Newbie Bedding Question

[summerluvin_ca]

I'm curious what type of bedding you use for your rabbits, if any?

Our 2 new FG's are taking the Timothy Hay and creating a disaster mess with it...ie. bedding or urinating in it
As I am just starting out raising for meat and I have JUST found a t.h. provider of bales... should I offer them up something else like straw or hays? still offering the T.H. in the grate for them.

Am I clear as mud? lol for our rescued angora, we started out purchasing bedding from the pet supply until I started shredding virgin newsprint for her cage.

 

[Dood]

The majority of my rabbits are on wire with resting mats

My house bunnies are very well litter trained and have litter boxes full of pine chips (sold as horse stall bedding for $5.89 for a compressed 40 pound bag) and on outdoor carpeting which gets deep cleaned as needed - once a month or so and more frequently if there are kits.

 

[Zass]

I strongly recommend having a wire cage(with resting boards) for a FG doe with a litter. Even if the parents use a litterbox, all those babies won't. They will pee and poo all over the place, and there will likely be lots of them.

Straw makes for better bedding than hay because it resists absorbing moisture. I prefer to use a layer of pelleted horse bedding with a layer of straw over top. The horse bedding absorbs the urine, and the straw helps keep the rabbits clean and dry, up off the level of their own mess.

This is what I mean by pelleted horse bedding:
http://www.tractorsupply.com/en/store/t ... ding-40-lb

 

[SA Farm]

With all-wire, I just have resting boards.
With hutches (part wood, part wire) I use shavings and straw in the wooden part.
Indoor plastic bottom cages, I use shavings.
I only use pine or aspen shavings with preference for aspen.

 

[bantambunnies]

If you must use solid-bottomed cages, or if you have drop pans, I usually use newspaper (but a lot of people use the equine pellets, and I'm sure those work even better.) I shred the newspaper by hand and it tends to wick up urine better than pine chips do. But otherwise, I use pine shavings. Pine shavings and newspaper together work okay, as well.

I do NOT like straw because there's no absorbent quality. The urine just sits in the bottom of the cage. But if you use something absorbent underneath, as Zass suggested, then it would work better.

For litterpans (that clip onto the side of the cage) I usually use kitty litter (natural and non-tracking, preferably). But that's only for house buns and currently we are house-bun-free (hallelujah! )

 

[Zass]

I do NOT like straw because there's no absorbent quality. The urine just sits in the bottom of the cage.

Definitely. I use straw only over top of an absorbent bedding. The straw works as a non-absorbent layer to keep the rabbits up off the messy stuff.

 

[akane]

Every solid bottom item gets a layer of pine pellets. If I need to make a more stable base than the rolling pellets I put 1-2" of shavings. If I need more insulation against cold then I put straw over it but only in winter when most urine is frozen anyway. Straw and hay are not only poor choices for absorbing liquid but their insulating properties make things wetter than if it was open to the air. Wet straw and even more so hay can mold quickly causing death if they ingest any. Lost a guinea pig that way. They'd peed on hay they pulled out of the rack. We opened him up to find his intestines not just bloated but necrotic in some places and he'd still been breathing. Right now instead of racks I am feeding a little less hay than they will eat daily straight on to the pine pellet layer but stirring the entire solid bottom cages daily. What does get left behind is mixed into the absorbent pellets and dries out. When my pellets are mostly sawdust so have much less absorbency left or the droppings become too numerous I empty that cage.

 

[Gerard Dawn]

You can use also use aspen, or a combination of aspen and other hardwoods, such as hemlock, spruce or fir. Hardwoods come in pellets, chips, shavings, or fine shavings. They are effective, however tend to be hard and splintery.