How To Introduce A Rabbit Litter Tray

Hi. My name's Marie, and I'm the deputy manager of the small animal department at Wood Green Animal Shelters, and today I'm going to advise you on how to introduce a litter tray to your rabbits. Litter training your rabbits is an excellent way of keeping them healthy, and keeping the accommodation clean.

This is also a great way where you can interact with the rabbits each day, as you're going in and out and removing the tray. Litter training rabbits is really, really easy, and they accept it very well, because they're very clever at this. The best thing to do is provide some sort of cat litter tray and place this inside the hutch or in the run in a corner area.

They can have two or three litter trays, and they do prefer it if they're in a cornered area, or if it's a tray outside, then it could be a sheltered cat litter tray. The best thing to put inside your tray is newspaper and then line this with a good layer of hay. Rabbits do have a habit of liking to be able to go to the toilet in one side, and be able to nibble on the hay on the other side, so do fill this up with a variety of hays.

You can even pop your litter tray, as this one is, in the outside compartment of the hutch and pop it to the back half. However, a lot of rabbits do like to go into the darker area, so you can place a tray inside this side, and they'll feel a lot more comfortable going there. I would really recommend that your hutch and your run are joined together, so they've got the freedom of choice.

It's a good idea to have a couple of trays in the run as well. So you could use things like the cat litter covered tray, or even just a pet carrier. Place newspaper and hay in this.

It gives them shelter and prevents the litter tray from getting wet from the rain. But also, they can go in there and feel quite comfortable and use it as a toilet as well. Another option is a tray filled with soil or filled with sand.

Rabbits love to be able to dig. It is their natural behavior. So they can express this and be a lot happier, but also they do feel quite comfortable to be able to dig around in this, and use this as a toilet as well.

Generally, it's a really nice, straight-forward process. As soon as you've got your rabbits home, put a selection of trays in the corner and they'll choose it very, very quickly. Young rabbits at the age of about six to seven weeks, when they first are out of the nest, up to a couple of months old, won't always take to a tray straight away, particularly when they're entire.

Once they're neutered, at the age of four to six months, their habit of spraying and feces all around the run will settle down a lot. So again, neutering's a fantastic way of encouraging toilet behavior as well. .