small litter training issue

[xnovalentine]

I know that younger unspayed rabbits are harder to litter train than adult altered rabbits. However, I’ve been trying to litter train lulla since i got her about a month ago and aside from a few small accidents in the beginning that was most likely due to marking, she does not go outside of her cage. the problem lies within her cage.

She has a lot of free time outside of her cage, and a litter box in every room of the house she’s allowed into. But she does stay in her cage when i’m gone to work and school and she goes everywhere in it. She does not use her litter boxes that are outside of her cages, and does not go if she’s not out of her cage. She will go back to her cage to go potty. Currently I have 2 litter boxes in her cage; the two corners she preferred, but she basicially is using her cage as a litter box.

I want to begin taking her off the bedding and start using blankets because i think it would be more comfortable when she is in there and maybe encourage her to begin figuring out that her cage is not just a litterbox.  Also, she goes everywhere so much in her cage that i change in 2-3 times a week and her poor little feet are yellow from hanging out in her pee . She does not enjoy the cleaning up of that! I have tried putting hay and food into the litter boxes in the cage, and she seems to go in both the boxes and inbetween.

I’m not sure what to do – wait for her to mature? go ahead and begin putting blankets in her cage? What do you guys think?

 

[Sarita]

I think the bedding with the litter box is confusing to rabbits. After all bedding is litter. I’m not sure if towels would be the best idea either for the bottom as it might still encourage her to pee on them. You might consider some carpets that you can throw in the wash instead.

Question – is she using her litterbox to pee or the whole cage as well? Or is she using the litter boxes to pee? What about pooping? Is that everywhere?

Also have you tried putting some hay in her litter boxes?

[xnovalentine]

she is peeing in the litter boxes, and everywhere else. She is also pooping in the litterboxes, and everywhere else. where would i get these carpet things?

[Floppy]

hmm I used to have this problem…then slowly I narrowed it down to two corners of the cage that
Floppy with pee in and then finally with the soaking of the newspaper/tissue trick and switching the
litterbox to his favorite corner…he has been using his litterbox since and has only gotten better about
the poop also. Now, he always pees in his litterbox and most of his poos are in there also. I stopped
using bedding cause it was 1) a mess and 2) it seemed he wasnt too crazy about it anyway. So he
just has a grassmat that he doesnt even chew on (which I think is kinda funny) and a lil blanket to
either play with or sleep on. Litter training takes time… I am sure she will learn!

[xnovalentine]

well, i am getting her spayed next month sometime so i hope that it will get better after that. i’m just not enjoying changing her bedding every couple of days and i agree that she doesnt care for it. thanks for the encouragement!!!

[babybunsmum]

hmmm… my bun has a cage with a raised grill floor in it so the poops & pee drop down.  since she has free roam of the whole room the cage is in (she uses the cage for litter & it’s also where her water and pellets are) i don’t worry about the floor being rough on her paws.  could you get a grill floor for the cage and put a blanket down over part of it for a soft bed?

[Beka27]

i’d def. stop using the bedding in the rest of the cage… is it a solid floor?  Meadow’s has a solid floor and i have a grass mat for her [sometimes… she destroys ’em quicker than i can buy ’em]  but she doesn’t seem to mind just laying on the solid floor and it seems that she prefers it sometimes [maybe b/c it’s cooler…?]  you may want to give it a try… and then if you see pee or poo, wipe it up ASAP and redirect her to the box.

[BinkyBunny]

So if I am understanding you right, she doesn’t go outside of her cage, but inside she’s a disaster. I bet she will get alot better when she is spayed. The fact that she doesn’t do this everywhere but her cage means she has control, she just chooses to use her cage as a litterbox and for territorial marking. She may be just claiming that as her territory which will be much stronger since she’s not spayed.

My friend had the same issue, and she actually got a ton of small soft blankets (she went to a discount fabric store and bought a whole bunch of soft cotton fleese like fabric and then cut it up in smaller sections. Then everyday, she’d take out the dirty one, put in the new one. She said it made for a lot of laundry, but after about 3 weeks, her bunny improved (note that she would take paper towels – soak up the urine, and put a piece of the urine soaked paper towel and put it in the litterbox. She did say that later her bunny did get worse when he reached sexual maturity, but still wasn’t as bad as when he was a baby, and then when he was neutered, he fell back into line quickly. The good litterbox habits she trained him to have seemed to really help out and he is emmaculate now.

[babybunsmum]

ooohhh!  i get the prob now… i’m just a little slow to understand

bb that sounds like a great idea.  could prob use clean old soft t-shirts or dish towels too.

[dmh426]

Spaying will def help with the problem. Honestly, it sounds like bunny got too much too soon. I know her issue is in the cage, but you’ve got too many litterboxes! Sophie is free range in my home, when I am home, and only has one litterbox- the one that’s in her cage. The bedding is probably confusing her with her litterbox. What do you have in the litterbox for litter? I recommend Yesterday’s News. She won’t have the yellow on her fur from her pee, since it will be absorbed and there won’t be any smell.

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