Litter training

[mamaduck3]

Hi, I’m the human mama of a rather large bunny, S’mores, (also three kitties and three human kids lol). The vet thinks she is 1/2 Flemish Giant. My current housing situation for S’mores is not ideal yet, but that is something that I am working on. I took S’mores in when she was abandoned at someone’s house and the people who found her put a call out for help because they could not keep her (they went outside one day to find her outside their door in a cage). I took her in because I had pet rabbits, and was familiar with my mom’s pet rabbit, a tiny Netherlands dwarf,  when he was alive, and they didn’t have any other offers for someone to take her in. My rabbit experience was with smaller rabbits, and so when I met S’mores (unnamed at the time, we named her), she was much larger in real life than the photos indicated. She was also a bit of handful behaviourly…lol. I think we’ve sorted some of the behaviour issues. For now, she’s in an extra large cage, and she gets hopping time. Like I said, not ideal, but it’s what I can do for now. I’m in the process of rearranging the bedroom’s of our kids so we can move her into a room. She should have access to entire bunny safe room, and will be spayed sometime this upcoming spring. 

One thing that I have to control is the urine mess that S’mores’ creates. She tends to throw all her bedding, with her soiled waste around, and out of her cage. My previous rabbits were litter trained with mix results. Honey, my Dutch, seemed like she was litter trained from the very start. We got her as a baby, along with her cage mate, Tootsie, and Honey just took to the litter box. Tootsie did not. They didn’t get along once they hit  the “teen years”, and they were housed separately. Tootsie was small, she looked a lot like a small wild rabbit, and she sort of acted like one as well. She didn’t cuddle or like to be picked up, like Honey enjoyed. She pooped and peed everywhere, and scoffed at the litter box. Her feistiness was part of her charm. She was smaller and she didn’t have the same strength and her tossing didn’t have the same trajectory as S’mores. We attempted to litter train S’mores when we first got her but it wasn’t something that worked out. She just uses her entire cage bedding as litter. It’s kind of gross. I do notice that she uses two spots to urinate, and in the past I’ve tried to put litter boxes in these spots, and follow the direction of different resources I’ve read, but it doesn’t work out. She takes the litter box and tosses it around. I have toys for her to toss around, but I think because she has limited space, and because she likes to toss things, she just likes to toss her litter box. Needless to say, poop gets everywhere when she gets really rambunctious. She also sprays outside her cage, while she’s in her cage. I’m not sure how she gets the urine outside the cage, as the sides are rather high and even though she’s big, she isn’t that big! Anyway, she ends up spraying the wall and floor near her cage, which not only is pretty nasty, it intrigues the cats too much! 

Recently, I read that wood stove pellets make good litter. I want to attempt to litter train again! I’m committed to getting this to work this time, especially since we are eventually going to move her to a roomier location. Because one of my past rabbits was so easy to train, and the other refused forever (she would literally pee and poop right outside the litter pan), I need some direction. What sort of litter pan should I use? How do I keep her from tossing the litter pan around? What sort of barrier have others used to keep urine from spraying all over, or discouraging poop from being tossed around overnight or when we come home from a long day away? Lol. 

Thanks in advance!

[toki]

S’mores is such a cute name! My Toki also used to tip his litter box. If you use a litter box like this one:

you can see it has two little holes at the top for it to be attached to something. With Toki, I used a cable tie to secure his tray. I also used some sticky velcro pads beneath the tray to make it even more unmovable. Afterwards, he tried tipping it about 2 more times but gave up and never did it again. Now he has a rectangular litter box, but again it is secured with velcro pads and he has never tried to tip it.

Of course, when she is spayed this behaviour should improve massively. You might not see too much of an improvement until that happens. You may already know there is a link at the top of the page for “Bunny Info”, which has a litter training page which might be helpful to you.

[mamaduck3]

Thank you! Toki is a cute name too! He’s a real cutie! I need to post pics of my girl!  She looks a little like a toasted marshmallow in that she is all white with brown patches, sort of like a s’mores. Lol. She has the biggest upright ears! So cute. 

I like these corner litter pans! I used these with my previous girls! I never thought of velcro pads to keep the pan from being flipped and tossed!! Brilliant! Thank you! I’ve had to use velcro her water bottle to the water bottle holder because she would go all silly and ripped the bottles off the holders. She’s calmed down a lot since we relocated her to a quieter room, and she is enjoying being pet again too. She still not too keen on being held, but I know once we move her to the little room she will be more comfortable with that. I do miss cuddling a bunny! 

I checked out the link. Thanks! I didn’t realise that spaying her will help with being litter trained! Of course, it makes perfect sense! I was changing out her cage today, and realised I didn’t have anymore bedding. I asked my husband to pick up bedding (my car got a flat) on his way home from work. He picked up softwood shavings, all full of the very wood materials that aren’t safe for bunnies. So thankfully I have wood pellets to put down. I’ll see how she likes those and will move that into her litter pan using the tips from the link. I don’t want to confuse her, but I would rather not put down this particular bedding and have nothing else to use until I get to store this week. I guess I have a few projects this weekend! lol

Thanks!

[toki]

She sounds adorable! Glad to help. Feel free to ask if you ever have any more issues/questions

[Sirius&Luna]

Hi!

Great job rescuiing S’mores! I’m sorry she’s being a pain about litter training!

The best thing you can do to make her realise what the litter tray for is leave the rest of the cage bare – I saw you said she uses her entire cage bedding as litter, and that’s because she doesn’t understand that the entire cage isn’t a litter tray because there’s litter all over it. Try just having one or two litter trays, filled with whatever litter you use, and the bare plastic floor. She won’t want to pee on the bare plastic because she won’t want to step in a puddle.

Once she’s got used to the idea, you can try adding some fleeces or towels as ‘bedding’ for the rest of the cage, but accept that they might get peed on a bit at first too. If they do, take them out again and go back to the bare floor for a bit.

(this is assuming the cage isn’t wire bottomed, which is bad for bunny paws!)

Toki’s idea with the velcro is great to stop them chucking it about!

[Author]

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