litterbox woes

[Lani]

I am stuck in a bit of a stalemate with Oreo on her litter box. I am currently using the corner boxes and this is what I trained her with; she’s now fully trained and has great habits with these corner boxes. I have been using them, despite them being a bit small, because she is a notorious litter digger and also likes to snack on the carefresh sometimes. The type of grate on the corner boxes really prevents her from being able to get to the litter at all. During the course of training her, I quickly realized that the box is not only small in terms of space for her to move around, but it doesn’t hold much. She can easily soil it enough in one day so that the poos are overflowing the grate and the smell from the urine is often unbearable to me after only a few hours.

So I bought the litter/screen combo from BB and tried that with her. As soon as I started using the BB boxes, she went back to digging in the box becasue there’s enough space between the edge of the screen and the box and she can lift the screen up and out of the box. We never got very far with these so I’m not sure how they are on capacity, but since they’re significantly larger than the corner box I figure it must be better.

Anyway, due to the digging, I went back to the corner boxes and back to overflowing poos and stench. I clean her box at least once a day and it gets completely scrubbed down at least once a week so it’s not like I’m not cleaning up after her. Now here I am trying to figure out what to do. Use the corner boxes and deal with the overflowing and smell or use the BB boxes and deal with her digging in them all the time? I am really hoping someone might have a suggestion of what to do; I’m willing to try anything

[Helenor]

Hm. What I can think of is making a dig box/litter pan out of one of those plastic tubs so she can dig and not fling litter out of it (I’m guessing that the flinging litter is the problem with digging). As for litter eating, you could try a different litter that she might not want to eat. I know my housemate’s bunny reacts differently to different litter. He recently stopped sitting in his litterbox because he’s scared of equine pine compared to yesterday’s news. Maybe she won’t eat a different type of litter. I would recommend trying wood stove pellets (hard to find now since it’s not winter) or horse stall pellets like equine pine.

[Sarita]

Have you tried the high sided cat litter boxes that are in 2 pieces where the top latches onto the bottom? You can put the screen in that one as well. What size litter box and screen did you buy also?

[Lani]

Helenor, I have made her a diggy box in a large plastic tub. She does use it occasionally but isn’t as excited about it as she about digging in the litter box. I’m trying to train her to dig only in there by putting her in it when she tries to dig on anything else but so far it’s slow going.

Sarita, I have not tried those cat litter boxes that latch together but that is a good idea, I will have to go look for one tonight. I got the large box/screen combo from BB so it’s plenty of room for her. I did put hay over the screen to hopefully distract her from pulling up the edges of the screen and digging but she still figures it out sometimes. I’ve seriously considered putting a rock on the screen on one end of the box to hold it down but I’m worried she’d somehow get hurt if she still managed to flip the screen out so I haven’t done it.

[Elrohwen]

Do you cover the screen with hay? Hannah will also dig and try to pull it up if it’s not well covered, but if I get a good layer of hay down she mostly leaves it alone.

[Lani]

Yeah, I’ve covered the screen in hay but she does that “smoothing” motion and pushes all the hay around (she does this with the corner boxes too) so she ends up exposing the screen and then just goes to town. As you can see, she’s being quite difficult but I’m determined to figure something out haha

[Elrohwen]

Yeah, Hannah does the “smoothing” thing too, but I usually manage to distract her before she starts pulling up the screen. Bunnies are determined when there’s something they want to do!

[Cuckoo]

Please tell us what you have figure out to do, because my bunny do the same too.
couldn’t figure out a way to distract him

[Lani]

Posted By Elrohwen on 04/28/2011 12:29 PM
Yeah, Hannah does the “smoothing” thing too, but I usually manage to distract her before she starts pulling up the screen. Bunnies are determined when there’s something they want to do!

 

Yes, they definitely are! I’m going to keep covering up the screen with more hay and hope this helps for now. This weekend I’m also going to get one of those large cat boxes with the lid that Sarita suggested and see if that will calm her digging…or at least contain it

With using the covered box, should I look for a specific style? I looked online and notice that the opening for most appears to be pretty high up and small-ish. But maybe that’s just the photos online. Also, is there anything I should anticipate needing to do differently in order to get her to use it?

[lindan]

Hello,

We just got 2 new bunnies and love them! I have the corner litter box with grate but decided not to use the grate. I read that they need to eat the grape cluster looking poops and can’t do that with the cover on. What do you do about that?

[jerseygirl]

Hi Linden

The grape cluster “poop” is called cecotrophes or cecals. Most rabbits eat those straight away direct from the bottom. So a grate on a litterbox shouldn’t really prevent them from eating the cecals. If you’re seeing alot of those type poops in the litterbox, they might be over producing them. This happens when the diet is too high in protein.

[Sarita]

Hi Lindan, you may want to start your own thread to get more answers. The cecals they usually eat straight from their anus…I know that sounds wrong but they do, so don’t worry about a litter grate getting in the way.

[Author]

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