Indoor housing advice!

[Sammyp]

Hi all!:wave:

I have 4 indoor bunnies.. (All currently live separately, 3 neutered males and 1 female) I have one 10 year old (bunny) a 6 year old (Maxie) a 4 month old (Alfie) and the baby at 9 weeks (poppy).

I have plastic based hutches with wire fronts for easy access in and out for them and I ave always used sawdust on the base, straw (for bedding) and grass and a small bowl of pellets.

However, Maxie has the run of our spare room and as he's a long-furred lop, he ends up with more straw etc all over the floor than in the hutch! So.... I decided to just use sawdust in the bottom and a pile of straw in the side of the hutch out the way with the grass instead of all over.
This has actually made it worse as now instead of hay the room is covered in sawdust! Including him!
He gets covered in it!! I'm really hoping to find a cleaner/tidier option, any ideas?

My hopes for the babies are that they will be able to live of ether in time (once she's older and spayed) so I'm trying something new... Litter training! It's not going well though. Alfie prefers his as a toy box and poppy keeps eating hers... Help!

Any advice for either of these would be great!

 

[Elena]

Hi,

Have you looked in the indoor housing sticky? The link is in my signature. I can't tell from your post whether the cages are just a base or not but they need a LOT of space and indoor cages aren't enough on their own.

As for the sawdust, I don't use it, it's messy, doesn't absorb much and it can also be harmful to them. I have underbed storage boxes (similar to the base of those cages) which I put a thick layer of newspaper at the bottom and then lots of hay. They like to graze and go at the same time so it encourages them to go in the same place. Then you can compost the hay and poop and bin the newspaper or just bin the whole lot. It's also a good way to provide fresh hay which should be 80-90% of their diet (unless you sub for grass though it's hard to get enough of that all year round)

 

[SJH]

I know the problem!

I use newspaper and then a layer of paper bedding/paper wool which you can get in most pet shops. It gets stuck in fur less!

 

[LilRabbit25]

For my indoor bunny i've built a wooden cage/house. Flooring is a non-slip plastic rubber mat that i've cut to fit exactly. He's got a few towels and blankets. his water bowl at the top and a tunnel to hide in. His litter box is to the right (with the drilled holes), inside i've just got a plastic storage box lined with a puppy pad and wood chips/hay/carefresh.

I litter trained him when he was still young so he got used to it quite fast though I think any rabbit would eventually become litterbox trained - you just have to collect every single dropping and clean up every mess or place it into their litterbox as soon as possible

I usually always leave the cage door open so he's outside (in the room)whenever he wants to. I've had experiences with Mozart jumping out of the litterbox and leaving a bit of a mess in the cage (right outside the litterbox area) so I put a puppy pad there - he enjoys cleaning himself there too.

Also, if you use a cleaner or soap to clean the cage, I would use a different one for the litterbox and the rest of the cage - as for Mozart, he sometimes gets used to the smell of the cleaning liquid and pees/poops wherever he smells it. So I use white vinegar for his litterbox and a few sprays of aussan small animal cleaner for the flooring outside.

 

[Sammyp]

Thanks everyone!

Your advice has been great!

I think I'll ditch the sawdust as it is causing such a mess, especially with the new babies! I'm not 100% sure what I'm gonna go for but I think I'll try a few things and see what works well.

We are looking at new ideas to make/adapt homes for ours at the moment and looking through the stickies has been really helpful! :thumb:

It's good to know I'm doing the right thing with the litter training as I am collecting any mess and putting it in the tray and I think they are sort of working it out!

P.s your hutch is amazing!! I bet he loves it!

Thanks again everyone!

 

[Tamsin]

For the neutered ones, I'd go for litter only in trays, and try paper/wood based cat litter. The pellets are heavy enough they don't spread quite as much or get caught in the fluff as easily

 

[Sam and Truffs]

One of mine eats the paper pellets, so you might want to watch out for that as presumably it's not a good thing! Crazy rabbit.

 

[Sammyp]

Thanks

I have wood pellets which seem to be pretty good, but I'm just considering what main base to use as well. Some people have mentioned newspaper but poppy still has dyed paws from the newspaper when she was at the animal shelter so I'd like to try an avoid that if possible.

It looks like some people just use towels/mats or carpet tiles? Is that worth trying or not a great base? The only issue I see with the towel idea is that poppy had a towel and used to pee on it so it got in a right mess... So this might not help with the litter training....

I've had bunnies for 10 years but I've never really thought about trying to make it less messy (I guess because I still lived at home and it wasn't me doing the cleaning!) now we have our own place I wanna make their homes neater and more comfy for them

 

[Tamsin]

In the cage? Just leave the base bare. If they are in a pen, you could get a piece of plywood cut to size and glue lino on or use lino tiles - that way it's wipe clean

 

[Sammyp]

Yeah. I have plastic based hutches with wire all over the top and sides etc, so it could be left with nothing in the base I just didn't know if that was ok?