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StarBunny

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Feb 10, 2021
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Location
Northern Illinois
My daughter and I made this new enclosure for Star. I am so happy he has more space. Especially since he will be getting ‘the surgery’ soon and I wanted him to get around easy. Strangely, when he was in the small cage his litter habits were so much better. I need to look into training him. It’s terrible when he is out for exercise time. Peeing everywhere!!
I was hoping you guys could take a look and tell me if there are any safety suggestions. I have the small shelf and also every single joint double or triple zip tied. Also I have layers of cardboard secured under the towel on the 2nd floor with a small hut he can jump on to get up and down.
The second photo is his old cage that a friend donated the day my husband found him at that business park. I just cleared it out. It was great to have but too small. :)
 

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That looks very good. I love how you set up your hay rack! Everything looks very comfortable. I would just make sure your bun doesn’t chew on the covering in the cage. If your rabbit isn’t fixed yet, moving to a new space triggers territorial behaviors like pooping and peeing. When your rabbit gets adjusted to his new home and gets fixed, he will stop peeing nearly as much, and his litter box use will be very good. Just make sure he has plenty of free roam time.
 
That looks very good. I love how you set up your hay rack! Everything looks very comfortable. I would just make sure your bun doesn’t chew on the covering in the cage. If your rabbit isn’t fixed yet, moving to a new space triggers territorial behaviors like pooping and peeing. When your rabbit gets adjusted to his new home and gets fixed, he will stop peeing nearly as much, and his litter box use will be very good. Just make sure he has plenty of free roam time.

Thank you so much Madelyn! My mom thinks all it’s missing is a palm tree and my husband laughs at how well he has things. I do hope getting fixed helps. I am going crazy putting down towels and washing them - and spots on my carpet. A couple months ago this wasn’t happening.
Quick unrelated question. What kind of water do you give your rabbit? I have well water so I didn’t want to give him that. I noticed he is drinking less and his pee is darker and has those calcium white spots in the middle. I think it was when I recently switched types of bottled spring water. Do you have any recommendations?
 
The extra peeing is also related to his hormones. Even formerly potty-trained buns can forget that training with the onset of hormones. I'd actually suggest limiting his roaming until he is neutered. The problem with allowing any pee on carpet is that they tend to return to pee in the same place again and again. Unless it is so well-cleaned that even bunny can't smell it, he's likely to return-- possibly even after he is neutered -- if the odor has lingered. (It can be very difficult to totally remove the odor to the point that even the rabbit can't smell it.) That's one habit you don't want to encourage.

I'd confine him to the new cage area and allow roaming only on washable surfaces (keep him off of the carpet for now).

Rabbit urine should have some sediments in it. That's normal and healthy. (No sediment indicates renal failure.) Unless your well water is horrible, I don't see why you can't offer it to your rabbit. We are on well water and use it for our pets even though we don't drink it unless filtered. If you prefer to buy bottled water, that's perfectly fine too.

The following link has photos of healthy urine vs bladder sludge:
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Uro_gen_diseases/generalities/Sludge.htm
 
The extra peeing is also related to his hormones. Even formerly potty-trained buns can forget that training with the onset of hormones. I'd actually suggest limiting his roaming until he is neutered. The problem with allowing any pee on carpet is that they tend to return to pee in the same place again and again. Unless it is so well-cleaned that even bunny can't smell it, he's likely to return-- possibly even after he is neutered -- if the odor has lingered. (It can be very difficult to totally remove the odor to the point that even the rabbit can't smell it.) That's one habit you don't want to encourage.

I'd confine him to the new cage area and allow roaming only on washable surfaces (keep him off of the carpet for now).

Rabbit urine should have some sediments in it. That's normal and healthy. (No sediment indicates renal failure.) Unless your well water is horrible, I don't see why you can't offer it to your rabbit. We are on well water and use it for our pets even though we don't drink it unless filtered. If you prefer to buy bottled water, that's perfectly fine too.

The following link has photos of healthy urine vs bladder sludge:
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Uro_gen_diseases/generalities/Sludge.htm
Thank you Blue Eyes! I have him running out right now but will keep him in his cage unless I sit with him. That is all so good to know! As for water, I’ve actually noticed in general he is drinking way less than normal. I have a 26 or 32 oz bottle that used to get emptied in a day and a half and now it takes several days before it’s gone. I do give him greens in the evening but I wouldn’t think that would give him enough. I’m trying to encourage drinking more. I even now put out a bowl for water also. One that can’t be knocked over. :) I will buy that other type of water I was using before to see if that helps at all. My well is a community well and our filter is just with a pitcher and I don’t care for our water unless I make coffee. I have a couple photos of what I’ve been seeing with his urine. For the first few months we had him and he peed on something there was no white residue, and now there is. But hopefully these photos are normal. I haven’t seen him pee lately but he is acting happy and normal.

He peed in one of his bowls I had in his litter pan. The one looked really dark but maybe that was runoff from the cardboard?

Thank you both so much!!!
 

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I think the new enclosure looks so much better than the first! He might be peeing everywhere because of the change in his environment. Bunnies are not ones to like change. His litter habits would improve if he got neutered (most likely). I see in the one picture the litter pan is full. I changed my litter pan every other day, and this helped my bunnies litter habits. I have read that if the litter box is too dirty, the bunny will do his business somewhere else!:)
 
That long calcium spot by the pen, looks pretty thick. More than might be considered normal sediment. Normal calcium sediment when dried, should be light and chalky, not thickened or pasty at all. Does it seem thick to you or light and chalky when dried? Do you feed a lot of high calcium greens, alfalfa hay, or an alfalfa based pellet?

One thing you could try if he's still having peeing accidents outside the litter box after having time to get used to his new set up, is using his old cage in some way. He may still see that as his territory and home base, and go to it to pee in.
 
I think the new enclosure looks so much better than the first! He might be peeing everywhere because of the change in his environment. Bunnies are not ones to like change. His litter habits would improve if he got neutered (most likely). I see in the one picture the litter pan is full. I changed my litter pan every other day, and this helped my bunnies litter habits. I have read that if the litter box is too dirty, the bunny will do his business somewhere else!:)
Thank you very much! :) I have a bigger pan now so hopefully that helps and I change it every day. Yeah the old cage has the used litter pan in it. That pan was very small and he pooped like crazy in there. That was one days worth! So far his going outside the box has really slowed down so I’m really happy about that. He really seems to like all his options. :)
 
That long calcium spot by the pen, looks pretty thick. More than might be considered normal sediment. Normal calcium sediment when dried, should be light and chalky, not thickened or pasty at all. Does it seem thick to you or light and chalky when dried? Do you feed a lot of high calcium greens, alfalfa hay, or an alfalfa based pellet?

One thing you could try if he's still having peeing accidents outside the litter box after having time to get used to his new set up, is using his old cage in some way. He may still see that as his territory and home base, and go to it to pee in.

Thank you very much for the info! I scratched my nail on it and it was white and dusty. Very chalk like. Ihad recently been concerned about this. I had been giving him some collard greens-not the whole leaf by any means, maybe the size of a deck of cards (area wise),escarole and chicory/endive. Thinking he was getting too much calcium I started cutting out all collard greens, bought some Romaine to give withthe escarole (broad leaf) that I still have. I have cut down his oxbowTimothy pellets from 2-3Tbs/day to 1 and he gets unlimited Timothy hay and sometimes some orchard hay. And of course water. He is only 8-9 months old and it baffles me. When he peed in the bowl and the sediment collected in the bottom it reminded me of silt. In the photos, along the edge where the pee is away from the bottom edge of the bowl was easiest to see. Are there any greens that are better to give on a daily basis? I had a hard time finding resources on what is best. Then there was information that said no study shows food is the issue- but that made no sense. Anyway, thank you so much for your help and everyone’s input. This is such a great place!
 
The lists on the following page of my website may help:
https://rabbitsindoors.weebly.com/greens--veggies.html
Thanks!! And I have been to your site before! I remember I emailed you about cages and having rabbits with cats and dogs. You were so helpful and emailed me back. I’m so glad you steered me back to your site as I hadn’t written it down and forgot it was back inside that email. Thank you very much!!
 
Romaine is perfect, and other dark leafy lettuces(green leaf, red leaf, etc). Cilantro is another low calcium green. Also, this link has a list of veggies and their calcium content if you want to take a look.
https://rabbit.org/lowering-blood-calcium/
Yes they say food doesn't necessarily contribute to bladder sludge, but I don't feel that's entirely accurate as that hasn't been my experience with my bladder sludge prone buns. I'm just going off my personal experience here, but I definitely found a correlation. Whenever I tried giving one rabbit parsley and carrot greens, he had a lot more calcium sediment and build up in his urine. So I just figured it would be better to limit the greens that seemed to cause this. Why put more stress on the bladder and kidneys from excess dietary calcium, when that can be prevented by feeding lower calcium veg.

Rabbits still need calcium in their diet, so you just don't want to go overboard cutting it too low. But if you are seeing a lot of calcium sediment in the urine, then you know your bun is getting too much. You only want to be seeing light sediment at the most.
 
Romaine is perfect, and other dark leafy lettuces(green leaf, red leaf, etc). Cilantro is another low calcium green. Also, this link has a list of veggies and their calcium content if you want to take a look.
https://rabbit.org/lowering-blood-calcium/
Yes they say food doesn't necessarily contribute to bladder sludge, but I don't feel that's entirely accurate as that hasn't been my experience with my bladder sludge prone buns. I'm just going off my personal experience here, but I definitely found a correlation. Whenever I tried giving one rabbit parsley and carrot greens, he had a lot more calcium sediment and build up in his urine. So I just figured it would be better to limit the greens that seemed to cause this. Why put more stress on the bladder and kidneys from excess dietary calcium, when that can be prevented by feeding lower calcium veg.

Rabbits still need calcium in their diet, so you just don't want to go overboard cutting it too low. But if you are seeing a lot of calcium sediment in the urine, then you know your bun is getting too much. You only want to be seeing light sediment at the most.
Thank you!! I had also been giving carrot top greens lately. So it’s good to know that should be fed only here and there. So I had been giving high calcium greens, carrot top greens, collard greens, turnip greens a while ago and chicory/endive ( I have no idea what chicory actually is. They combine the 2 all the time.) So all this information is super helpful. I don’t think he has a problem but I’m glad I asked you guys and am on the right track now before it got worse. He is still running and playing and looks good. I can only think it was the vegetables because his dry food has never changed and he’s peed so many times on my carpet and I only recently noticed the change. The crazy part is that if he only went in his litter I would never have noticed. So I can’t be too upset about the extra cleaning. :)
 

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