I'm back ... c: With questions of course.

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I've stopped by Rabbittalk. I've missed you guys! The following paragraph will be an update about the rabbitry so if you care about that read on. If you just want to know what my questions are skip to the part in bold.

So why haven't I been on Rabbittalk lately? Well, mostly it is due to the fact that I stopped breeding rabbits. There are a few different reasons I stopped, but one of the main ones is because I just don't have the time to raise the kits as tame as I want. Also, the demand for rabbits has dramatically decreased in my area over the past year and there are dozens and dozens of rabbits popping up in rescues all over my small town, which just three years ago there was not even one rescue that had rabbits in the area.

I've recently been fostering rabbits, and decided a few months ago to rehome my last one and just focus solely on my schoolwork as this is my senior year of high-school. Then I got a email from a lady who had adopted an old Holland buck from me. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself, let's go back through the history of this buck the past few years and this present time email will make more sense. Thumper, was my first Holland breeder buck and a sweet heart that I rescued from a inhuman breeder. The poor rabbits were living in just awful conditions. (You may have seen pics or posts about him in the past, I had him for 2 years) Anyway, I got him cleaned up and he lived with me for a year until I decided I wanted to rehome him to make room for a younger buck that had the colors I wanted to introduce into my herd.

I gave him to a very good friend of mine who is very rabbit savy and cares a lot about her pets. That didn't last long. My friend reported to me that no matter what she tried, Thumper just didn't like her and he would dig and bite at her whenever she tried to pet or handle him. I took him back, and he was just as sweet as ever to me. :? :lol: I gave up on getting a new buck and just decided to keep him.

Another year when by and at this point it is a few months from the present. I decided to rehome all my rabbits and I found him a wonderful indoor home with some kids to retire in. I warned the lady who adopted him that I tried rehoming him a year ago and he did not take well to his new owner, but it was a year ago and he has changed some since then. She was fine with it and took him home and it went about a month until I heard from her again. Now back to that email. The lady is telling me that Thumper is biting and she has been trying about everything she can think of to make him feel more comfortable. She got him as a family pet and for her two young boys but she said she hadn't let them hold him because he was being aggressive. She said she may need to rehome him but she wanted a few more weeks to see if she could make a last stitch effort to win him over.

I heard from her yesterday and she said all attempts had failed and no matter what she tried he is still biting and discontent. She said she would sit with him alone at night on her lap when everyone was asleep so it was nice and quiet, but he just shakes when she pets him and if she pets him for too long he will start biting her. I told her before she adopted him that I would take him back with a full refund if it didn't end up working out so I plan on taking him back in.

She is going to drop him off tomorrow and actually pick up another foster of mine who is the sweetest little cuddly doe that I've always thought would be great with children. She sits on my lap contently for hours at a time while I do homework and read. Anyway, I was thinking about rehoming Thumper but he doesn't seem to like anyone else but me! :lol: :shock: So I'm considering keeping him... I realize I mentioned wanting to focus on school, but our 16 year old cat just passed away and our house went from having quite a few animals including a full rabbitry to only one rabbit in the past year. I've never been without a pet and the thought makes me sad. So I'm seriously considering keeping Thumper inside and part of me thinks it may be less work. No trips outside to break the frozen water or open and shut tarps or bundling up to trek through the snow and worrying about ice bottles in the summer. I know I'll have to clean the litter tray a lot more but I think it will compensate with all the stuff with comes with having them outside. (Whew thanks for sticking with me through all that! :cheesysmile: )

Ok, so my rabbitry set up is such that I have large hutches outside in a sheltered area and I put tarps around the rabbit hutches in the winter. Thumper is fairly old and I noticed this fall he wasn't handling the cold well at all, that is one reason I wanted to rehome him to an indoor home. The reason I've never had any indoor rabbits is because I still live with my parents, and they don't like the rabbit urine smell. However, they both really like Thumper (my dad especially) and are willing to make an exception for him (since it is just one rabbit) to live in my room. If this works out how I want it to, I will have him litter trained and let him free range in my room when I am there with him.

So my question is, what are some good ways to reduce rabbit urine odor?

I did some research on it and found Bi-Odor. I hesitate when using anything unnatural (as in not herbs etc) with either myself or rabbits and was wondering if anyone had experience with it? I don't know much about it except you put it in their water and it helps their urine not to smell. This is where I initially found it: http://www.thenaturetrail.com/rabbit-ca ... pdz-yucca/

Of course, cleaning the litterbox out everyday and washing with white vinegar once in a while will help too. I run a diffuser in my room a lot recently with some essential oils just so it smells nice, so that may help. Are there any other tips or ideas you guys have? What works for you who have indoor buns?

Thanks for reading! Love you guys! :group-hug2:

I can't imagine a pet-free life! I hope that thumper settles into living in your room with you, it sounds like he's been missing you.
I sprinkle a small amount of sweet pdz in my litter pans, it seems to do pretty well with cutting down the urine smell.
Good luck!

I use clay kitty litter and baking soda in my indoor rabbits pans and change them frequently, giving a good scrub with full strength vinegar to remove any crusted areas

Neutering will also reduce the pungency of male rabbit urine but considering he isn't in the best of health you may not want to risk anesthetic

Thank you guys!

Does anyone have any experience with Bi-Odor that you put in their water or Bye Bye Odor that is supposed to remove ammonia when sprayed on the tray?

Hi,
I'm super new to rabbits, I just got mine in July and already have an unexpected litter. I did neuter my boy, and he has stopped spraying. I currently have him, the mom and 5 babies living in my bedroom, because I don't trust my dogs enough to keep them elsewhere in the house. At first I couldn't stand the smell, but I found a litter that seems to be really great. It's called "feline pine" and it is pine pellets that turn into a sawdust consistency when wet. I can now enter my home & room without any stinky rabbit smells. It does smell like hay and pine, and I clean the boxes frequently. With 7 rabbits in my room (OMG) I have to clean the box at least every other day, sometimes every day. The buck is in his own cage, and his needs cleaning less frequently since he is only one bunny.

Another thing that you probably know already since you are familiar with rabbits, is to put the hay in the litter box. I resisted doing this at first because it seems so gross. I had those corner litter boxes, and a hay feeder. I found that they would pee all over the hay that went in the cage, making it smell horrific. Now I got a normal cat box, I barley cover the bottom with pine pellets (they expand), and I top with a handful of pine shavings. Then I put the hay in one half of the box. The smell is WAY better, and all bunnies are using the boxes to urinate (even the 4 week old kits). The cage floors are cleaner now, too.

Also, a 40lb bag of the pine litter lasted from July until last week. It doesn't take much to work.

you can get pelleted pine horse bedding at tractor supply, a 40lb bag is something like $15 - way cheaper than feline pine and it's exactly the same thing it's what i use in my housebunny's cage and you can't smell him at all. he never really did spray before i got him neutered, but he also never really got the hang of the litterbox for peeing in, so we have fleece on the floor in his pen. it's fairly absorbant and machine washable, works really well. of course he's a dwarf, so there's not like, huge puddles of pee to deal with, so your mileage may vary lol. i don't really use any urine deodorizer since he doesn't really smell, so i can't give recommendations on those.

i've also read that feeding them a cheaper quality food that has a lot of soy in it can make the urine smell worse. i know switching foods is pretty hard on rabbits, but may be worth looking into. i found that oxbow and sherwood forest cut down on the smell of urine quite a bit. unfortunately those feeds aren't good for breeding rabbits, so i moved them to a commercial feed which does contain soy as a filler, but so far i haven't found it too bad. it definitely smells better than when they were all on purina, haha.

Back when I had house bunnies I used hardwood fuel pellets as litter, they are even cheaper than the pine pellet bedding, but still expand like the bedding pellets. And since they never actually got into it, since I had hay on top of it, I didn't worry about them ingesting it. It's 40# bag generally like $5 or less.

My males never missed peeing in the litter box, but there were typically berries laying around favorite spots, like cardboard hidey houses and such.

shazza":1cp3o01m said:

you can get pelleted pine horse bedding at tractor supply, a 40lb bag is something like $15 - way cheaper than feline pine and it's exactly the same thing it's what i use in my housebunny's cage and you can't smell him at all.

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Thanks so much for the tip! The feline pine is expensive, so I'm glad to find an alternative.

Thank you guys so much! I found the pine pellets work best like most of you mentioned.

I do have a hilarious update though. I had him in my room for a few months and then he started getting really noisy at night and I couldn't handle it. I rehomed him a few weeks ago and what do you know...just over a week later the lady with the foster I had swapped with Thumper shows up at my doorstep. Literally. The husband of the lady shows up at my house a few nights ago and has her with him, saying they are supposedly moving overnight.... :| After I've had her back for a few days I realize why they wanted so desperately to get rid of her...she's a sassy monster :lol: She's hit that teenage sassy pants stage and is just a little grump. I'm winning her over with treats though hahaha.

The amount of smell was never a problem. Some barn lime/aglime and/or sweet pdz with pine pellets works fine for even things with more or stronger urine than rabbits provided it goes into the litter or tray sprinkled with enough to neutralize it. Aglime is just ground limestone, which is mostly calcium carbonate and helps neutralize odors and ammonia. Hydrated or hydrolyzed lime and quicklime are processed products that can also help with odors but are dangerous to have contact with and caustic. Sweet pdz is zeolite, which is an ammonia absorbing mineral we also often use in fish tanks or prefiltering contaminated water. Inhaling large amounts of even inert dust is bad though so don't excessively spread it into bedding the animals will be digging or running around in.

My problem with indoor rabbits is they ALWAYS spray the walls. Different breeds, different genders, different sources, different numbers, breeding, not breeding, etc... I end up repainting the walls behind the cages without fail when I move. Urine guards don't matter. A netherland can get 4' up the wall with a deep tray or urine guards. Hutches tended to all leaks around the trays and we had plastic containers filled with urine under the legs of a solid side, back, and top hutch we tried to use indoors. I have been debating how to make truly urine proof, easy to wipe down cages that can still have ventilation and wire or slat floors so we don't have tons of broken down bedding pellets to dispose of like the guinea pigs.

Thanks for all the info Akane!

I do find the spraying so strange though. I bring my bunnies indoors when it gets really hot, and I've had quite a few different breeds and only had one buck that ever sprayed, and it was only twice. Once when he was mating and another time when he was inside in a cage next to the doe. He was a mix breed dutch I believe. I remember being thoroughly shocked when I found urine on the ceiling of his hutch after breeding. :lol: I guess I've just had good luck with most of my rabbits. My rabbits behave themselves. :mrgreen:

That has got to be pretty frustrating though. What cleaning solution do you use? I find if a rabbit smells a odd cleaner they want to mark it with their own scent. I usually use just plain soap and water but have found vinegar works wonders with odors and keeps the rabbits from being too intrigued with the smell.