Digging in Litter

shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
Love your rabbit
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.
Wabbitdad12

Wabbitdad12

Retired Moderator
Joined
Aug 19, 2007
Messages
8,668
Reaction score
16
Location
The Bunny Zone, Elkhart , Indiana, USA
I have a blue mini rex doe who has suddenly taken to digging all the litter out of her box onto her cage floor!

I am sure someone has encountered this behavior before, could you enlighten me to possible reasons?
 
Wabbitdad12 wrote:
I have a blue mini rex doe who has suddenly taken to digging all the litter out of her box onto her cage floor!

I am sure someone has encountered this behavior before, could you enlighten me to possible reasons?
Click to expand...
I think that many rabbits like to dig in their litter because it is fun. Or at least Muffy thinks so. :rollseyes. I now put a plastic grate over top of her litter to help keep it in the box. I also found that some litter box fillers were much more fun to dig in than others. Carefresh, for example, is very light and very easy to dig out of the box. Muffy also found woodstove pellets, after they have turned to saw dust, oddly appealing.

From what I've read, un-spayed rabbits may dig more. I've also had rabbits with gas dig a lot (but these rabbits tended not to be recreational diggers, so digging was an odd behaviour for them).

Maybe if you provided your girl with other things to play with? An empty cardboard box that she could dig in, for example? My lops love to dig in their cardboard hidey boxes.
 
Put a grate down? That has worked with my guys wanting to eat it.

Reasons? Muffin will dig in the carrier during car rides, so I think for her it's about getting closer to the ground to be more stable (car swaying, etc). Many bunnies just like to rearrange things. Another thing to think about is that she may not approve of the location you've put her box in in her cage and she's trying to move the litterbox.
 
Spring seems to make my buns dig more, but also something like cystitis might make them more uncomfortable. Chances are though its just more to do with being more active. Maybe it's worth trying to stimulate her in other ways?
 
We use hay on top of newspaper for litter/bedding, and our bunnies love to rearrange it. Kiwi often drags some of it out onto the carpet, and Coco occasionally "digs" tunnels in his hay. Since this is new for your bunny, I would suggest keeping an eye on her to make sure everything else seems alright. Is she eating and pooping normally, etc.? Does she seem bored? It might just be a matter of finding new games for her to play. I stuff long boxes with hay to "block" them, and Kiwi & Coco love to dig their way through; why not try something like that?

On the other hand, unusual behavior can indicate something wrong, which is why I would stress keeping an eye on her. Pam mentioned gas: to tell if your bunny has gas you can get down on the floor beside her and press your ear against her side/belly. You should be able to hear light "swishy" watery sounds, about every 2-4 seconds or so for my bunnies is normal. Loud gurgling indicates gas, whereas silence indicates stasis (both are serious problems; you can read about these and other important bunny health issues on the HRS website, http://www.rabbit.org, to name one great site). It's good to do this test often enough, particularly at first, to get a sense of what normal belly sounds are like. Coco recently suffered from a bit of gas, most likely due to being on antibiotics for an infection, and giving him gentle tummy rubs made him feel much better.




(I just noticed you've posted here thousands of times - compared to my measly 11 as a newbie, LOL - so more than likely you know everything I've said in my post already! Maybe it will prove helpful to newer/less experienced members, so I'll leave it up anyway. :p)
 
Sounds like a party to me! Dig Dig Dig!
 
KimberlilyKC wrote:
Pam mentioned gas: to tell if your bunny has gas you can get down on the floor beside her and press your ear against her side/belly. You should be able to hear light "swishy" watery sounds, about every 2-4 seconds or so for my bunnies is normal. Loud gurgling indicates gas, whereas silence indicates stasis (both are serious problems; you can read about these and other important bunny health issues on the HRS website, http://www.rabbit.org, to name one great site). It's good to do this test often enough, particularly at first, to get a sense of what normal belly sounds are like. Coco recently suffered from a bit of gas, most likely due to being on antibiotics for an infection, and giving him gentle tummy rubs made him feel much better.


(I just noticed you've posted here thousands of times - compared to my measly 11 as a newbie, LOL - so more than likely you know everything I've said in my post already! Maybe it will prove helpful to newer/less experienced members, so I'll leave it up anyway. :p)
Click to expand...

Thanks, there are always new things to learn. In all the things I have read and experienced, I have never heard of the method you described to see if she has gas. That is quite interesting, I will give it a try.

I have had her litter box secured to the side of her cage because she use to dump it over, I will cut it loose and she if she just wants to rearrange things. She probably wants to move the sofa and recarpettoo!;)

Thanks for the ideas!:)
 
Yeah, I like that way of listening for gas better than what I normally do--holding an unhappy bunny up to your ear to listen to their gut usually leads to lots of scratches!
 
Miss Amelia used to love to dig in her litter box. She would mostly do it when the litter had been left for a day or two too long. It was like she was telling us that it really was time the litter box was cleaned.

I got a litter box with a built-in grate, and she has reduced the digging. She will dig around a bit at the hay bits that end up in the box, but she can no longer reach the actual litter to dig it out; she's just looking for tasty bits of hay that may have been overlooked. Also, the box gets cleaned more often now, so she has less reason to complain about it.
 
Ebony has done exactly what you described just this morning WabbitDad. She is making it clear she is not at all interested in my attempts to litter train her :sweep.


If your bun is already litter trained but has just started being messy, that's different altogether :ponder:

Let us know of any changes!

Jo xx
 
I have a flemmie that has been kicking out her litter too. I cut the cable tie holding Blueberry's litter in place and this morning she had moved it to another corner. Still kicked the litter out.

I gave her a round oatmeal container with the end cut out and she seems to be having fun crawling in it and chewing on it.
 
Timmy has two litter boxes- one he uses and the other he just sits in. If I take the second away, or take the litter out of it, he stops peeing in his litterbox so this is what works for us.
Because during the school year I would get up at 5:45, the buns were used to having food by 6. If I was late, or, for example if it was a weekend, Fiona would wait patiently, but Timmy would dig until I came and fed him.
I decided it was worth it for me to get up, feed them, and go back to bed as opposed to having to put everything back in the box.
(Note, I used the past tense there because I'm across the country from my buns and I'm not sure exactly what situation they've got now - whatever works for my mom, but I'll be home to them in 9 days!)
 
The smell could be a little different I suppose, it all smells the same to me, but then again I don't have the sensitive nose of a bunny.

It is a different bag, I just picked it up last Saturday.
 
I unsecured her litter box from the corner its been in for a while. She has stopped digging in it and has moved it to another corner of her home. Evidently, she just wanted to rearrange things.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top