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Litter training - looking for advice

LarryMolly

Warren Scout
I'm looking for advice about litter training our rabbit Poppy. She's been with us a few months now after living in dirty confined conditions all her life. She's just over 2 weeks post spay and we were hoping that we'd be able to litter train her but it's still proving very difficult. The first week post spay she was 100% litter trained amazingly (apart from the poos) but this last week she's doing about 3 wees a day out of the litter box. So she is using her litter box most of the time. She also drinks a huge amount so wees so much more than any of our other rabbits!

When she wees out of the box she goes anywhere so this makes it hard to know where to add another box or move the current one to a space she's chosen. It's also a low sided litter box and she's able to easily get in and out.

In terms of her living space, she has a pen set up next to our neutered male as we will be bonding them eventually.

Could this still be her hormones playing up as it's not been long since the spay? Or could it be because she's so used to just weeing anywhere in her old home? Or is she being terriortial as our male is close? I've no clue!

I've read all the advice I can find online about litter training and cant think what else we can try. Any advice on what we can do would be great.

Thank you!




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It could be hormones still,as they can take 6 weeks or so to subside. She could be being territorial too, and certainly habit could play a part. You may need to add multiple trays, but the best thing would be to ensure that her litter tray is big enough. Large underbed storage boxes are best, as there's plenty of room for a rabbit to wee and poop without accidentally weeing over the edge. If you feed her all her hay at one end of the litter box then she will be more likely to use it reliably.

If her enclosure is kept free of substrate and you can keep sweeping it clean of poops, and mopping up wee and neutralising it with vinegar/water then that will also help.

If she is drinking an abnormally large amount I would mention it to the vet to have her checked over.
 
Zoobec seems to have got it all ;)

Don't worry if you have to add more trays. My girl started with 6.... we now have 2. (One in their room & one downstairs.)

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Thanks both! I'll try adding more litter boxes into her pen, that's a good idea. We already use a large litter tray and clean up with vinegar and water throughout the day. Would you keep her in her pen for the time being until she's using her box better? She's in a 6x5 and currently gets supervised playtime morning and evening as she does wee on the carpet so I have to make sure I'm there so I can clean it up straight away.

We've already had her bloods done for her excessive drinking and they came back fine. We will get her urine tested next week though to rule out anything there as well.


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Think we've cracked the litter training (well the weeing anyway) so I thought I'd write a post in case it helps anyone else having the same issue.

We removed the fleece so she is on plastic corex for her flooring as we realised she likes to wee on soft things, we added another large litter tray (van ness extra large from Amazon) meaning she now has one top right and one bottom left of her enclosure. In these we have back2nature and lots of hay which we clean out daily. We also added puppy pads on parts of the floor so there is some padding for her whilst still being easy to clean for us. Sweeping multiple times a day with 50/50 vinegar/water solution. We stopped allowing her to free range the whole upstairs so she's currently only allowed into the hallway.

As soon as we did the above we haven't had one wee outside the boxes.

That's about it. Once we've been doing this for a few weeks with no accidents we'll start to introduce her vetbed and fleece back into her enclosure and start to allow her back to free ranging upstairs.

Keep your fingers crossed!!


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