Hi

[Ranj77]

Hi,

We brought my daughter a mini lop for her birthday in August. She is nearly 12 weeks old now and it is our first ever bunny. My daughter named her Cinammon and she is an indoor rabbit (my husband is not very happy about that...smells :roll, and we keep her in our utility. I have done a lot of online research as has my daughter and we have tried to keep smells to a minimum by spending the money on Carefresh (Pets @ Home, when they have offers ) and my daughter spot cleans the hutch (to get the stray poos :roll: several times a day and also cleans the litter tray daily. Any other ideas on how to keep smells to a minimum would be highly appreciated

I went from Wilkinson's Meadow Hay to Wilkinson's Timothy hay after realising she was not very fond of the meadow hay....not green enough Timothy is so much better, she eats so much more now and it doesn't cost much more than the meadow.

I have also gone from a water bottle to a bowl as we quickly realised that she wasn't drinking much from the bottle and now that she has a bowl she is drinking plenty

I am trying to keep costs to a minimum whilst still being a good owner. Any tips or advise you can give to a newbie will be welcomed. She is kind of litter trained, see my other posts for more information on this :thumb:

 

[TheThreeB's]

Hi :wave: Welcome to the forum x

It's sounds like you are really working hard to make sure she is well looked after You will find that this forum is full of useful advice. Good luck x

 

[MightyMax]

Welcome :wave:

 

[Mackers]

:wave: welcome to RU!

 

[xxx_Ra_xxx]

Hi, welcome. Rabbits are a lot of fun. I use back to nature in my rabbits litter tray, I have two of them in my back hall. The other great thing to do is to get her spayed when she is old enough, she will need to weigh over 1kg. I think this help with the smell too and rabbits must be spayed for health reason and will also help with her litter training. Have you tried her on alfalfa hay while she is young. It's go extra in it to help with growing rabbits. Good luck

 

[Ranj77]

Thanks everyone

I will look into spaying her when she is older. Does the back to nature soak up the smell? How much does it cost? Carefresh is quite pricey (unless I am just stingy...). I will stick with the Timothy hay now as she really likes it and is constantly munching away on it

 

[joey&boo]

Thanks everyone

I will look into spaying her when she is older. Does the back to nature soak up the smell? How much does it cost? Carefresh is quite pricey (unless I am just stingy...). I will stick with the Timothy hay now as she really likes it and is constantly munching away on it

Welcome. I find bunnies the least smelly of animals as long as they have larger enough litter trays that are changed daily. I bug megazorb as litter & local hay bales from an agricultural merchant which has saved me a fortune - they require a fair bit of storage space though.

 

[Jbun]

Hi and welcome!

It is possible to get the smell under control when using the right litter, and spaying will help as well when the time comes. I personally found Carefresh not to work very well(presuming it's the same as we have in the US, a soft paper pulp type litter). It didn't seem to control odor very well, and would get saturated quickly so that it needed to be changed quite frequently. I eventually moved to a wood pellet litter. Here it is available as a natural cat litter and as equine bedding. Getting it in the large bags for horses is the most affordable choice if you have that available to you. I like it because it absorbs the urine really well, drains it away from the rabbit and thus helping keep them clean, doesn't stick to fur and get tracked around the house, and is great at odor control. It also makes it so cleaning doesn't need to be done every day usually.

My litter box set up consists of a large 20x27x6 inch concrete mixing tray(large underbed storage bins work well too), with about a 1-1.5 inch layer of wood pellet litter, a soft plastic screen(homemade) over the litter to prevent digging (as well making it easier to clean out soiled hay and poop with just a small hand broom and dustpan), and a layer of hay over the litter and screen with a big pile of hay at one end of the tray or in a hay rack at the end of the tray. The hay in the litter tray serves a few purposes, buns like to poop while they eat so it helps keep more of their droppings in the tray, it's a softer surface than the wood pellets(which some buns don't like the feel of rough wood pellets on their feet), and it also helps with odor control as well(giving it a sweeter hay smell). I spot clean the litter for one bun every couple of days(as she pees mostly in the corners), and the other buns tray I clean out a couple times a week. I also clean out the soiled wet hay and poop at the bottom of the tray daily.

I have 7 buns indoors and don't hardly notice any urine smell. Mostly it's just the hay that I can smell if anything, and I have a pretty strong sense of smell. I've gradually moved to this setup and stuck with it as it has worked the best of any for me and my buns.

 

[Ranj77]

Hi, thanks for the responses.

Jbun, can you send me some pictures of your litter tray set up please?

 

[daphnephoebe]

Welcome

I used to struggle a lot with smells when the girls were young. We used carefresh, back to nature, different wooden cat litter and all of them were really useless.
We started using fitch 7/8 months ago and I've never gone back. Its brilliantly soft and highly absorbent and controls smell really well. Its a lot cheaper than carefresh.

https://www.fitchrecycling.co.uk/fi...dding/fitch-pet-bedding-single-bale-20kg.html

I found using hay in hay racks over the litter tray helps to prevent smells. The urine seems to ferment the hay when they urinate on it and I was having to clean the tray twice a day and wasting so much hay. Now I find I'm spending around 70% less on hay each month because I'm not throwing away bags of it each week.

 

[TheThreeB's]

Agree with daphnephoebe, I use Fitch bedding in litter trays too and its excellent for soaking up the wee x

 

[Jbun]

Hi, thanks for the responses.

Jbun, can you send me some pictures of your litter tray set up please?

I have a couple pictures posted in this thread if you want to take a look.
http://forums.rabbitrehome.org.uk/showthread.php?458277-Pine-Pellet-Bedding&p=6813622#post6813622

I use large bales of horse hay that is pretty cheap, so I don't mind wasting a little to layer over the pellet litter. I just found that for me, having a layer of hay over it helps with the smell and my buns prefer having the hay to walk on.

Finding what works best is usually just a bit of trial and error. Try different things out and you'll figure out what works best for you and your bun.