Bedding for C&C cage NOT fleece

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Kaycejones

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I've been struggling with bedding for my bun "Whatsthis" my previous boy was disbled so though he was messy the fleece bedding was best for him. Whatsthis though is not disabled, she is not potty trained at all and I'm having a heck of a time with feece bedding for her. We have a 3x7 Cube cage and currently it's bottom is kids foam puzzle mat and though I love it it's not workong out. I am making a Coroplast base today and would like to nix the fleece bedding for now. I have horse bedding pellets but am not fond of how slippery and hard they are. Was considering fluffing them a bit but them the sawdust will likely stick all over my lil bun. It seems like a big area to bed with Carefresh but that is do able too. My plan is to start full bedded with something then in time cut it to half fleece, half bedding, 1/3 bedding 2/3 fleece etc in hopes I'll be more successful with litter training. Any other bedding I'm forgetting you might use for this type of cage, indoor bun?
 
If you put any type of loose bedding on the entire floor of the cage area, then it will be much more difficult to potty train. By putting bedding of any kind (pellets, carefresh, fleece, etc) on the cage floor it basically makes the entire cage one gigantic litter box (in bunny's eyes).

In order to litter train, it is best to have solid flooring only, with no bedding whatsoever. Then have a large litter box with your choice of litter. (Wood pellets topped with hay is a favorite among many members here.)

I would strongly advise against coroplast for a floor. It is very, very, very slippery for bunny's fur paws. This can risk injury to legs.

A textured rolled lino or vinyl flooring would suit better. You can often find cheap ends of rolls at hardware stores.

Once you have a solid floor and a roomy litter box (like in photo), then bunny should choose to go into the softness of the litter box to go potty.

The following shows a litter box setup with the horse stall pellets. They can be totally covered with hay if you want it softer all over to begin. Usually though, the hay tends to get spread within the first day anyway if you place the hay as in photo.
1614280775131.png

and here's a sample of a NIC cage from many years ago. I'm including this so you can see how the lino was used on the bottom floor of the cage. The edges were just outside the grids so bunny could not get to the edges and chew there.

1614280907566.png
 
She's been on a solid no skid floor with no bedding and daily cleaning of her 2 large boxes with bedding for a couple months now. I'm throwing in the towel on litter traininh right now. Someday I may try again but I've had enough. For now I do want to bed her whole cage and reevaluate if we want to try again. Thank you for the advice though.
 
Is she spayed? Is it just poos or urine also? Could you show a photo of current setup?

(edit) By solid no-skid floor, are you referring to the mats? If so, the mats may be too soft and therefore looking/feeling like "bedding."

Fixed rabbits typically litter train effortlessly -- with the right set-up. I'm trying to see what could help.
 
She's a feral rabbit and we are unsure if she's spayed yet but are not ready to put her under and do it or find out. She's very scared, not accepting of handling yet. She urinates and defecates all over. The mats are the flooring but they are not soft, very little to no give and are just non skid. She cannot be out of her cage as of now because she is too scared of me/everything to allow her free roam so I do not want to litter train her anymore for now as there is no need. Puc of set up, she does have houses/hidey areas now.
 

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If she won't mess with or chew them, I currently cover the floor of my rabbits area with disposable puppy pee pads, as she is old and disabled, and can't make it to the litter box anymore. I just change out the pads as needed. I get the big box of them from costco.

Another option that may work in litter training that involves covering the whole floor area(so no spot cleaning of messes, only cleaning out litter boxes), is you cover the whole area with litter boxes(may need to adjust area size so there are no empty spaces. This is temporary, as eventually litter boxes will be removed one at a time, determined by how things go.

I would use big ones, like the mortar mixing trays you can get at home depot. I think they're like 2x3. Or a bunch of small ones works fine too. You fill up the whole space with litter trays and just clean out litter boxes as needed. It will also give you a good idea of which ones she uses the most. Then after several weeks or maybe even months, you take out the least used litter box and see how she does. If she doesn't try and pee in that area where the litter box used to be, stick with that for awhile until she seems adjusted and used to it, then remove the next least used litter box. And so on until you are only left with one or two litter boxes that are the ones she uses the most.

This hopefully trains her to think that litter boxes are the place to pee. That's the idea anyways.
 
That's the idea I'm going with. I did make the C&C today and used paper bedding for now. She does not appear to have any trouble moving around in it so that's excellent. Eventually, maybe after we spay/or confirm spay when she settles down I'll start sectioning it off in the way you described with litter boxes. I am not sure if there is a better bedding for this than the paper pulp, maybe I'll rotate in other bedding until I like what find.
 

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