Dealing with Urine Salts

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TerriG

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I am sick of urine salts building up in the pee corner in my grow-out cages. Do you guys have this problem? How do you deal with it? I went and cleaned it all recently and it is all gunked up again. I do need to install urine guards so that there aren't any corners for it to build up in. It's not just the corner though. It just builds up on the wire in that area.
 
It's not on the tray, it's on the wire bottom. I use 1" x 1/2" for my cage bottoms. The grow-out cages don't have trays, it just falls to the ground and then we muck out the hay and waste.
 
Vinegar, spray it on with a spray bottle, or put paper towel soaked in vinegar over top to loosen the buildup and make it easy to clean off. Then regular cleaning with soap and water should prevent it from building up again.
 
How often is regular? There are usually 5 rabbits in there. I'm being dead serious. It's easy to clean the doe's cages with them in there, but the grow-outs are a lot harder. I built a tractor to be able to empty out a cage for cleaning. I am just trying to think about winter again. We couldn't even do trays for weeks at a time because the pee-cicles froze the trays to the cages. We had to take hot water and screw drivers to get them loose. Last winter was pretty brutal.

I check the rabbits every day but they always pee in the corner that is hardest to see. I need to do better at catching it before it becomes a big chore to take care of.<br /><br />__________ Wed Sep 04, 2013 3:21 pm __________<br /><br />
Bad Habit":22i99z07 said:
Vinegar, spray it on with a spray bottle, or put paper towel soaked in vinegar over top to loosen the buildup and make it easy to clean off. Then regular cleaning with soap and water should prevent it from building up again.

Vinegar is doable. I had wondered if it would work.
 
I used it to clean my 2nd hand plastic bottomed cages. One of them I'd been scrubbing for WEEKS, had gone through three or four scrubbers on ONE cage, and nothing... I put vinegar into the cage and let it sit for an hour, and it wiped off with just a cloth. No scrubbing, no work. The cage was black on the bottom to start with, when it should have been white. I wish I'd gotten before and after pictures, because I honestly can't believe myself how well it worked... And I was there when it happened!!!
 
I like vinegar. It works well on rabbit urine. Gets all fizzy even applied and, for me, the urine pretty much just wipes off. Had to clean a cage recently that I bought that had years of built up urine and the vinegar took it right off.
 
The buildup is caused by the calcium in the urine, and the acid in the vinegar breaks it down. Just make sure to rinse with plain water afterward because the acid is no good for your galvanized wire.

I also use a putty knife to chip off the calcium.
 

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