Ways to train your rabbit to the litter box
People are responsible for keeping their pets: food, sleep, habitat and general health. Sometimes pets can bring inconvenience to their owners, for example, if they do not have a specific place for a toilet. So the question arises: how to train a rabbit to the tray? This must be done so that the animal feels more comfortable being in the cage. And so it is much easier for the owners to clean.
Tray training your rabbit
How should litter training take place and what is needed for this? First, an important aspect is the selection of the correct tray, its location, filler and temperature in the house. And secondly, in order for the pet to get used to the new toilet, it needs to be trained. For this, the owner should be patient, although rabbits are intelligent animals and amenable to the training process no worse than dogs and cats.
How to choose the right tray
The choice of a new toilet for the animal will not be difficult if you clearly know the requirements put forward for it. A properly selected tray is already 90% of success in animal training. What you should pay attention to when choosing a vessel:
- Rabbit trays should be comfortable and spacious enough for the animal to relieve itself and bury its tracks. If the litter box is too narrow and cramped, the pet will simply refuse to walk in it.
- It is better to avoid acute-angled containers in order to prevent injury to the animals, because rabbits are animals that constantly jump and cannot sit still. Sharp corners can seriously harm your pet.
- You don't have to reinvent the wheel by deciding again how to train your rabbit to the litter box, and just buy a cat litter box with a special grate. They are quite spacious and comfortable for cats, which means that it is much easier to train a rabbit to use this type of litter box. An important aspect in this case concerns the interaction of the animal with the lattice. It is better to take it out, since its rods put pressure on the delicate legs, as a result of which the animal can get injured or simply refuse to relieve itself in a certain place.
- In extreme cases, you can build a toilet for an animal with your own hands. To do this, you can use an ordinary metal basin (it is important that the corner sector is rounded to avoid injury). But when choosing this particular method, the owner must take care of the room temperature so that the cooled metal does not scare the pet away.
To train a decorative rabbit to the tray, it is not enough just to choose the right pot. Experienced breeders know that toilet training becomes much easier with the right choice of litter.
Rules for choosing a tray, filler and location
This should be taken care of at the initial stage of training, otherwise the process will go wrong.
Toilet filler
How do you choose this filler? Should it be flavored or not? Is it better to take sand in granules? Sawdust, maybe? About all the intricacies of the selection of filling in an animal pot in order and in detail:
- the best option for filling the tray in an apartment is sawdust;
- it is better to choose deciduous trees, because the sawdust of these plants absorbs moisture and unpleasant odors well, and also cannot injure the sensitive legs of the animal;
- cat litter is better for cats and leave: rabbits love to try everything, so the likelihood of poisoning pets with granules with chemicals increases significantly;
- sawdust, if it is impossible to get them, can be completely replaced with paper, hay or straw;
- it is allowed to use clean paper, and not newspapers with printing ink, which can also be harmful to health when ingested.
If nothing repels the good sense of smell of the eared, they quickly learn and then go to the toilet in an organized way throughout their lives.
Another important aspect: correctly place a DIY or store-bought tray. Rabbits are very clean animals, they will not shit all over the territory of the cage. Most often, they have one specific spot, and all their owner has to do is simply locate it and place the tray there.
Training
To teach a rabbit to go to a specific location, you need to be patient. In no case should you swear or shout at the animal, and it is better to replace punishment for wrong actions with rewards for the successes done. The most important thing for training a pet to a litter box in an apartment:
- Decide and choose one or more code words ("toilet", "place", etc.) to teach the rabbit to understand where he should relieve his need.
- Install a vessel in full view of the animal, constantly repeating the code words at this time.
- Observe the behavior of the animal and, having identified the moment when it wants to defecate, carefully, without frightening, pick it up and transplant it into the prepared tray, while repeating the code word again.
- It is very difficult to determine the moment when it will feel like it, so you should not despair. The owner can take the pet's feces and put them in the tray, then put the rabbit there and let him smell it. The same should be done with urine: wipe with a cloth, and then put it in the tray. It is important that there is no smell left in the wrong place of bowel movement, otherwise the animal will perceive it as a necessary place of dislocation.
- It is recommended to praise your pets when they go to the right place. To do this, you can give them your favorite sweets and treats.
- Training can begin at the age of one and a half months of the rabbit's age. It is more difficult to potty train completely adults or not yet independent babies.
- Sometimes it can happen that a trained pet stops walking to the right place. This can be due to two factors: pregnancy and puberty. In the first case, you just need to be patient and after giving birth, immediately start retraining the animal. In the second case, things are more complicated, and sometimes only castration can help, because rabbits do not just go to the toilet everywhere during this period: they attract the opposite sex.
The litter box process
The process of training itself is not difficult, and teaching a decorative rabbit to go to a certain place is no more difficult than taming a cat or a dog to the same. It's important to just be patient and genuinely willing to do it.
Love for a pet is also very important: the animal feels an attitude towards it and absorbs information much better when the training process is carried out with love and patience.
Additional recommendations
If a person has already dealt with instilling such skills in other animals: cats, dogs, chinchillas, guinea pigs, etc., then this will not cause him much difficulty in the case of eared ones, but beginners are advised not to forget about basic hygiene rules keeping rabbits. Helpful hints:
- It is better to change the filler in the pot every 2 days. Maximum - once a week. This will not lead to unsanitary conditions and will not scare away the animal, because rabbits are very clean and do not go to dirty trays.
- When releasing your pet for a walk around the apartment, you need to decide: whether additional trays will be equipped on its territory. If not, then if the rabbit wants to defecate, it must be immediately transferred to the tray so that it gets used to it.
- The best location for the bowel movement is the same as where the breeder had it.
- When buying a rabbit with a cage, the future owner should ask the seller for a small amount of litter from the tray, to which he is used to, so that the rabbit does not get confused later.
- It is better if only one person will be engaged in training a decorative rabbit to the tray.
- These animals love to relieve themselves while eating. You shouldn't be scared or scolded by the pet, you just need to transfer it to the tray or throw out the animal's feces.
- To enrich your knowledge base, you can study additional literature or watch a video on the Internet. If you can't cope on your own, you can turn to the breeder for help.
- Living only behind bars, the animals become withdrawn and dull. Therefore, they just need to sometimes get out to freedom and explore new horizons.
Conclusion
The answer to the question of whether it is possible to train a rabbit to the tray is positive: it is possible and necessary. The main thing is patience and love for your pet.
If a person is really devoted to his pet, then problems with his upbringing should not arise, because the owner will look at all difficulties as an opportunity to become better and teach the rabbit something. As a result, under such conditions, the fluffs go where they need to go after a short amount of time.