Litter Training

[Szamar]

My recent bunny, 5 years old, has no problem pissing in her litter box, but she always leaves her little bunny berries right next to the box. She already learned that she can not leave it everywhere. She is a nice bunny, really grateful, happy, but she does not like to be picked up. When i caught her next to her litter box, i tried to pet her, put her on her litter box, but she always ran away. If i did not let her do it on her favourite spot, she started pooping under the bed. We recently reached a spot, where she is normally running to me happily everytime she has playtime, I pet her a lot, so on, but if I make a step towards her when she is next to her litter box, she runs under the bed immediately. I feel like she knows that she should not do that, but she keeps pooping there. What should i do? Why can she piss there, but not poop. I would be gratefull to hear any suggestions. 

[currya15]

I had two males both of which are/where trained for their boxes. (We lost one last week.) Give or take they still get excited and leave a few “berries” around the room or in their cage, it happens. What we did was fill their boxes of hay and find out where they were going the most and moved it there. We also would show them where the berries were meant to go. Try and catch it as recent as possible and (using a napkin of course) we would pick them up and show the boys that they go in the box. Thinking of it now, our one we recently lost would go in his cage a lot. I’m thinking it was him telling me ok, my box is filled enough for my liking and you can clean it now lol. It didn’t take a whole lot of time either to get them trained. We clean our other boys’ much more recent now.

Hope this helps!!!

[Szamar]

Thanks for the reply!

I also try to pick up the berries, as soon as I can. Yesterday I laid down next to her litter box (she is more confident if I am in her level), called her, and put her poop one by one into her litter box. She started to make voices like crying, she looked huffy, even turned around and hopped away. 

Can it be caused by the lack of hay? She has one litter box in her cage, and another one in my room, but I never put hay into her litter box. I taught its not hygienic. 

Probably I should live with it though, she is kind of old, just wanted to hear other bunny owners opinions on this behavior. Maybe someone else experienced the same.

[ThorBunny]

My rabbit also leaves a few pellets outside of the box. In her case, they seem to get kicked out when she hops out of the litter box. My advice would be to just put the berries back when you see them rather than chasing her away from the box. You don’t want her to un-learn all of her good litter habits by teaching her that the box is unsafe!

Those “crying” noises may be annoyed grunts. I know my rabbit gets very annoyed when I get into her area and move around her litterbox, including putting back stray poops. I just wait until she is out of the area to pick up poops/clean now

[jerseygirl]

If she can get to the hay while sitting out of the box, then this could be contributing also. They’ll poop where they eat the hay. You could try putting it in a rack that sits over the litter box.

How do the bottom of her hocks look? Could she find standing on the litter too long uncomfortable perhaps?

You mention she is getting older. Do you notice she isn’t getting around as easily as she used too? Could a litterbox with lower sides or a low front help?

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