Smelly bun

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briennap

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So I'm laying in bed and here comes my bun jumping up right after me. And I notice she is smelly...and her feet are a tiny bit yellow.

Other than that she is really clean. So I was thinking about just simply giving her a little foot/butt bath cause like I said everything else is clean. But then I read online how baths can actually be dangerous and that they aren't necessary unless the bunny has health problems and the only reason to bathe a bun is because of health problems...well I'm pretty positive my bun is healthy and doing great but she's still a little smelly.

Also read to try and clean their cage more, which would make sense except I clean it twice a week and her cage has the metal wiring on top where she stands and the poop and pee falls into the poop plate catcher on the bottom under the wire she stands on so she's not sitting in her messes so why is she smelly? And how should I fix it? There's no poop in her fur and everything seems to be working fine lol she's just stinky! So I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this for me pleasssse
 
What does she smell like? Similar to a used litter tray?

Are there any areas in the cage that don't have metal wiring? There should be, to avoid causing her any foot pain, and if there are is it possible she's been urinating on these spots and stepping on the urine, resulting in stained paws?

Butt baths are normally only recommended as a last resort, for buns with potty problems... if you do need to bathe her feet and/or her behind, I'd probably recommend using some gentle, unscented baby wipes first to see if they resolve the problem. Much less stressful for your little bun. I've read that wringing out baby wipes with some warm water first can help, too.
 
What does she smell like? Similar to a used litter tray?

Are there any areas in the cage that don't have metal wiring? There should be, to avoid causing her any foot pain, and if there are is it possible she's been urinating on these spots and stepping on the urine, resulting in stained paws?

Butt baths are normally only recommended as a last resort, for buns with potty problems... if you do need to bathe her feet and/or her behind, I'd probably recommend using some gentle, unscented baby wipes first to see if they resolve the problem. Much less stressful for your little bun. I've read that wringing out baby wipes with some warm water first can help, too.


Thank you! Yes the baby wipe thing does sound a lot more practical, I will try that. 😊 and no, there is no opening in the cage it's all wire and she has a bowl she likes to sit in in there but he's never I'm there, not even at night my house is bun proof so she's out all the time as often as I am. I just don't get how she got so smelly, and yes thank goodness she does smell like her litter pan and nothing REALLY bad but trill got nervous wen I read they only smell if something's wrong so I freaked out at that immediatel.
 
The yellow on the feet is basically urine. I've had the same with Lady and Brooke when I first got them from the pound. When I took them to get groomed, we took a washcloth with baby soap and shampoo to try to get it off and we decided against clipping the yellow fur out from the feed and am waiting for it to grow out. But it drives me crazy.

When I took them to my vet this past month he fussed me out about having rabbits with urine stains on their feet and told me I had to change their cages more often...and I had to explain to him I just got them and they were rescues and my other rabbits do NOT have urine stains on their feet...

Lady loves bananas but will fall asleep on her banana and her fur is all sticky and then there was the time the dogs peed on her through the baby gate but I won't even go there... (dogs were tortured for a while!!!)

But for things like that I have a foam pet cleaner that is all natural called Citrus Magic Pet that is for Hard to Bathe pets and it's all Natural Foaming Pet Cleanser it cleans and deodorizes in seconds no water no rinsing and no mess and it's fragrance free. I love it and used it when the dogs peed on Lady and also now I need to use it to clean the banana sticky areas out of her fur. I bought this at Petco and it's great. I'm getting ready to put this on Lady right now to get her cleaned up.

I hope something like this will work for you...

Vanessa
 
But then again, I have seen tons of You Tube videos of pet owners in Japan giving their rabbits baths and they look like they love it and them in swimming pools swimming etc... The bunnies seem to do ok... so maybe it's a regional things.. Maybe in Japan they feel they must give their bunnies baths but none of the buns seemed to have any adverse health reactions because I have seen follow up videos in You Tube... so I dunno.. I was going to wash them especially after the dog peed on Lady but the vet told me the same thing.. but I have seen Rabbit owners in the asian areas of the world give their bunnies baths and it appears on a regular basis... so I dunno...
 
When I was researching before getting Felix, I read on a few sites that some bunnies will actually enjoy regular baths, but only if they've had them regularly since they were a small bun. I didn't want to try it with Felix, because for the most part it seems rather unnecessary - he meticulously cleans himself all the time!
 
we decided against clipping the yellow fur out from the feed and am waiting for it to grow out. But it drives me crazy.

Definitely the right call, as bunnies NEED that long fur on their feet to protect them since they don't have pads like cats and dogs do.

Lady loves bananas but will fall asleep on her banana and her fur is all sticky and then there was the time the dogs peed on her through the baby gate but I won't even go there... (dogs were tortured for a while!!!)

How much banana are you giving her? Fruit should be limited to 1 tsp per 2 lbs body weight per day, which isn't very much banana - if she's getting enough that she eats her fill and has some left to fall asleep on, she's probably getting too much ;)

As for the dogs... heh... we have a female cat and a neutered male cat so they can't pee sideways through an x-pen - if they could, I guarantee my bunnies would've gotten peed on more than once! Like Lady, Nala and Gaz would've had it coming for all the things they've done to the cats, lol.

But for things like that I have a foam pet cleaner that is all natural called Citrus Magic Pet that is for Hard to Bathe pets and it's all Natural Foaming Pet Cleanser...

I bought that exact brand of waterless small animal shampoo once (hell if I remember why - it was way back when my girls were babies; might've just been a random "looks good to keep around" thing)... I think I got it at Walmart. Sadly, I tried it on pee-feet later and had no luck with using it to get rid of the stains on the bottom of Gazzle's feet. I eventually gave up on her ever having clean feet, heh. It probably does work on pee that's fairly fresh, but it didn't seem to do anything for really set-in stains.

At the time, the pee-feet were from accidents outside the box because they weren't old enough to be spayed yet. Now, Gaz still has pee-feet because the girls like to pee on the coroplast floors in their condo - my theory is that they want to ruin it to make sure no one else will want it. I wipe up pee as soon as I spot it, but for some reason it seems to have a magnetic attraction where Gazzle is concerned ><

I can't put down fleece to absorb pee because they dig it up, rip the binder clips holding it to the coroplast off, run around under the fleece, dig holes in it and otherwise DESTROY it. I finally had to take the fleece away :(. That was over a year ago though, so I'm going to give the fleece another try since Gaz lays down in the pee, too, and is badly stained as a result.
(Towels would be much more absorbent, but I can't trust my girls not to chew it up and fleece is the only fabric with short enough fibers that ingesting some doesn't risk causing an obstruction.)
 
Also, it just occurred to me that I've got a bunny with chronically pee-stained feet and she never smells bad... which makes me wonder if that's actually the cause of the bad smells for your bunny.

One thing that can cause a bunny to smell funky (in a "litter box" sort of way) even though you don't see anything in their fur to explain the smell is if their anal glands need cleaning. Binky Bunny's "Monthly Maintenance" checklist has a section on how to check and clean them (an unpleasant but sometimes necessary task).
 
@ briennap
Yes, Jennifer beat me to it, but I was also going to suggest that her scent glands could be the source of the smell. Some rabbits do a fine job of keeping those clean themselves while others need a little help.
Here's a howto video:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x9dbSUdomg[/ame]

@lovelop, I was also concerned when I read that bunny was laying on banana. An average 5-7 lb rabbit should get no more than a 1/2 inch slice per day. I know my bunnies go bananas for banana so I try to stretch it out by giving them little bits at a time:
Here are mine enjoying banana!
[FONT=&quot][ame]http://youtu.be/Ae53AvCQ2G0[/ame][/FONT]
 
My bun smells like body odor or like an onion if he is stressed out. Once my cat was chasing him and after I got the situation under control I noticed a strong body odor smell coming from his back area. It was pretty strong. At first I thought it was me because I have never smelt anything on him but once I ruled out me I sniffed him and could not believe the smell!
 
I just don't understand how she's getting the pee on herself lol...like I said where her litter tray is located there is no way she has access to it so she is never standing in her own pee. But that pillow I posted about before..although I do have the washable cover now and wash it very often cause she still pees on it constantly, could it be from her peeing on the pillow and then standing on it? Cause she sits on the pillow and then digs and then pees and the digs again. So now that I'm thinking about it that could be where her pee stains are from? And I'm still going To try just washing her down with a wash cloth first, I don't want to shock her with a bath.
 
@ briennap
Yes, Jennifer beat me to it, but I was also going to suggest that her scent glands could be the source of the smell. Some rabbits do a fine job of keeping those clean themselves while others need a little help.
Here's a howto video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x9dbSUdomg

@lovelop, I was also concerned when I read that bunny was laying on banana. An average 5-7 lb rabbit should get no more than a 1/2 inch slice per day. I know my bunnies go bananas for banana so I try to stretch it out by giving them little bits at a time:
Here are mine enjoying banana!
[FONT=&quot]http://youtu.be/Ae53AvCQ2G0[/FONT]


If it were to be her scent glands should I take her to the vet to ask? Because she is very very hard to handle she's a devil compared to that bun in the video, so I highly doubt she would be okay with me searching around her bum area. But I don't know if that's the cause either, when I fiirst got her 4 months ago she never had an odor and ever since she fell in love with this pillow at my house she pees on it constantly while she's sitting on it and digging on it so I really think it's from sitting on that pillow I guess I'm going to have to take that pillow away, sad she loves it so much but it's just not healthy for her to be doing that and letting it stain her white feet.
 
Lady only gets the tips of the bananas and mostly it's after we have been playing and she will put what she has not finished in her cage to 'save for later' and winds up sleeping on them! I don't give her tons of bananas that's for sure.. I want to keep her sugar level down. One time I gave her about 5 pieces of cereal for a treat and she was bouncing off the walls... so I'm keeping her sugar treats down!
 
If it were to be her scent glands should I take her to the vet to ask? Because she is very very hard to handle she's a devil compared to that bun in the video, so I highly doubt she would be okay with me searching around her bum area. But I don't know if that's the cause either, when I fiirst got her 4 months ago she never had an odor and ever since she fell in love with this pillow at my house she pees on it constantly while she's sitting on it and digging on it so I really think it's from sitting on that pillow I guess I'm going to have to take that pillow away, sad she loves it so much but it's just not healthy for her to be doing that and letting it stain her white feet.

My Sapphire is also very difficult to handle - moreso than any other bun I've had - so I can sympathize. A vet should certainly be able to take a look (a rabbit savvy vet). Otherwise, if there are any rabbit rescues within driving distance, they often offer nail clippings and scent gland (& teeth) checks either for free or for a nominal fee.
Scent glands can have a most disgusting smell. That odor would be much more potent than slightly yellowed paws.
 
My Sapphire is also very difficult to handle - moreso than any other bun I've had - so I can sympathize. A vet should certainly be able to take a look (a rabbit savvy vet). Otherwise, if there are any rabbit rescues within driving distance, they often offer nail clippings and scent gland (& teeth) checks either for free or for a nominal fee.
Scent glands can have a most disgusting smell. That odor would be much more potent than slightly yellowed paws.


Well she just smells like a combination of her poop and pee, as if she's sitting in a litter box so i don't know, I'll try taking that pillow away and if the smell stops I guess I solved the problem cause like I said before, when I first for her I didn't notice she smelled AT ALL and she still is very clean. Just has that odor, so I think it's from sitting on the pillow when it's soaked with pee.
 

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