litter training my bun

[freiheit]

okay, so I used to have a litter in his cage and some compressed paper litter arround it, filling maybe 1\4 of the cage and I decided to take that off; no more embiguity; he has to learn what a litter it right? Now in my mind, every animal has some basic instinct to keep himself and most importantly; the habbitat he lives in, somewhat clean and comfortable… but he pees outside his litter… I only took the extra yesterday so I’m gessing it’ll take a bit more time for him to get he shouldn’t pee outside…. but me and my bf are in an argument; I say we should clean it right away so that it doesn’t become a marking spot, he says we should leave it there until he gets that it sucks to have pee in your cage outside your litter.  what do you guys think? I had argued about his “if you eat the electrical wires your going back in your cage” method… but it did work. Our bun isn’t interrested in them anymore, to my great relief.

 

and we also let him out of his cage and well… I get guilt trips thinking of aplying BB’s litter training tip #1 and not letting him out until he mastered poty training there…firstly because he’s already acustomed somewhat to going arround the appartment and secondly because I wonder if the cage is big enough. It’s not one of those small plastic cage you can find at stores, he does has some room to stretch and walk arround… it’s over a meter long, with a small plateform he jumpsd off and on from time to time… and with the size of our appartment, we don’t really have room for anything bigger

 

so…what dyou think I should do?

[Beka27]

limit his space. it’s not cruel. it’s necessary while he is learning. if you skip this step, he might not get it and then you’re going to end up needing to backtrack anyways. when you bring him out, do it in a limited space at first, with close supervision… keep it short, put him back into his cage often. having hay in the litterbox will help him distinguish where to go as they love to eat and poop at the same time. if he pees outside the box, wipe it up with a paper towel as soon as you can and put the wet paper towel in the litterbox. don’t leave it in the cage b/c it will get on him and stain his fur and make him a stinky bunny.

[MooBunnay]

In regards to the cleaning – I have litter trained 8 bunnies now, and the technique that I highly recommend is immediately cleaning up both pees and poos immediately. For poops, as soon as I see them I pick them all up and put them right into the litter box. For pee, it is a bit more elaborate, you should blot up the pee with a paper towel, then put a piece of the papertowel into the litterbox. Next, the scent of pee will remain so spot it with a bit of vinegar and wipe it up to make sure the smell is out of the spot.

In addition, while littertraining I thoroughly clean the cage bottom including vacuuming and wiping any hard surfaces with vinegar. By keeping the floor super clean, and the litterbox with all the pee and poops in it, you are really empasizing to the bunny where the box is! (so, I would agree with your opinion of cleaning the pee right away!)

Since the cage is on the small side, I’d recommend some limited time out of the cage every day (like an hour) just for him to get a little exercise.

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