How Often Do You Clean Out Bedding Hay?

Hello all :wave:

I'm wondering how often I should completely change/replace the hay in Beatrice's hutch? Mr. Ham's I change perhaps once a week, or at least I pick out the dirty bits and leave the fresh, because he does tend to poop spontaneously, meaning that his bed gets dirty after a while.

Beatrice on the other hand is the cleanest bunny I have ever met! Her hutch is laid with lino and just has hay in the feeder downstairs and in her 'bedroom' area upstairs. She has never once peed or pooped in her bed. The hay is always clean and smells good. I don't know how often I should completely replace it?

I don't want to be wasteful but nor do I want her to be sleeping in a dirty bed (surely muddy paws over time would make it a little bit dirty, I don't know, it always seems super clean).

To summarise: how often should you change your rabbit's hay bedding completely? Thank you

This is a bit like asking how often should you clean anything if it looks clean :lol::lol:

I think you will also get different opinions on this. What I do is to judge this purely by observation. If it looks dirty it gets replaced. This could be after a day or it could be after a week or longer. I am also wanting my rabbits to eat some of their bedding hay and I find that it gets to a certain age, either because it appears to them unclean or perhaps just flattened, when they don't eat it so readily. I would then change it, even if it looks clean to me. So, because my rabbits have always been both not reliably 100% clean and also fussy about their hay, it doesn't last long before it needs to be changed.

Well done Beatrice for being a clean rabbit

I spot clean daily, do a full clean weekly, and exceptionally clean bed areas about once a month (but check weekly anyway). That pretty much applies to all our small furries from hamsters to rabbits. During winter months, it is almost a twice weekly clean as the rabbits and guinea pigs spend less time in the runs and longer in hutches, plus anything that gets wee'd on stays wet so needs doing more thoroughly more often. In the summer months, they spend more time out on the grass and and the hutches don't get nearly so wet from toileting.

I tend to rotate the very clean bedding hay into the litter trays that get used most often - so the hay isn't wasted.

My rabbits have their hay in the litter trays so they get cleaned out every day. I do waste a little hay this way but it works for me. Where does your female do her toilet then?

Thank you for the advice everyone! I think I have a similar approach to you Omi - I spot clean/replace when it looks dirty. I fluff up/add hay to Beatrice's bedroom area on a daily basis, as she spends a lot of the day just sat in there munching, but as it is always so clean I'm hesitant about what to throw away. I like the idea of adding old stuff to the litter tray Shimmer, at least you make the most of it then.

Tonibun, my female Beatrice has a corner litter tray with Back 2 Nature pellets in it. As she's so clean, she'll only use her box (sometimes she poops just outside of it). When we first got her she didn't have the litter tray, but she still religiously pooped in the same corner and never once in her 'bedroom' area. With our male Mr. Ham, who is 5 years old but we haven't had for very long, he doesn't seem so bothered about going to a specific place to toilet, so it's easy to tell when his hay needs replacing.

That being said, we recently bought him a litter tray and he has really taken to it At first he thought it was an intruder and threw it around a lot (we had to screw it to the side of the hutch in the end :lol: ) but now he seems to use it frequently and his hay bedding is a lot cleaner. Good thing too, because we're bonding him with Beatrice this weekend and she won't be too pleased if he blesses her sleeping place with droppings