about being house-buns...o.O

shop deals on amazon
Love your rabbit
Shop deals on ebay
Advertise with us
Rabbits Online Forum

Help Support Rabbits Online Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Kaiah

Kaiah

Active Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
28
Reaction score
0
Location
Kentwood, Michigan, USA
we have 3 buns and would love for them to be true house-buns with freedom to roam in bun-proofed rooms...however, we live in an apartment with carpeting and worry about pee stains and marking issues. also, digging and chewing of the carpet is worrisome.

does anyone have any tips or advice on this?

we used to let the buns run around the living room area and it was ok until we got our 3rd bun...now there are constant pee issues whenever they're let out. (the bonded pair have not been bonded to the 3rd bun, so they're constantly claiming the area around the litter boxes).

because of the pee issues, the buns are restricted to our hallway area, which we've lined with cheap throw rugs to prevent the actual carpet from being stained...even so, there have been accidents. :(

i hate to see them penned up for most of the day, then only allowed in a tiny area when playtime does arrive. it seems so unfair!

if we were to successfully get the buns to all play together, would the pee issues stop? can we bond them just as "play buddies"?

also, we're unsure of how to go about bonding all 3...should we try them one on one with each other, or introduce the new bun to the bonded pair together?

eventually, we'd like to get a partner for the single bun, but can't at the moment...and it would be really nice if all of them got along for playtime.

if we had our own house, this wouldn't be such an issue...but since we rent, i worry about the cost of ruined carpet, etc.

please help!!

Kaiah - worried bun mom
 
I had the same problem because I live in a Condo with carpet everywhere but the kitchen. I really wanted my bun to have his own play room. So I turned the walk in closet into one. I just bought a roll of lino (cut it to size with a razor blade) and put it over the carpet. My plan is to bond my two rabbits and have them be in the walk in closet permanently.

11018002.jpg

 
that sounds nice...i only wish we had a walk-in closet. :( however, we might consider doing the lino thing for our hallway...the throw rugs we've got are getting mighty pee stained. :X

thanks!
 
Put down a plastic tarp, and put the bunny x-pen over it. It might not look the best, but it will solve your problem.

I have not been successful bonding 3 rabbits. Very few people actually have the right bunny personality combo to manage it. However, I know there are people on the forum who have done it. PM mouse-chalk (Jen) and ask her advice :)
 
Toby, my Nethie, is a full-blown housebun (at least in the bedroom). He shares the bedroom with my boyfriend and I. There will be accidents! We are in an apartment as well, so I know your concerns! We remedied the "weeing outside the box" by putting a cheap area rug under his litter pan. It catches most of the wee. Other than that, Toby likes to "mark" near my hamster cages.

One product that I use that works WONDERS on bunny-pee stains is called "Citris Magic". It's from Wal*Mart, and it's in their pet section by the cat stuff. It is made with vegetable enzymes (even though it smells like lemons?) but it gets the yellow/orange stain out. It gets most of the smell, too. You can watch the spot disappear after spraying it. It's that fast! It's only like $4 a bottle, too, so it's cheaper than Nature's Miracle (I've heard good things about this, too).

Besides that, I just have to vacuum twice a week to get the stray litter and stray poo off the carpet. It's not that bad. I thought it would be much worse.
 
all four of my bunners are house buns, and we have had only one bun who has issues with pee. she is kind of a spaz though. my parents got a steam cleaner which works.

the other two live in our basement, and they have a 4"x6" ish size pen where they spend the night and part of the day. they are on plasticy stuff, then plywood, then a cheap carpet. they don't have any issues, even when i put my foster buns in a pen next to them. and when they are let out to run, there will be some accidents, but its mostly poo and we just vaccum it up.

i think all the peeing is simply because they smell another bun in their area and don't want to smell the other bun, only themselves. is there any way you could have them run in different areas? that might help solve the problem
 
thanks! i'll look for it at Wal-mart! =) we've been using resolve...it gets the stains out, but is a chemical, so i worry about it.
 
Yup! No problem! :)

It says that it is made with "vegetable enzymes", but it is called "citrus" magic and smells like lemons :p It has kitties all over the front (it looks like a Windex bottle).
 
well, see...that's the problem. we WANT them all to get along together, so putting one in another room would be contrary to what we're trying to accomplish. secondly, the living room is really the only place the buns can be...our spare bedroom has turtles in it and is my boyfriend's "office" area...cords and wires and instant bun death everywhere. and our bedroom is off-limits due to there being all sorts of chewables in it, not to mention it gets very cold in there during the day because we shut the door.
 
Cover ANYTHING that is fabric until they are used to it! I mean couches, chairs, etc. Wee can be terrible to get out of cushions day after day after day! I have a flannel blanket that goes over the bed so if Toby wee's, all we have to do is wash the blanket, not the quilt. As far as cords go (in your living room), you can get rigid tubing from Home Depot (found in the electrical area) to cover them. I would hide as many as you can, though.
 
We may not be able to smell bunny pee after we've cleaned, but they sure can. In fact, Evie makes a special point of re-marking places that I've cleaned with vinegar. Far easier to prevent than fix, IMHO. Like Kelly, I've also got a blanket covering my furniture whenever rabbits are out.
 
I live in an apartment with 3 bunnies. My bonded pair has a really large pen in the living room. They must stay in there when no one's home, and at night. In the morning and evenings, they are allowed to roam around the living room, dining room, and hallway. They don't like the kitchen because the floor is slick, so they don't go in there. They can't go in the bedroom because I have allergies and can't deal with the fur in the bed. We never bunny-proofed the computer room, so they can't go in there, either.

Neither bunny has ever peed on the carpet, though Amelia has pulled up so much carpet in the corners, we will never get our deposit back.

When Tobi came to stay with us as a foster, I made her a pen in the corner of the computer room. She has a 3-storey condo with a pen around it. She does not get to run around as much as the other 2. :( But a few times a week, I will open the pen and put the edge up against the door, and block off the hallway with 2 baby gates.
Tobi does not get along with the other 2 bunnies, so they cannot play together. I have to use 2 baby gates together because she will try to bite the others through the gate.
 
I have a basement area that my husband made for our bunny but that was for her to stay down there and he put plastic around it to make a room. He didn't want her inside, but I won. I felt bad for her being downin the dark basement alone in her cage like that. I have her upstairs in the computer room where my daughter (her mommy) and I are all the time. He is very rude and we fight over the rabbit. I love her and she is family to me.
 
blankets are good to cover furniture, but plastic is better! I use old shower curtains and empty garbage bags. I'm also trying to re-train my guys to be better at the litterbox. For a while we also put aluminum foil on top of the plastic because they hated the noise of running around on foil. It's best to keep them in a smaller space and only expand the amount of area they get to run in when they've proved they can have good litterbox habits there. You can also put additional litterboxes around, in the places they like to go. I have a bedroom pair and living room pair of bunnies, and the gate that separates them is a favorite place to go, so there's a litterbox there for each pair. It can be difficult to bond 3. We tried to bond Benjamin to Tony and Muffin for a while, but that did not work. We got Frida to give Ben some companionship, and I've also heard it can be easier to bond 4 than 3, so we may someday try to get a whole herd together.
 
tonyshuman wrote:
It's best to keep them in a smaller space and only expand the amount of area they get to run in when they've proved they can have good litterbox habits there.
Click to expand...
Toby now gets to hop around in the hallway and bathroom. I don't trust him in the living room/dining room yet. He likes to poop by Berry-Boo :?
 
BethMI just wanted to let you know when I lived in an apartment my rabbits ate huge holes in the carpet everywhere corners and around the walls. There was over 20 holes. I called a small carpet company and they came and patched the holes and stretched the carpet and you couldn't even tell. It cost me $250 to repair and I got my whole $1000 deposit back. The apartment people never new. Usually you can stretch carpet so if it is in corners and around the walls it makes it easier. They stretched the carpet and cut it. Just an idea if you are due a big deposit.
 
Wow! I am so lucky that Toby is well-behaved! He only digs/chews on the cheap, $20 area rug! I don't know what I would do with a chewer bun!
 
Thanks for the advice on the carpet patches, it's something we will think about when it's time to move. I think our regular deposit was only $99, and the pet deposit when we got the bunnies was maybe $200. (Jason paid the deposit, and I paid the adoption fee + a box of hay + a donation to the HRS chapter to equal $200.)
The only thing is, they could charge us for the carpet replacement.

When we moved in here, we were told that our apartment was up for new carpet, but they wouldn't be able to get installed until about a month after we were supposed to move in. We decided to just skip it, we would have had to have the apartment empty for the installation. We've been here 3 years now, so we're sort of hoping that they will write the carpet off since they were planning on paying for the replacement, anyway. I doubt they will do, that, but it's nice to dream! (It will really depend on the original leasing agent still being here when we leave.)

Thanks though for the suggestion, I will definately keep it in mind! Amelia likes to do all her chewing in corners and next to walls, aoround the fireplace hearth, etc. Most of the corners we've been able to put down cheap carpet sample pieces, she can go to town on those and then we replace them when they're done. (She just pulls the fibers, she doesn't eat them.)


 
I just got Toby to stop digging at the rug where he used to. I put a phone book over it, and he finds it's much more amusing to chew/dig at that than the carpet :)
 
Amelia doesn't much care for phone books. Pulling carpet is pretty much her favorite thing to do. She really loves to do it in corners where she thinks we don't notice. Right now, she likes to go behind the two extra baby gates that are leaning against the wall. (She has also pushed her willow tent tunnel over the edge of the carpet by the fireplace, then gone into there. I amazes me how smart she is, she thinks if we can't see her we don't notice. She has, however, failed to take the noise factor into account. :))

I tried putting bricks where she likes to chew, she will just go somewhere else. I tried putting a gallon water jug down, she chewed a hole in the jug and flooded the spot. If there's something in the corner she likes to hide behind to chew, if we remove that thing she will abandon the spot and find somewhere more hidden. Very persistent, that rabbit! So now the best thing is to just keep a stock of carpet sample squares, and replace them as needed.

Funny, Nick doesn't pull carpet like she does, but when she's behind the gates going to town, I will often find him sitting outside the gate. Almost like he's being a lookout for her. Amazing.

I think she must have been a complete terror before she was spayed (isn't spaying supposed to stop that behavior?) and I think that may be why they ended up at the shelter. :( Luckily, I love her no matter how much she misbehaves!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top