage, even while being litter trained she’ll still need some time to run around each day.

How about puppy pads? They’re pretty cheap and make clean up SO much easier!

[thegreenjudy]

ah I was actually wondering about that this morning. She wasn’t too impressed sitting in the cage
so we let her out today for a couple of hours. she had thrown her litter tray all over the place overnight so will need to secure it more. but as soon as she was out she weed on the floor again.
but didn’t see her do it so couldn’t do anything about it there and then.. and she is so hard to catch. feels like the chicken and egg scenario… lol

[Sirius&Luna]

You can also associate a noise with doing something wrong. Wick uses a hiss I believe, and I clap. That way, you can make a noise to show it’s negative, even if you can’t get to her in time. They normally respond well to claps or hisses

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