Hide box poop collection?

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This make rabbit likes to poop in his hide! I tried moving around the cage. Then he pulled it the middle so I left it in HIS area of choice but this is what I see. (Look at pic)

He doesn't pee in there but clearly poops in there. Do I just say oh well and dump the poop every few days or what?

Why does he do this? Luckily he smells clean but this can't be too sanitary.....right?
GxQVHmz
 
Green2Rabbits":3j908lq6 said:
This make rabbit likes to poop in his hide! I tried moving around the cage. Then he pulled it the middle so I left it in HIS area of choice but this is what I see. (Look at pic)

He doesn't pee in there but clearly poops in there. Do I just say oh well and dump the poop every few days or what?

Why does he do this? Luckily he smells clean but this can't be too sanitary.....right?
GxQVHmz

It happens, - I just dump out, or in the summer,- remove the box.
 
I also had a rabbit that liked to save her "hard poops". I have a hypothesis behind this.

Back in the days when I went on lots of nature hikes I would notice that wild rabbits in the US would put many of there poops in a single pile. I'm thinking that this behavior goes all the way back to when Domestic rabbits and US wild rabbits had a common ancestor.

A you probably know that rabbits make two types of poops, soft poops and hard poops. As a regular course of action rabbits re-eat there soft poops. Rabbits get as many vital nutrients from there soft poops as they do eating food the first time. In the wild, rabbit populations fluctuate from boom to bust. When food is plentifully wild rabbits multiply and when food is scarce those that are not eaten by predators die from starvation.

My hypothesis is, in the wild, rabbits save there hard poops as a hedge against possible starvation times in the future. This would be a hereditary/evolved trait, not a cognitively planed out strategy. If there were no food available, the rabbit could eat the hard poops that it had saved up. There would not be as many nutrients in the hard poops, but it would be better than eating nothing at all. I do not have any direct evidence to support this hypothesis. It would be a stretch of ethics `to preform a test on domestic rabbits.

My neighbor and I purchased our breeding female from someone that was getting out of raising meat rabbits. The previous owner worked with her husband to raise meat rabbits. The husband moved to a nursing home. The wife decided to stop "doing rabbits", the rabbits were kept on-site several months before being sold off cheep (instead of being dispatched). I am wondering if with just one person, the feeding was not as regular as it should have been.

When my neighbor and I first got our breeding female, she would always seem very eager when we put food in her dish. In her cage was a place where the poops did not fall through the hole. She seemed to poop there. When we would remove the poops the rabbit would seam to be agitated. Even more than other times we would do suff in the cage. It was then I thought my poop saving hypothesis.

If rabbits have genetic program in here head for poop saving, our rabbit's epperince could have triggered that programming. Her programming would be telling her, "Times are tough, you can save hard poops. If you don't get fed, you can eat your hard poops, and stave off hunger until your next feeding.". We kept her well fed (maybe too much), but once her programming was triggered it would not be shut off easily.
 
Ghost":ta1w9ir5 said:
I also had a rabbit that liked to save her "hard poops". I have a hypothesis behind this.

Back in the days when I went on lots of nature hikes I would notice that wild rabbits in the US would put many of there poops in a single pile. I'm thinking that this behavior goes all the way back to when Domestic rabbits and US wild rabbits had a common ancestor.

A you probably know that rabbits make two types of poops, soft poops and hard poops. As a regular course of action rabbits re-eat there soft poops. Rabbits get as many vital nutrients from there soft poops as they do eating food the first time. In the wild, rabbit populations fluctuate from boom to bust. When food is plentifully wild rabbits multiply and when food is scarce those that are not eaten by predators die from starvation.

My hypothesis is, in the wild, rabbits save there hard poops as a hedge against possible starvation times in the future. This would be a hereditary/evolved trait, not a cognitively planed out strategy. If there were no food available, the rabbit could eat the hard poops that it had saved up. There would not be as many nutrients in the hard poops, but it would be better than eating nothing at all. I do not have any direct evidence to support this hypothesis. It would be a stretch of ethics `to preform a test on domestic rabbits.

My neighbor and I purchased our breeding female from someone that was getting out of raising meat rabbits. The previous owner worked with her husband to raise meat rabbits. The husband moved to a nursing home. The wife decided to stop "doing rabbits", the rabbits were kept on-site several months before being sold off cheep (instead of being dispatched). I am wondering if with just one person, the feeding was not as regular as it should have been.

When my neighbor and I first got our breeding female, she would always seem very eager when we put food in her dish. In her cage was a place where the poops did not fall through the hole. She seemed to poop there. When we would remove the poops the rabbit would seam to be agitated. Even more than other times we would do suff in the cage. It was then I thought my poop saving hypothesis.

If rabbits have genetic program in here head for poop saving, our rabbit's epperince could have triggered that programming. Her programming would be telling her, "Times are tough, you can save hard poops. If you don't get fed, you can eat your hard poops, and stave off hunger until your next feeding.". We kept her well fed (maybe too much), but once her programming was triggered it would not be shut off easily.

That actually makes perfect sense like today I went and "cleaned house" brushing his poop out the sides where it falls through the cage mesh then gave fresh bedding.

He doesn't pee which is funny because it is around freezing outside so he purposely doesn't pee just poop and organize it neatly to the front corner of his hide with his cardboard strip bedding over it. He also doesn't stink and the poop I brush out is dense. I feed him twice a day so it must be old behavior.

Thanks for the added input. In summer his hide won't get a bottom or bedding so it will just fall through but at least during winter I don't need to be concerned. He did urinate once but I moved his hide.....he adjusted it and so far it's only the poop balls.
If he likes his bed and y'all aren't worried then I'm not going to.
Thanks and Merry Christmas!
 
My old style checkerd giant, used to pile the dry poop in a back corner of their cage..
they were raised in a solid bottom cage with deep bedding ..
They also were agrivated when I removed it..
I never figgured out why they did this..
your theory/hypothesis makes sense..
 
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