pees and poos ????

Hi there,
I have 2 10 week old minilops, i'm trying to litter train them just now but just when I seem to be getting them to use the tray I find they have been peeing and pooing somewhere else, they have now peed and pood on both blankets in seperate areas of the hutch as well as using the tray ... I am about to put the blankets in for a wash is it ok to use a normal laundry detergent ( I know its prob a silly question but I just want to be sure) ... also I have found a dried in white stain splashed on a cardboard tube and one of the walls ... as their pee tends to be a thick dark yellow liquid i dont know what this is .... im a bit worried ..... onto the poo now ... I am finding a lot of the poo they are supposed to eat, should they be eating it all or is it normal for there to be some left .... any advice greatly appreciated :?

I might not be able to help on the pees but I can help on the poos!

They usually eat their first morning poo, called caecotrophs, you will know which ones they are. They are darker, sticky and smelly! They usually eat these straight from their bottom, so if you find them in the hutch that usually means they need to eat more hay and perhaps less pellets or vege.

Their normal poos are the little balls, the ones they make all the time, they should be quite crumbly and a honey/brown colour. They are basically digested hay. Perhaps google for some pics?!

About the weeing I am not sure. I have one mini lop who I got at 9 weeks, I had a problem with her for about 48 hours, in which she would basically wee where the litter tray wasn't and even if I moved the litter tray she would wee in the other corner.

In the end I cleaned out the whole cage and just started a fresh, people have recommended soaking some newspaper in their wee and then putting it in the litter tray which should encourage them to go back there as they are meant to be territorial wee-ers!! What litter are you using in their tray?

I use Megazorb and then put some hay on top. I find Lola does all her wee's in the right place but does some stray poos wherever she fancies!

Hope that helps a little, hope someone can help you more with the wee-ing!

I have just cleaned out the whole hutch and started again, i too use megasorb and hay in the litter tray, i am using a good sized cat litter tray so they have plenty of room, i have found both of them sleeping in it a few times lol. ... they are eating wags bunny brunch, this is the food they where eating when we got them and have been advised to change to pelets very gradually, I will maybe try giving them less of this and they might eat more hay, thanks for the advice :thumb:

Bunny wee has a lot of calcium in it and stains white. That's normal so don't worry too much about it. It can be cleaned off the walls with vinegar.

I use normal laundry detergent for my buns. Also rabbits poo to mark their territory so as they're young and probably new they will do this while they settle down. Keep a nice big litter tray full of fresh hay and I'm sure they'll start to just use that. It should be big enough for both buns to get in at the same time so if one needs to go while the other is they don't have to go on a blanket. Bunnies to like to sit for a while and munch hay while they poo.

Also usually after neutering they're a lot less territorial so spraying wee and scattering poos usually stops.

I have two 11 month old does who were completly untrained untill they were spayed...no amount of cleaning etc made them use their litter tray but as soon as they were spayed they litter trained themselves! :thumb:

My two younger does who are aprox 5 months old ish pee in their litter tray as thats the only place with any hay in it within their hutch but I find poops scattered everywhere...I just sweep them up and put them into the litter tray to try and show them where they are supposed to go but I dont think they will fully train untill they are both spayed aswell!

I'm still very new to rabbits, but I have a doe about the same age your mini lops and she's been almost 100% clean for the last week or so.

What I did was to religiously pick every dropping she made outside of her boxes, and put it into her nearest box since she has a box both in her cage and in her favourite spot in the house. This might seem like a lot of work, but it pays off. I also watched her like a hawk and put her back in her box every 10-15 minutes, even if she wasn't pooing, or if I saw her with the absorbed look on her face. Quite frequently, just dropping the rabbit in the box would trigger the poop. Weeing hasn't been a problem: she took to the litterbox almost immediately and peed only once outside of her cage, on the very first day we got her. Don't change the hay or whatver you use too often, they need to smell themeselves for them to understand what goes where.

I also gave her treats and compliments everytime she went into her litterbox, even if she did nothing in there, gradually cutting on the treats (she gets none now). If she did do her business in there, she would get a bigger treat and even more praise. Now, she gets all excited when it's time to poop because she knows she'll be getting a compliment or some cuddles. She seriously binkies and jumps before going to her outside box She associates the box with good times, so she willingly goes to it.

The only time when her toilet training slacks a bit is during the night, but it's usually the odd pee and 7-8 poops at the very max. Some nights, there's nothing on the cage floor. So keep going at it I say.

Thanks a lot all of you for the advice .... greatly appreciated :thumb:

Doughnut wees in her litter tray but since I've added a pen to the hutch she also wees in there sometimes even though she's been spayed. She also goes in different places in the dark area of her hutch where her litter tray is, whereas I thought most rabbits go in the same corner.

She poops all around her pen and also in her litter tray. She doesn't poop around the house though, only an odd one pops out but it's only on her territory. There again if she did do all of her poops in her litter tray it would be so full up when I get home from work!

She also seems to spread the hay that I put on the litter tray all around rather than eating one end and pooping the other. Does any one else's rabbit do that or have I just got an odd one!

It's very hard to litter train young, unspayed rabbits so I would try not to worry about it too much. You'll be in for a loosing battle. I'd just covered anything you don't want ruined and sweep up poops. That's the beauty in getting a spayed pair from rescue, the hard bits done for you.