NIC cage flooring

[Winterthebunny]

Making NIC cage plans, of course I probably wont even make this NIC cage for a long while... First I have to get a few other things done in my "bunny goals". I have a big french lop named Winter, she is unspayed and I got her from a breeder and have had her for a while. She has a wire bottom cage and because of her big breed obviously I'm not satisfied "anymore"(before I was less educated with rabbits and thought it'd be fine).

Our bathrooms have linoleum and she's in our bathroom we rarely use, she doesn't really like linoleum because she has no traction and I don't really want carpet because she isn't litterbox trained and I'm getting money to spay her but anyways.

I was thinking to separate the stories, NIC cubes with wooden dowels under there, then plywood over the NIC cubes and then whatever flooring.

What "easy to clean" and textured flooring can I use?

Also, I have to spay my rabbit to have her litter box trained, don't I ? All the sites are basically telling me "it's almost completely impossible"

 

[Imbrium]

you can potty train to some extent before spaying - I started working with mine on it when I got them at 7-8 weeks old. litter box habits improve with spaying (or so I'm told, I've yet to stop finding random pees from time to time >.>) but you can get decent results beforehand.

personally, I use coroplast in my condo, as I didn't have the tools to work with wood. I used to use fleece on top of it, as many people do, but between them occasionally peeing on it (and with my condo it was a pain to pull out to launder) and digging/tearing it up, I took the fleece out.

now I use this vinyl runner thing from home depot... was like $10 for a HUGE roll (way more than I needed) and the *perfect* width for a 2-grid wide condo - I just cut the length to fit. it's less slippery than the coroplast alone (though, oddly enough, my bunns didn't mind the plain coroplast even though they HATED the tile floor) and very easy to clean! I imagine it would work just as well over plywood as it does over coroplast.

installed:

 

[patches2593]

im not sure for flooring. maybe a rubbery matt from home depot??? if you buy a rug or a matt, on some of them have a rubber bottom when you flip them over. that's what i used as the flooring of the cage where there wasn't blankets for my last bunny. i have a nic cage too with 4 levels. the top three levels were made of linoleum covered with fleece blankets and the bottom first floor i just had linoleum which he loves to lay on and sometimes he has trouble with traction. if you do want to buy a matt or rug, just make sure its safe for them especially if they were to chew it

my last rabbit i litter boxed trained before he was neutered and it worked.

from what ive heard, you can litter box train a rabbit whether they are fixed or not. using the litter box after and before my rabbit was fixed made no difference; either way he used the litter box

hope this helps!! let me know if it does!!!

 

[Winterthebunny]

Okay, good ideas, thanks!

I tried doing the litter box training for a day, it was a failure and just took the space out of her already tiny hutch, she completely ignored it and just did her business beside it(I also have to constantly clean up "territorial droppings" when I let her out...). I'll put in more effort, lol. xD

 

[Imbrium]

yeah, takes a bit more than a day, hehe.

by the way, do you use bedding in your current cage? not using bedding tends to make litter box training go more smoothly.

 

[Winterthebunny]

I use "Dry Den", it doesn't list what wood it's made out of. They're compressed wood pellets that puff up with urine, but again it's a wire floor so she couldn't ever nibble on them.

 

[Imbrium]

is it possible to try ONLY putting the wood pellets in the litter box that you want her to use?

 

[Winterthebunny]

I don't know. I mean, could I put something else in there? The waste tray is metal and is already a little rusty, I don't really want her to pee(if she does) onto bare metal.

 

[Imbrium]

ah, yeah... sorry, I forget sometimes how wire-bottomed cages work. well, you could use the same stuff in the litter box that you use in the tray.

 

[ldoerr]

For flooring in my NIC cage I have coroplast with bath tub stickers down for traction. For the shelf I covered the panels with fleece. Also you can easily litter train an unfixed bunnie. When I had my rabbitry I used wire floors. The first year or two I litter trained all of my rabbits. I would put the box in a corner where they pooped and they would just use it.

 

[Winterthebunny]

Problem is is that my bunny poos in random places in her cage. Typically in the back right corner but also by her food crock so basically it's a big blob of space that's more than a quarter(maybe even half) of her cage.