How to toilet train your rabbit

My friends are so surprised when I told them that my bunnies are all toilet trained. Meaning: they know when to go and where the toilet is when they want to pee or poo. I have to capture that unbelievable expression on their face to really show you what I mean.

Rabbits are more intelligent and more sociable than what we think they are. Having them toilet trained is easy and they pick up very fast. Some takes a day or two, some takes longer. But it can be done with a little bit of patience.

Here is what you need:

1) Litter box – the normal cat litter box is fine. I prefer those that has a higher edge. Some bunnies raise their butt too high and they overshoot. It happened to my previous bun.

2) Hay – the hay that your rabbit is currently consuming

3) Bathroom mat or wire mesh – to cover the litter material to prevent the rabbits from consuming them. I have also tried wired document tray with holes before. All of them work well as long as you can separate the rabbits from the litter material.

4) Litter material – Paper based/Organic litter material is recommended. Newspaper or plenty of hay is fine too but you will need to be very diligent in cleaning the box. I avoid crystalite type of cat litter, corn cat litter, or other type of litter which are very dusty – they are not good for rabbits respiratory system.

5) Balsamic vinegar – to clean up any unwanted pee outside of the litter box to clear away the markings and odour. I find this vinegar works the best compared to white vinegar. It’s strong.

6) A bun that is already spayed/neutered. I would say this contributes 50% of the success rate!

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Let me share my litter training experience with you:

1) First, lay your litter box with the litter material, the bathroom mat/mesh, and then the hay on top.

2) Put your bun into a smaller area, and put the litter box in the same area as well.

3) Pick up any poos that are outside of the box. This action will move his/her ’smell’ into the litter box. When the bun pees outside of the litter box, wipe it away and use the balsamic vinegar to wipe on that spot. Talk to him in a gentle voice saying something like, “No no, not the right place buddy”.

4) If the bun keeps peeing in the same area, eventhough you’ve wiped the balsamic vinegar in that same spot many times, then move your litter box to cover that particular area. It is easier to accommodate him than he accommodates you. If you find that the bun is peeing in more than one area, no matter where you put the box, then you can try this:

a) Clean up the whole area by washing it thoroughly with cleaning products to wash away his ’smell’ and start again OR

b) Put another litter box OR

c) Reduce the size of the training area OR

d) Change the rabbit, this is a stubborn bun! (just kidding… )

5) If you see him poos inside the litter box, praise him by giving him a gentle pat on his head, or give him a treat that he likes.

6) When trained successfully, you will get zero pee and 2 or 3 poos outside of the box. Do expects a few poos outside of box now and then because that’s rabbit’s way of marking his territory.

If your bun is too young to be spayed/neutered and you need him/her to be litter trained, no worries, you can still do it. But do expect more peeing outside of the box (especially for male bun), and there is a possibility that your bun’s toilet habit might change after spaying/neutering. So you might need to retrain him/her after that. In any case, they all can be litter trained.

Once you reach zero pee stage, start to expand the bun’s area. Do it step by step. If you plan to let your bun free access to a big area, make sure that you prepare another litter box to cover the area. Some buns need extra litter boxes, some don’t.

In my experience, Kenji has a whole apartment (1000 sq ft) to himself then, and he knows exactly where to go to when he needs his toilet. He can recognise the way back to his litter box.

Enjoy the litter training experience!