One Bun perfectly Litter-Trained, the Other not so much!

[PalmTrees]

Hello. This is my first post but I have had a read of the information around here and I’m still a bit puzzled.

We have one bunny who we’ve had for around 8 months. He is neutered and came to us already litter trained (adopted at 6 months). He is the perfect litterbox user! He has a triangle pan with a wire screen that the poop drops through. He never pees outside of it and rarely poops outside of it. He never goes to the bathroom inside his hutch, he eats his hay in there and then hops out to use the pan. Wonderful.

We recently adopted a girl bun so he can have some company. Their bonding sessions are going great! No fighting, some humping and some snuggles. They really get along and we are hoping to move them into a pen together soon (they are in side-by-side pens at the moment, attached to separate hutches). She was advertised as litter trained but now that we have her we realize that her litter habits are much different to our male bun’s. She likes to poop where she eats. We gave her the same type of litter pan but she ignored it at first. Now she will sit on it and use it, but if her food bowl is not on it as well then she will poop on the floor wherever the bowl is after eating. If she has a full hutch of hay she will pee and poop in the hay. We have started to put hay only next to the litter pan but she still seems to poop and pee in the hay. 

My concern is that when she moves into the male bun’s pen, she will go wherever she wants, ignore her litter pan and he will become grumpy because she would be marking his territory. Eventually we would like them to share one hutch where they will eat the hay from, and have two separate litter pans outside of the hutch. I don’t think our male bun would eat hay if she had gone to the bathroom in it.

Sorry for the long post, but does anyone have any tips on how to help her use the litter pan, and away from other areas? I have tried putting poop and newspaper soaked with pee in the litter pan and I think it helped a little but I would really like her to get the hang of this so that they can share a hutch sooner. We don’t really have the room for two hutches.

Thanks for any help!

P.S. If anyone has any tips on how to get her to drink from a water bottle instead of a bowl that would be great. She tends to knock the bowl over!

[JackRabbit]

Most buns like to poop while they’re eating hay, so her pooping where she eats isn’t unusual. I’d be surprised if you can train her to poop in a litterbox outside the hutch and eat hay inside the hutch without pooping. Can you put a good sized hay feeder above a larger litterbox in the pen area? (Triangular litterboxes that are sold for rabbits are actually a bit too small for rabbits.)

Keep in mind that your male bunny’s litter habits may change once they are living together. He may find that he also likes to poop while eating. Even if she has her own litterbox/ hay feeder setup, I doubt she’ll stay out of his hay (in the hutch) and will likely poop on there when she decides to grab a bite. You may have to accomodate her poop/hay needs all around in order to have a tidier bunny area. I imagine your boy bun would adapt to the change a whole lot easier than trying to get her to adapt to other than what nature programmed.

Bunnies can be funny about poop — I have one that requires one to five (never more) poops to be on her bed at all times, and will not eat a bite of anything unless her rear end is in her litterbox. My boy bun only poops in the litterbox (unless excess cecals which he leaves on the clean fleece for me to step in) and he poops a ton. My other girl poops in the litterbox, but she will also poop “around” the litterbox — usually about 10 poops. I think it’s a control thing with her tho! All three will only pee in the litterboxes.

Edit: All three of mine have large hay feeders above m/l rectangular cat litterboxes, and all three poop while eating hay. My bonded pair eat their pellets and salad outside of their “bathroom area” but don’t poop while eating those. Kieko’s pellets and salad are served in bowls right next to her litterbox opening so she can at least have her butt in the litterbox “just in case”!

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