Indoor bunny keeping

[hereygersbunny]

Hey everyone me and my girlfriend recently decided to purchase a 3 month old female Netherlands Dwarf bunny and named her Molly. Knowing no one that owns a bunny this is all new to use and I could use some advice just to make sure we are doing everything right.

We would cage her up for the first 2 weeks but then felt bad. She now has run to the living room with her cage in there but the top is off so she hops in and out. We are using CareFresh bedding in the cage (roughly 1-2") with Yesterdays News in her litter box.

The problem is she doesnt use her litter box very much. It has been roughly a month now of picking up her poop/pee out of the CareFresh and putting it into the litter box. Do some rabbits take awhile to get into the litter traning?

Once she does get the litter traning down would we be able to get a cat litter box and remove the whole cage? Like put her food down in the kitchen and her litter box in the closet if she knows were it is?

Also we were wondeirng about getting her a friend, maybe a male with them both fixed? Would it be to late to get her a friend once she is a yr or older since the male will be younger or does this matter?

Sorry for all the questions but we are new to rabbit keeping and alot of pet shop workers don't seem to have definite answers, alot of umm I think it would be okay.

 

[LindyS]

I herd girls are a little harder but we don't litter box train either.

 

[jerseywool704]

Hello!

I litter box trained my rabbit, I'm not sure how long it took me, but definitely longer than a month. I did what you said, where I'd put clumps of pee soaked bedding into the litter box. and paper towels I used to clean up the pee also. Another good suggestion is to put hay into the litter box. Sometimes they like to much while they go to the bathroom (weird I know) But I would do that also.

For my rabbit I would let her run around the room, but I'd put a large (comforter sized) blanket out on the floor. Wherever I noticed she would pee I would move the litter box to. She started going in her litter box more and more, until she just never had an accident.

It definitely takes some patience, but it's totally worth it, its so nice to have a bunny who uses a litter box!


I don't know about taking away a cage completely, I probably still would keep some sort of area that is just the bunny's so that she has a safe place to go. I'm not sure if you've heard of the bunny condo's built out of wire cube crates? There are a bunch shown in the Habitat section of the message board, I believe some people call them NIC condos? I built one for my rabbit. It's so inexpensive. I think I paid a total of like $75 and the cage is AMAZING!

As for a friend. Definitely they'd be spayed and neutered like you've already said. Sometimes the bunnies actually don't get along, so when you plan to adopt they usually recommend you bring the rabbits for a couple of meet and greets.

A great website with loads of information is http://rabbit.org/

 

[Nancy McClelland]

We just have a litter box in their hutch in one corner with the rest fill with carpet, toys and bowls so there is no confusion as to where the toilet is. The location was chosen by where the bunny was eliminating inside of their hutch. On the main floor we have three litter boxes and 8 pans filled with shredded newspaper so they have a large number of choices. They all leave pellets everywhere, but only urinate in the pans, so we clean the room once a day with the shop-vac.