Pooping

[b24karrot]

Hi all, asking for some advice here:

When we had Blake and Downy they were perfect about litter boxes, we had to work with Blake a little but eventually he became great.
Then we brought in two unnuetered males, and even though they were kept seperate Blake started going all over again.
Now we lost one of the males on the table and the other is back at his foster mom's getting fixed and having his hormones go away before he comes back, in the mean time we adopted a dwarf english spot 2 year old fixed male named Cookie, but Blake still is very bad about going all over. We can not seem to get him to go back to using his box. And we cannot pick him up and put him in his box because he runs everytime you go near him. We have tried putting hay in his box but then he just goes in and eats the hay then comes out and poops.

Cokie is bad too, when we adopted him they said he had great litter habits but now he is going all over.

We have to rake the carpet about once an hour to get all the poops up.

Any one got any ideas for us. Soon Bubba will be back too, and though his foster mom says he is good about his box I am worried the cycle will continue with him as well.

So throw all your ideas at me peeps.

Dawn

 

[JenniferCameron]

I have no ideas I just had to add that my Winston started doing the same thing. He eats the hay in the litter box and then jumps up and poops on the couch, then he hops on me and tries to take a pee.

Slowly but surely he is doing it less and less though.

I hope you find a solution!

 

[Little Bay Poo]

The only way we got Ronnie to use his litterbox was by getting our other male rabbit, Billy, to poop in it. (Billy and Ronnie are neutered but unbonded and very territorial). Ronnie started using the litterbox in an effort to remark it as his territory and get the Billy smell out. Ronnie's got wonderful litter habits now (even better than Billy)!

I don't know if this technique works with other rabbits...it happened with us as a fluke and wasn't our original intention.

Also, if you have really territorial rabbits they may poop outside the litterbox as a way of marking their territory. While Billy has excellent litter habits when he's in his cage, during play time he always poops next to the barrier separating him and Ronnie.

 

[maherwoman]

They're doing this because they can smell the unneutered males. It's a territory-marking thing. It'll probably clear up in a week or two.

My buns do this for new cages, new additions to the household, and Fiver just plain never really understood they were supposed to go in the box (hehe).

 

[b24karrot]

Thanks for the info, but the un-nuetered male had been out of the house for two weeks now and Blake still cannot find his darn box. Do I need to get a carper cleaner and do the carper with a vinager mixture, would that maybe help?

 

[maherwoman]

Oh yeah...vinegar's awesome for odor removal and stain removal. I'm not sure, though, if you would need to use a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water, or just straight vinegar. I've forgotten, as I haven't had carpet in a couple years...

But...I would say that having them there definitely started this...and he just, for some reason, hasn't found his way back to being trained again.

What kind of litterbox setup do you have? What do you put in your litterboxes?

If you don't do it already, it would probably help (if not solve things) if you put a good helping of hay on top of his litter. I've never had a bun that didn't litter-train pretty quickly (think days, a week at the most) in doing this.

 

[b24karrot]

Yeah, that is how we trained him to start with was the hay, he had a hard time with litter box training until we used the hay then after that he was great, then we brought in the news boys and right down the old pooper, so to speak.
We use Yesterdays news litter for small animals and we keep it very clean, empty it often, but he just has lost his way.

I guess we will try the vinegar, maybe that will do the trick.

Thanks for the info.

 

[maherwoman]

Maybe try also spraying vinegar in the air througout the house, and spraying it more directly around where the unneutered boys were in the house. I'm wondering if maybe their smell has persisted in the house a bit, and he's reacting to that?

Did the unneutered boys urinate outside the box anywhere? If so, you could try cleaning those spots with the vinegar...that would also help.

Maybe holding him and walking into the area (after cleaning it) where the boys were and him seeing they're not there anymore would help?

Just tossing ideas out there...

 

[b24karrot]

No I thank you VERY much, for all the great info. I think we will do the vinegar thing this week and also now that you said it the spraying too, now the one male bunny that survived we will be getting back in about two weeks and he has now been neutered and by then all hormones will be gone, so I am thinking maybe we should wait until then to go through the house, don't want to do it now and just have to do it all again in two weeks.

My girl, Downy, has not missed one step in all this, she is still my perfect litter girl.Even when Blake was good about his box in general, at night when he was in his cage he would go outside his box all the time, but never went on the carpet.

My new adoption from the rescue, Cookie a 2 year old neutered male came in neutered and they said he had great litter habits, and there were no unfixed boys when he came in, but he cannot seem to make it to the box either.

So I think for sure the vinegar and they spraying it around, then we will just see where we go from there.

 

[maherwoman]

Sounds like you've got a good plan there!

Glad I could help! :hug: