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Litter training advice needed please!

jpath19

New Kit
Hi all,

We have two house bunnies, Eric and Molly. Eric, is 5 years old and we recently paired him with Molly, aged 13 weeks. Eric was quite ill in summer and lost his ability to pee and poop in his litter tray. We moved house a couple of months ago, and kept him in his cage for a while where he would mostly but not entirely pee in his litter tray, but still poop around the cage and living room when we let him roam. We introduced Molly and probably didn't keep her in the cage long enough really, so she pees and poops everywhere now. We can tell that when we let them roam they are having accidents outside of the cage as our carpet gets stained. There is one corner this happens in mostly however there have been stains in random places dotted about.

We have two options really from the previous posts I've read. We can keep them in the cage until they are fully using the litter tray, putting their poops in the litter tray and soaking up urine with a tissue and then putting those in the tray. Then once that is successful we could perhaps fence off an area around the cage and see if they maintain using the litter tray before letting them roam completely freely? The only worry I have about this method is I don't know how long it will take for them to start using the litter tray, and they're already climbing the walls being in the cage so much. The cage is 1.5m x 0.7m and has no lid, so it's not tiny, but it's not ideal for them to be kept in.

The other option would be to let them roam freely, and put a couple of litter trays around the living room and maybe reward them with a treat when they jump in them. However, I imagine there is more risk of accidents and they would still keep pooping everywhere which is a massive issue for us as there is just so much!

Does anybody have any ideas about what the best way may be for us to approach litter training them? My girlfriend and I also both work full time jobs so how would that work with training? For instance, when poops may build up throughout the day and there wont be either of us to pick them up and put them in the litter tray?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Johnny
 
Do you have any areas of the house or a room they could be allowed to free roam in that isn’t carpeted? It might be easier to litter train them then, as all my rabbits have used soft surfaces as toilet areas, even with multiple litter trays provided. If you have a puppy pen you could make an area that is smaller but still plenty of room to exercise, as they still need to have lots of room.

I’m assuming that Eric is neutered but Molly is not spayed yet? When she has been spayed and her hormones have subsided hopefully her litter habits will improve dramatically.

Bonding, moving territories and hitting puberty are all things that affect litter habits so fingers crossed if you can clean up after them as often as possible then things should improve.
 
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