Sleep and poop issues

[Ali925]

Sorry for the subject title, but wasn’t sure what to call it!

Do any of your buns poop while sleeping and make a mess?  Both of mine will make messes only when sleeping…  I know they produce cecotropes then, and I always see that they eat them.  It’s just once or twice a day they’ll leave some in the spot where they were sleeping…

I understand it with my baby bun for now, but my other bun is 6 months and has been using a litter box for several months and no big accidents except for what I just described.

I hope this doesn’t mean the diet is too rich and they’re producing extra?  My 6 month old is eating Oxbow Bunny Basics T (1/3 cup), veggies twice a day and unlimited hay.  The baby is still on alfalfa based pellets (he’s 2 months) and unlimited hay.  I don’t really do sweet treats or anything too unhealthy, maybe a carrot every few days for my older bun, but no treats for the baby yet.  

Any advice?

Thanks in advance…

[RabbitPam]

Are they sleeping in the litter box and doing this, or are they sleeping in another part of the cage when it happens?
Do you use any bedding outside of the litter pan? If you do, even if you spread hay around, they may think it’s OK to do that since they will smell it in their sleep, so make their litter pan and their sleep area very distinct from each other.

I think you can start mixing the regular pellets in with the alfalfa, and then gradually cut them out for the baby. I would take about 2 weeks to do this. Mix this week, and remove alfalfa next week. It may also be something of a learned behavior with the baby since bunnies teach and copy each other. But having the 6 month old may mean there’s a problem for him. If it’s only a couple of cecotrophs that are getting eaten as soon as they wake up, I don’t think that’s a problem. But if they are accumulating, sticking or mushy, and making a poopy butt, there may be more going on. Try my suggestions above, and see if anything changes. Unless someone else recognizes a more serious problem here, it may correct easily.

[Ali925]

Thanks for the response Pam.. Sorry this is a long response again… but thanks so much for the help:

1) For my older bun Oreo, she does this when she’s sleeping on a towel, or in her Cottontail Cottage (second floor)… It’s hard to clean it up completely, so it’s possible she continues to smell the scent and think that it’s okay to poop there… When she sleeps in the bottom floor of the cottage, it’s right on the bed sheet and we just wash it right away to hopefully get the smell out. I know it’s bad that we don’t completely clean the cardboard (it’s hard to do that) but she loves the cottage and I would hate to throw it out because of that. On occasion she’ll sleep in her litterbox (rarely though) but I don’t notice anything unusual in her litter box afterwards.

As a side note, her litter box is always filled with completely normal looking poop,nothing mushy (and lots of it…she’s a good eater).

And Oreo has always done this, but it’s not every time she sleeps, maybe it’s just once a day. I have never noticed any poopy butt, or anything mushy/sticking to her. She’s been evaluated by a vet recently too, and nothing out of the ordinary. She was treated for Coccidia (minor case) but that was weeks before her spay in March. I was just hoping that her litter box habits would be perfected after her spay and that’s why I hadn’t worried about this “sleeping poop” . And like I said, other then this, she’s pretty much perfect with using her box…

2) As for the baby Blu, he’s been getting better about not making as much of a mess (he’s only been with us about 2 weeks)…but I was thinking the same thing..to change him to timothy pellets. I was just concerned since he’s still young and growing (he’s less than 2 lbs still) that he needed the richer pellet for now. If I do change him to Timothy pellets, should I provide alfalfa hay? Right now he gets timothy and orchard grass…

He is the same as Oreo, on occasion he sleeps in his litter box, but usually in his straw/hay bungalow or on a towel. With his, sometimes it seems like it might just be a few leftover cecal pieces, not the whole thing. Almost like one gets stuck to his fur, but not really poopy butt that I can tell. I’ve seen a very tiny piece get stuck near the fur by his tail (his fur is very full, much thicker than oreo) and then when he runs or sits it might fall off. I know he’s eating his cecotropes as well, but is this something that takes time to perfect? like as he gets older? or maybe he’s overproducing..

I wanted to give him some time since I know this is still an adjustment time for him – before I brought him home he was living in an outdoor cage with no litterbox… I figured he might take some time to adjust, Oreo did too.

Okay let me know what you think of all this…

Thanks again!

[Author]

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