Stained Fur

:wave:Is it normal for a female rabbit to have stained fur around her genitals? It's obviously where all the urine comes out and there's a lot of fur around.

Our rabbit is a white mini lop - which is not the best colour for stains.

She is 18-months old, an excellent user of her litter tray and has no problems with her diet. She is also spayed, fully up to date with her vaccinations and has regular health checks by the vet - no problems. She assiduously keeps herslf clean everywhere else.

So far, when she smells very rabbity we have just given her a very shallow bath of that area only and done all of the usual things with the correct rabbit shampoo, drying, etc.

Anything else we should do, or just bath her every six months or so?:?

Hi, welcome to the site! :wave:

How is your bun in herself? Is she eating, drinking, playing and using her littertray a normal amount? How often do you clean out her littertrays? As buns pee so much (boy do they!) it can be hard keeping the littertrays dry, so they're sitting in there own wee a lot of the time. This could well be what's causing the problem. What litter do you use? One other thought is that the food she eats could be effecting the colour of her urine, and therefore cause it to stain her pale fur. Could you give us an outline of her diet?

Thank you for the welcome.

In answer to each of your questions:

How is your bun in herself?

Very well. She is a house rabbit with an inside and outside hutch and regular access to the garden. Like most rabbits, she combines siting still with bursts of rapid activity. She whizzes and binkies about the garden and, when inside, jumps on/off furniture if she feels like it.

Or just lays down with her legs stretched out in the warm if she feels like that instead.


Is she eating, drinking, playing and using her littertray a normal amount?

Yes to all of these things. She particularly likes nose rubs, hence my user name of "Snouter".


How often do you clean out her littertrays?

She has one litter tray in the house. The location is in a corner of a room and was chosen by the rabbit when she was litter trained. It is cleaned every day - sometimes three times a day.


What litter do you use?

A plastic tray covered with layers of newspaper covered by layers of absorbent kitchen roll. She does not like wood shavings in her litter tray but does like the paper tissue of a kitchen roll. Sometimes she sits and shreds some of this paper with her teeth while she uses the litter tray.


Could you give us an outline of her diet?

• Timothy hay
• Burgess Excel Light
• Carrot tops (the leafy green bits) and some carrot
• Brocolli
• Cabbage
• Banana
• Apple
• Oven-baked crunchy wholemeal bread (small amount). A particular favourite of hers.
• Herbs
• Plus nibbles of green garden plants that she encounters in the garden. We don't have any of the rabbit-harmful plants - we checked.

In view of your very helpful comments I'm putting my money on sitting in her own urine on the litter tray as the cause. Although the kitchen roll absorbs it and is changed regularly I guess there must be enough left to stain the fur.

I think you're probably right. I lined my littertrays with kitchen roll for a while, but found it was really only absorbant enough for one piddle! Have you tried Carefresh? It's really absorbant, although a little expensive. Anything to prevent urine scald tough! Unfortuantely I had to stop using it as G + P decided it was delicious! :roll::lol: I'd say it's definately worth a try though. There's something else called 'Megazorb' which sounds great too - I'm looking into that at the moment.

It sounds like her diet is fine too, so that's great. Fruit and bread products should only be an occassional treat though (as my darling vet sister never tires of telling me!) so you'll have to resist bunny-begging with that one!

She sounds like a little darling anyway - we need piccies!

Thank you for the information, I'll check out these products.

Glad that the diet is fine.

She has also developed a taste for an indoor house plant and has eaten dry and fresh palm leaves plus chewed its bark ever since she "discovered" it about seven months ago.

She only gets a small piece of banana or a thin slice of red apple (and not every day). In addition to the "proper" food for rabbits of hay and greens her passion is oven-baked crunchy wholemeal bread and she will beg, periscope and nudge to get it. She crunches her way through 1/6 of a slice every day.

She is certainly a little darling, with mainly white fur, a few brown marks down her back, soft brown ears plus big brown eyes. I'll try and sort piccies out when I get access to a digital camera again.