Hello. I’m curious about how other folks have set up their secondary litter boxes for free-range house bunnies. (With litter only, or litter + feed hay?) And how this effects their bun’s litterbox pooping habits.
Working in cooperation with my bun’s instincts, I was successful in shaping his use of a primary litterbox area inside his home cage. Moving from a simple dishpan + hay & litter combo, to a final configuration of an easy to clean high-backed corner litter pan, within a larger dishpan facing a hay rack over three weeks. Dubbanee is now very comfortable and hygenic, with excellent litter box habits.
When I later decided to let Dubbanee have 24 hour access to his exercise pen area (open to his home cage), I added a second litter box at the far end “just in case”. Since then, I have found that Dubbanee has been leaving 5-10 stray droppings inside the expen, right next to this secondary pan. (With 99% of his daily droppings still inside his home litter pan [cleaned daily], and with no stray urine in evidence).
I’m pretty sure this is my fault for sending mixed messages – I also added feed hay to this secondary box, which D. can reach from outside the box, leading to browse & poop behavior from outside of the box. For about a week and a half, I’ve been sweeping the poops into the litter pan, with new poops reliably reappearing outside the box each evening. (I’m pretty sure this is distinct from territorial marking; before training, Dubs left poops around the entire periphery of the expen, but has not since. He hasn’t engaged in any spraying [though admittedly he fits the profile as an 11 month old unaltered male]). Because I’ve been priming the secondary pan, I haven’t been able to verify if it has in fact been used for poops during the day.
I considered blocking outside access to the hay, but eventually decided to scale back to just the inner litter pan for poops, with all feed once again inside his home cage last night. (Because my goal is to have Dubbanee graduate to being a true free-range house rabbit. I want to give my buddy the most freedom possible, but also have to be somewhat careful because I am immuno-compromised after a year’s worth of chemotherapy. )
I’ll be observing closely over the next few days to see if Dubs gets back to his previously excellent litterbox habits with a no-feed secondary litter box. But I’d also love to hear from the community about how their bun’s secondary litter boxes are set up, whether their buns habitually poop where they flop & lounge, multi-room litterbox habits & etc.
Thanks for listening.
DD