Is it possible, smell wise, to raise rabbits in the basement

[Redwolff644]

I've been considering moving my 5 rabbits (4 does, 1 buck) to my basement. It's between 40-60 year round down there, I don't have to go out in the heat or cold (Wisconsinite), and I can keep everything right there by the cages. I was considering all wire cages with a setup to deposit the feces and urine in a bucket that could be emptied regularly. Would this keep the smell down to an acceptable level, or is there something I am missing?

 

[MamaSheepdog]

There will always be some odor when keeping any animals indoors, but if you clean regularly you can keep it to a minimum. Pine pellets (horse stall bedding or wood stove pellets without accelerant) will help with urine absorption and odor control.

Adding a TBSP of apple cider vinegar per gallon to the drinking water is also supposed to help with the urine odor.

 

[CloverHen]

Sweet PDZ absorbs ammonia and is used in horse stalls to improve air quality. I'd highly recommend it for anyone with rabbits inside the house.

 

[akane]

The rabbits don't cause much smell indoors. I have far more trouble keeping the smell down from the guinea pigs and the chinchillas. Guinea pigs pee a lot and the chins are on fleece. There is some urine smell partially because rabbits pee out of their cages even with plastic 6" up. Everywhere I have kept a rabbit indoors I have ended up with a urine coated wall. I use horse pellets. They aren't the best for shallow trays. That's when I'd use the aglime/sweet pdz/barn lime. The bottom of a bucket could have some pellet bedding or wood stove pellets to help reduce moisture. A dehumidifier helps too. Moisture is your enemy. It will increase the urine smell and make the air feel heavy with it.

 

[Susie570]

Sweet PDZ absorbs ammonia and is used in horse stalls to improve air quality. I'd highly recommend it for anyone with rabbits inside the house.

Do you know if Sweet PDZ is safe to use in rabbit litter boxes?

 

[akane]

Anything dusty can cause respiratory infection if it is disturbed often and rabbits may like to dig in such material. Lots of companies and individuals have been adding baking soda to their bedding and caused respiratory infections. aglime is heavier but it still carries some risk. I only ever use it under a wire floor.

 

[Susie570]

Anything dusty can cause respiratory infection if it is disturbed often and rabbits may like to dig in such material. Lots of companies and individuals have been adding baking soda to their bedding and caused respiratory infections. aglime is heavier but it still carries some risk. I only ever use it under a wire floor.

That's what I thought... wasn't sure how dusty it is though

 

[funnies50]

I used to keep Coco in the garage :shrug: But I'm not sure about a basement, because it's kind of dusty, doncha think? :roll: Idek.

 

[akane]

Depends on your basement. Basements can be fully furnished living quarters. We were looking at a house that had it's own kitchen and bedrooms in a fully below ground basement.

 

[Susie570]

I currently have 5 rabbits indoors. There is definitely an odor, but not necessarily an unpleasant one. Sometimes there is a urine smell :x and I have to go through and do a thorough cleaning. I'm currently experimenting with putting some peat in the drop trays to see if that absorbs odor any better, but the rabbits prefer to pee in their litter boxes and, if I were fastidious about it, I would have to clean the litter boxes every day.

Note: you cannot clean a rabbit litter box the way you clean a cast litter box, i.e. scooping out the dirty stuff. It simply doesn't work. You just have to dump the whole thing.

 

[MatSuAK]

I had great success keeping four Satin/Flemish mix in our mud/laundry room. I used wire cages with pans underneath. Taped dog potty pads to the inside of the pans. Make sure rabbits can NOT reach to chew on the pads. The order control was splendid. Easy to fold and dump the poo on top of potty pad in the garden and throw away the potty pad, no ripping or spilling of urine involved.
This was last winter and we heat with wood, so humidity was never an issue for us. Left the door open to the rest of the house and dogs, caged rabbits, and cats got along just fine. The cats actually loved sleeping in and eating the hay on top of the bunny cages

 

[BirchLane]

I keep my entire rabbitry in the basement, which is currently comprised of my meat rabbit breeders (two meat mutts and Flemish Giant) and my English Lop show rabbits (2 bucks, 3 does). I usually have at least two litters of kits down there, which can sometimes bring my numbers around 25-30ish. Mine is partially in-ground, so I experience temperatures that are usually between 60-70 degrees year-round, though there is some fluctuation in extreme weather conditions. I live in southeastern TN and it's notoriously sweltery here from about May until September, so I keep a dehumidifier going 24/7 during that time. I'm also considering a window AC unit for the basement to cut down on the "swimming through the air" feeling that comes with southern summers.

I am extremely fortunate that my basement is equipped with a roll-up garage door. I thought it was stupid when my husband and I originally moved into the house in 2013, but I quickly began to appreciate its value when I began my work as a "rabbiteer." It's so convenient when it's time to clean out cage pans and move the "bunny berries" out to the garden, or when it's time to restock the feed and hay supplies. Plus, now that it's starting to cool off, I can roll the door up to get even more air circulation down there.

I do, however, find that you have to be super-vigilant about cleaning up after your rabbits so that things don't start to get a little funky. When I first began raising rabbits in the basement, I was cleaning pans almost every single day to keep the smell down. (Now, to be fair, I have an extremely sensitive nose and am sometimes bothered by smells that don't phase other people.) I now use Sweet PDZ and pelleted horse bedding in each of my cage pans to neutralize the scent of rabbit urine and increase absorbency, which allows me to go about 4 days before needing to completely dump and spray out the pans belonging to my breeders and show buns. I'm still dumping the pans underneath my grow-out pens every 1-2 days because growing kits produce an astounding amount of poop.

 

[WVForestGirl]

What do you use to spray out the pans when you clean them?

 

[macksmom98]

What about using cedar or pine shavings? I have read a lot about them and I know there are some that think they can cause sickness, but I have also heard that's not been proven.....any thoughts from others?

 

[ladysown]

A lady I used to know kept 15 rabbits in her house all the time and you would NEVER know. Seriously, you walk into her basement and you didn't smell them, you just saw them. she did this out of necessity over having poor neighbours AND a very limited pet policy in town (allowed two pets total).

Her method.
1. wrapped the trays in garbage bags.
2. tip trays twice a day and flush down the toilet. and every other day she changed out the garbage bags
3. ZERO litter pans... she said too hard to clean and impossible keep out the smell if you have to store until garbage day.

I was REALLY impressed with her diligence. AND her trust as she let me come in and see her set up and that was just something she didn't do.

 

[akane]

The effects of cedar have been proven including in laboratory settings. It is potentially deadly in a confined area. It can be used some in very well ventilated areas. Preferably only outdoors with air flow. Pine is better but scientists have still tested levels of liver enzymes that point toward stress on the internal organs. You are less likely to see respiratory problems with pine than with cedar though. I think it's just less acute. Cedar is so strong it often causes respiratory problems and the animal dies or the person learns not to use cedar instead of the slow damage to the liver that seems more common with pine. Although, our loss to cedar was not an acute respiratory problem but the organ damage. He just drank and drank and drank water. I think his body was trying to flush toxins. Kiln dried pine, even more so pine pellets because they are compressed, are generally considered safe. The drying process gets rid of much of the volatile oils.

 

[BirchLane]

What do you use to spray out the pans when you clean them?

I just use my water hose, coupled with a high pressure spray nozzle. Some people use pressure washers on their pans and cages, but I never let mine go that long without a thorough cleaning. I also keep myself well stocked with kitchen scrub brushes from the Dollar Tree, just in case I have one that gets cecotropes stuck to the cage wire. I generally don't have any problems with "the funk" at all, but I would use diluted white vinegar as a cleaning solution in the event that I did.

Kiln dried pine, even more so pine pellets because they are compressed, are generally considered safe. The drying process gets rid of much of the volatile oils.

I use pelletized horse bedding for just that reason. Well, and also because I'm a horse person and keep it on hand for my equestrian pursuits. Having been employed by a very well respected show barn with 80+ horses in residence, I developed a very strong appreciation for the necessity of good ventilation and bedding options that are very friendly on the respiratory system when it came time to clean out all those stalls. :x Pine pellets are incredibly absorbent, low dust, and really affordable. Even though they add a little weight to my pans, I'm really thankful that I don't have to worry about pee sloshing around when I'm trying to take pans down from the top level of my triple stack cages. (I'm pretty convinced that my meat mutt buck is actually just pee with fur on it.)

 

[akane]

Pine pellets are awesome for moisture and smell and they worked fine in the stable but I actually find the dust horrid using pine pellets for my indoor guinea pigs. It all breaks down to the tiniest particles and gets thrown everywhere. I was also using it for hedgehogs and despite the fact they disturb the bedding less the room would be coated in a thin layer from the broken down pine pellets within a couple months. You could see the path we took through the doorway and around the heater to the cages. I have to wear a dust mask to sweep the floor and to clean cages. Clouds of dust come up when I pour a scoop from the cage into the dirty bedding container to go on the compost pile. It's great for it's most important purpose of keeping cages dry and ammonia free but not if we are talking about dust when used with an animal that pees like guinea pigs and scatters it around while running.

Corn cob pellets risk toxic mold and being eaten by the animals. There's a walnut hulls pellet I want to try but so not cost effective compared to pine. There's also wheat pellets which work great in my experience (they do clump as they dry so it's a different style of cleaning which is the part that avoids the dust) but for some reason no one has really gone anywhere with the product. It's still quite hard to find wheat in the pellet form like oxbowhay company started to make popular. The closest I can get locally is swheat scoop cat litter which isn't quite the same. We found the urine trickles to the bottom before being fully absorbed and if you don't stir and scoop daily, if not multiple times daily, it starts to sort of rot down there. When you finally go to clean it out...

 

[BirchLane]

I suppose the difference in my experience is the fact that I keep my rabbits on wire floors, so they're never in direct contact with the pellets. (Before anyone has a fuss over wire floors, I keep my cages well equipped with resting mats and find that my buns experience far fewer issues such as urine scald and sore hocks because they aren't in contact with their refuse.)

 

[MamaSheepdog]

I suppose the difference in my experience is the fact that I keep my rabbits on wire floors, so they're never in direct contact with the pellets. (Before anyone has a fuss over wire floors, I keep my cages well equipped with resting mats and find that my buns experience far fewer issues such as urine scald and sore hocks because they aren't in contact with their refuse.)

You won't get any flak on RT for keeping rabbits on wire. Most of us do except those that colony raise or live in Europe where it is illegal to do so.

I agree with the dust being an issue when animals are in direct contact with it... I use it in my whelping boxes in the house and it is very dusty. But the puppies smell nice and clean.