Walking in Litter 'Tray'

[che]

Hello. New to the forum. Joined with a quick question.

I got my rabbit a couple of days ago - she's the first one I've ever had, and it seems to be doing well. Just one little issue.

We've got the toilet training down. She's a house rabbit, free to roam whenever I can supervise her. She has a toilet tray in the corner of her cage and fills it with pee and poo, not a problem there. She's not going to the toilet anywhere else, which is great. Only took a day to get her to that stage.

The problem I'm finding now is that this tray full of pee and poo is obviously very dirty, and she keeps stepping in it and getting her paws covered. Now, obviously that's not good for her and it's making me want to lock her in the cage more because I don't want her stepping in it and then straight onto the carpet.

Is this something I can do something about? I know that rabbits are very clean animals so I'm surprised that she's ok with just stepping in the pee, but she keeps doing it.

I have a proper litter tray coming in the mail in the next day or two, so I'm hoping that she'll start using that if I leave it in another part of the room so that it's not in her cage, and I can line it with hay to soak the pee up a bit more, but if she doesn't then I'm not sure what I can do. Shall I just put a towel in front of the cage, sort of like a mat for her feet to go on before she reaches the carpet?

 

[selbert]

Hi and welcome!

A towel would be a great idea, my buns love towels and blankets! Sounds like you have a very small litter tray, I have a large one but that's for two rabbits and I also clean the corner where they pee and poop every other day. I got a scoop so I can just scoop the poop and sprinkle some fresh litter and hay (rabbits love to eat and poop at the same time!) They sure do poop a lot!

Hope this helps.

:brownbunny

 

[che]

Thanks for your reply! I've found an old towel to put down. I just wanted to make sure that it was normal behaviour to walk in her litter tray and not something I was doing wrong. Yes, it's a small one at the moment as her cage is small and I lock it up at night so I didn't want to have a big litter tray taking up all of the space. Hopefully her new, bigger tray will turn up today and hopefully she'll start using that. She's shown a lot of interest in one corner of the room, behind where her cage is, so I'm thinking if I put the tray there she'll be more likely to use it. I'll see how it goes.

 

[selbert]

Oh yes it's perfectly normal! When my little doe was a baby she loved sleeping in hers! Despite all the lovely beds and hide outs I kept buying haha.
That sounds like a great idea, I'm sure she'll take to it. If not, then a little hay at the end your bun doesn't poop is a good way to get them to use tray.
All the best

:brownbunny