I know this probably gets asked a lot (Sorry for a lengthy post too!) but it would be great to hear other peoples experiences and tips that worked for you!
So my partner and I recently (2 weeks ago) brought home a male mini lop. Huge learning curve for us as he is our first bunny! He is now 10 weeks old and we’ve tried litter training since the get go.
He LOVES his litter box as his bed and spends a good amount of time in there but he will poop and pee just about all over his cage. Most of what I’ve read has said bunnies have a favourite corner, but he pees in every corner of the cage! so there’s no one spot I can really put the litter tray. Recently this week I’ve been waking up in the mornings and hes moved the litter box from the corner it would be in directly into the middle of the cage in-front of where the door is.
We’ve been picking up his poop and making sure to put it in the tray, fresh hay, and any bedding that he pees on we put in there as well.
He settled in with us quite quickly and he gets 4-6 hours of playtime every day when we get home from work right up until we go to bed, he poops everywhere but we don’t mind that too much as it’s easy to pick up and most of the time its sporadic and not all piled in one spot, but over the last two nights hes peed on the carpet 3 times. We have towels laid down for him to prevent accidents but he always finds the smallest area of carpet that is uncovered and he didn’t do this at all the first week and a half we had him.
We caught him straight after a pee one of these times and picked him up and placed him in his litter tray saying “litter tray”, we think he knew he was in a bit of trouble at the time, but the other two times we haven’t noticed when he’s done it and only cleaned it up straight away upon finding it and telling him “No”.
He’ll be getting desexed at around 4.5-5 months of age, will it matter if he still hasn’t quite understood what the litter tray is for or will all hope be lost once that happens and he still hasn’t learnt proper toilet manners? We want to let him roam much more freely all over the house instead of just all in the living room but we can’t until he at least learns where to pee.
Is there a specific way they’ll sit or position themselves? he doesn’t seem to move any way out of the ordinary but once he moves there it is. Is there anything you did differently that you found worked or is all just about a lot of patience and cleaning up?