Happy Hygiene: How to Maintain Your Rabbit’s Cleanliness and Comfort

Let’s start with a very important statement:

If you care about their cleanliness, they care about it, too.

Cleaning Routine 101

There are many reasons why people choose to not clean their rabbits litter box and pen each day. That is their choice. But keep in mind that as lazy as you are, is how lazy your rabbits will be with keeping their pen clean.

If your rabbit is messy you have taught it to be messy. Rabbits need routine and if you have forgotten to clean them or you are lazy and don’t clean it on time, you have not taught your rabbit that you care about their cleanliness. You must make sure that you keep your rabbits clean like clockwork. No excuses.

Just like you should feed them at the same time every day, you should clean them at the same time every day. If you do it every day, it will be easier to maintain and it trains your rabbit to be clean too.

Rabbits have a 2 month memory, which means if something happens every day at the same time for 2 months, they will forget what happened before and the new routine will be what it desires. So, if you are re-training your rabbit for cleanliness, it will take a concerted effort for 2 months.

Remember, your body language and the tone of your vocalisations are important when teaching rabbits. If you do it wrong, they won’t behave the way you want them to. It’s that simple. They see you as boss-bunny because you dictate feed times, play times, cleaning times, everything. You are their world, and you have to realise that and be the Queen/King of your Rabbit.

People complain that their rabbit is messy, spreading hay all over the place or leaving food everywhere. Have those people looked at their behaviour? Maybe the rabbit has been taught to do that and the owner hasn’t even realised. Remember, rabbits learn the bad things faster than anything.

Rethink the way you handle the situation, add a routine, and stop doing random things and your rabbit will settle down once it learns that there is a cleaning routine. It will take 2 months to set up and maintain the daily routine, but you will win if make a concerted effort.

Don’t believe anything

Never compare yourself to someone who shows you something that’s perfect online. Like those perfectly clean pens with those perfectly clean litterboxes. Nothing is as perfect as that and if it is, there is something drastically wrong.

I once saw a “How to Clean Your Rabbit” video and it was this girl, about 23 years old, with this perfect pen. To clean the pen she had a brush and pan in hand as she swept up the 4 poops on the floor and then she took out the litter box and tipped the contents into a bag and put down a fresh doggy pee pad and put some hay on the top. And that was it. How can that be it? People would believe it, but is a lie, as plain as day.

• What about washing the litter box?
• What about the rest of the mess like dropped hay and food crumbs?
• What about the hair fairies?
• What about vacuuming?
• What about disinfecting?

No, it didn’t happen. because the video is not telling the truth. That pen had been pre-cleaned before the video to get rid of all the mess and to make sure that it was perfect before it. Only because they don’t want people to think that they let their rabbits get messy. It’s all about appearances on the Internet. What will people think? I can’t have a messy pen. That makes me look bad. When in actual fact, a perfect pen like that one is bad.

Rabbits are clean, yes, but they are also alive, which means they do make some mess, and leave hair, some poops, and chopped off bits of hay around the pen.

My rabbit stinks

Maybe it does. But it only smells because of what you are feeding it. If it isn’t getting the right vitamins and minerals in its diet, it will smell, just like you do if you eat particular foods.

You eat asparagus, you stink. You eat cabbage, you stink. You eat onions, you stink. Garlic, curry, caffeine, spicy food…

It’s the same with rabbits. If they eat too many vegetables they stink, and they will stink more if vegetables are their main diet. Stop feeding vegetables to your rabbit. Feed them grass, let them eat more hay, give them a good quality pellet instead. Rabbits do not need vegetables every day, if at all.

There are two things that makes rabbits stink are ammonia (in urea) and enzymes.

• Urea – is carbonic acid. It is the main component of urine. Mammals produce urea to help control the metabolism of nitrogen. It is created by combining ammonia with carbon dioxide molecules. It is neither acidic or alkaline, and it can dissolve in water. Urea itself is colourless and odourless. It is a waste product, passed in urine. It’s main use is as a fertiliser on farms because it is high in nitrogen, and it is used as a raw material in the chemical industry.
  • Ammonia – is an inorganic compound made of nitrogen and hydrogen. It is colourless gas, has a pungent smell and is lighter than air. It is classed as nitrogenous waste. It is caustic and hazardous and requires specialised containers for storage.
• Enzymes – if the rabbits have an exocrine insufficiency, their dry poops (not caecotrophs) will smell. The exocrine system is controlled by the pancreas which in turn controls digestion. If the pancreas does not produce enough digestion enzymes, it will cause stinky poops.

Rabbits have a high concentration of ammonia in their urine and it gets higher if the rabbit has eaten a lot of nitrogen-based foods – like vegetables – after all they have been grown in nitrogen-based fertiliser ground.

If rabbits have dark, poops that have a glossy appearance, it needs more fresh grass in its diet. The fibre in the grass with reset the pancreas so that it produces more digestive enzymes and the poops won’t smell anymore.

Why not hay?

Hay is great for digestion, but it doesn’t cover all bases. You’ve probably heard that rabbits need fibre in their diet, which is true, but there are actually two types of fibre digestible and indigestible. Rabbits need to have both types of fibre in their diet to make their gut function properly.

Hay is 80-100% digestible fibre, which is not good as a balanced diet for adult rabbits. If they only eat hay with a high digestible fibre content (like Timothy, Lucerne and Oaten) it causes stagnation problems in the digestive tract and can lead to gastrointestinal disorders like enteritis or colic.

Fresh grass has both indigestible and digestible fibre, and the more fresh grass you feed your rabbit, the better it’s gut will be.

But they say 1 cup of veggies a day

Yes they do, but they only say that because grass isn’t always available. Rabbits will choose grass over vegetables any day. It is a stupid old fashioned belief that rabbits need vegetables.

Now that scientists are studying rabbit digestion and not blindly following something someone suggested from the early 1970’s, understandings have been updated. Anyone who disagrees with that needs to start reading the new reports and not believing the old ones.

We talk about all of this to more depth in the Diet section.

Freedom from Animal Cruelty

Any other logos that claim they promote they are animal cruelty-free are not official and definitely don’t follow all of the international standards.

These logos do not mean that the products are pet-safe, it just means that the product wasn’t tested on animals.

Chemicals

We have written an in depth article about chemicals and rabbits, so we won’t double up here.

However, we will have a look at cleaning products and the chemicals in them briefly, so you can have an understanding of what to look for.

Rabbits and chemicals – in brief

Never use harsh chemicals near rabbits, or where rabbits live. Harsh chemicals include bleach, ammonia, phthalates (soaps, hairspray, shampoo, deodorisers) and chlorine.

When you are looking for cleaning products, you want to find something that is a disinfectant, kills bacteria and is not scented – or if it is scented, it has a minimal scent, and the rabbit is not near it for a minimum of 2 hours to let it dry.

Strong scented products, like lemon scented disinfectants, or anti-bacterial wipes, leave a residue on the areas that they were used. This residue can get on rabbits feet, and they can ingest it when they clean themselves. It also can get on their bowls and in their water. These chemicals can make your bunny really sick or even kill it within a couple of hours.

Keep in mind that baby wipes, which a lot of people use because they are unscented and gentle, still leave that residue behind and are equally as dangerous.

You can see the residue if you wipe your computer monitor, tablet or phone screens with a disinfectant wipe. After it has dried, there’s a film that is hard to wipe off.

Products

Disinfectants

Common disinfectants contain:

• alcohol
• chlorine
• ammonium hydroxide (or ammonia)
• chlorine componds
• formaldehyde
• glutaraldehyde
• ortho-phthalaldehyde
• hydrogen peroxide
• iodophors
• peracetic acid
• phenolics
• quaternary ammonium compounds

Rabbits cannot be near alcohol, formaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide (bleach) as it can kill them. The other chemicals in disinfectants can be equally as dangerous. These chemicals can cause liver and pancreatic tumors, breathing difficulties, digestion problems, skin irritation and eye swelling.

Environmentally friendly disinfectants contain:

• citric acid
• accelerated hydrogen peroxide
• isopropanol
• ethanol
• lactic acid
• quaternary ammonium compounds

These disinfectants are less likely to cause damage to rabbits health. However, if you choose to use them it is recommended that the rabbit stay away from the disinfected area for two hours after cleaning.

A lot of people choose to use homemade disinfectants because they are cheaper and you can control the ingredients. These homemade disinfectants usually contain vinegar; however, white vinegar is a misconception, as vinegar is not a very good disinfectant, and will not kill all bacteria and germs. It only kills Escherichia coli and Salmonella, which is not good enough for cleaning rabbit areas.

When it comes to properly cleaning rabbit areas, you need to have a disinfectant that kills bacteria, diseases, worms and parasites and not many homemade disinfectants will successfully do this, especially if the main cleaning constituent is white vinegar.

The best homemade disinfectant contains:

• apple cider vinegar
• water
• lemon juice

1 part vinegar to 4 parts water, and add some lemon juice into a spray bottle, and shake.

If you want to disinfect wooden areas, rub a cut lemon over the surfaces, leave it for a few minutes and then wipe it off.

For stains, sprinkle salt over the surface, then rub with a lemon. Wipe clean.

The beauty of apple cider vinegar and lemon is that they are both rabbit safe.

Antibacterial

Common antibacterials contain:

• triclosan
• triclocarban
• benzalkonium chloride
• benzethonium chloride
• chloroxylenol

The main chemical that makes anything antibacterial, antimicrobial and antifungal is triclocarban. It was originally used in medical field, but is now used on soaps, lotions, deodorants, toothpaste and plastic. In 2013 the Food and Drug Association (FDA) required all companies to prove within the next 12 months, to prove that triclocarban was not harmful. Many large companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Avon started removing the chemical from their products due to health concerns.

By 2016 the use of the chemical reduced by 40%, and by 2017 it had failed to be proven as safe and that normal soap and water was much more effective.

Environmentally friendly antibacterials contain:

• lemon
• orange
• grapefruit
• tea tree
• thyme
• lemon grass
• lavender
• rosemary
• eucalyptus oils

Citrus is fine to use with rabbits, so are herbs. But steer clear of eucalyptus or essential oils.

Lemon may be the answer

Grow yourself a lemon tree, and you’ll have a non-stop source of antibacterial, antifungal, antimicrobial disinfectant.

Animal safe soaps

These soaps are animal and human safe due to their ingredients. These soaps can be used to wash litter boxes, toys and equipment without harming your rabbit.

Make sure you rinse all soap out of all products before drying it thoroughly.

Castille Soap

Pure Castille soap is an all-natural soap made from plant-based oils and other natural ingredients. Normal soaps that we use have a base of animal fats and chemicals which are not pet-safe.

Castille soap was traditionally made with olive oil, but it can be made with coconut, almond, walnut, avocado, castor or hemp oils. If you are going to use Castille soap look for hemp-based soap, as rabbits cannot have coconut or nuts. Avocado will kill rabbits. Castor oil can be dangerous for rabbits as it can cause intestinal cramping, and can cause uterine blockages.

Castille soap also contains lye, which is an alkaline chemical that can corrode metal, plastic, paint, cloth and skin. If you get it wet, it corrodes faster, and when it is mixed with water it can cause a fire.

Lye is used in soap because when it is mixed with oils, it saponifies. That means that when the ingredients (water, oil and lye) are mixed together to make the liquid for a soap, the ingredients go through a chemical changing process. When the soap cures over many weeks, further the chemical changes make the soap harden and there is no more water, lye and oil left in the soap. The only thing that remains is soap.

You have to use lye in soap to make it soap. People have tried to make soaps without it, but the soaps don’t work. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says soap must contain lye, or another alkali chemical.

If you’re interested in using hemp-based Castille soap, look for hemp citrus Castille soap, something like this one as an example.

Castille soap can be used to wash animal’s bodies, but never bathe a rabbit.

Dishwashing liquid

Dishwashing liquid’s come in all shapes and sizes. It is made to reduce the surface-tension of water allowing it to penetrate grease, oil and dirt.

It is a good option to clean litter boxes. It easily removes any stains, fights bacteria and disinfects. It is important to rinse all the soap off the litter box with a lot of water after washing it. Make sure there is no soap left on the box, then leave it to dry, or dry it thoroughly with a clean dry cloth.

Dishwashing liquid doesn’t have a smell after it has been washed off, which is what you want. Post-scented cleaning products (products that leave a smell after being used), should not be used with rabbits. Dishwashing liquid is made to not leave a smell, because it would make food taste yuck.

Never wash animals bodies with dishwashing liquid.

Disposable Wet Wipes

Disposable wet wipes are made from 70% polyester and a mix of polypropylene, cotton, wood pulp, or rayon fibres that have been formed into sheets. They can be packaged individually, small packs or in bulk.

Human Wipes

Human wipes are those that are only intended for human use. They contain strong chemicals that can make animals sick, can cause dermatitis, fungal infections or skin irritation.

Baby Wipes

Baby wipes are not safe for use with pets. Their pH level is balanced for human skin, which is a totally different pH that animals have. Baby wipes can be up to 200 times too acidic for the use on or around pets.

Baby wipes also have harmful ingredients like essential oils, artificial moisturisers, alcohol and isopropyl alcohol, all of which are dangerous to rabbits.

Pet Wipes

Pet wipes are made with 100% pet-safe chemicals. Most companies make pet-safe wipes that are not really rabbit-safe, they may be safe for dogs and cats, but rabbits have different requirements.

Generally pet-safe wipes are made without fragrances, alcohols, parabens, or dyes, but they are made with:

• water
• coconut oil
• aloe vera
• green tea extract
• natural glycerin
• benzoic acid
• propylene glycol
• lactic acid
• methylisothiazolinone

The only ingredient on that list that rabbits can go near is water. Coconut oil, aloe vera and green tea extract sound natural, but they can cause digestive issues and ultimately kill your rabbit. The rest of the chemicals can cause skin irritation and breathing difficulties.

If you do choose to use the wipes, make sure you wash all residue off before letting your rabbit near it.

Steer clear of all disposable wet wipes when dealing with rabbits.

What do Vets use to clean?

There is a huge list of products that vets use to clean, because they have lots of different tools and places to clean that we don’t have at home. Generally, they use chemicals like:

• Vetafarm Hutch disinfectant Clean
• Vetafarm Insect & Mite Liquidator
• F10 Wipes – 100 Pack
• F10 Odour Eliminator 500ml
• UrineFREE All in one bio-enzymatic urine stain and odour remover

If you choose to use any of these products, make sure you research them and the effects they have on rabbits.

Tips for cleaning

Litter Box

Rabbits can leave orangy-brown stains in the base of the litter box, which is an excretion of oxalates. This is caused by chemicals in the rabbits urine called urochrome or urobilin. The stain is very alkaline and can be removed with white vinegar because it is acidic. You will see the stains disappear before your eyes!

If the stain is brown, it means the rabbit is dehydrated and needs to drink more water.

If the stain is amber, orange or reddish, the rabbit has eaten foods that have made a mineral imbalance, which can be fixed with a good feed of fresh grass.

If the stain is a bright yellow, or a mustardy colour, there is a problem with the rabbits liver, get them to the vet asap.

If the stain is thick, gluggy or grainy, there is a digestive issue, and the rabbit isn’t eating enough fibre and the rabbit needs more grass.

Healthy rabbits excrete excessive calcium from their renal system, which can leave an opaque white chalky residue behind. It is classed as bladder sludge if it is a yellowy or mustardy colour and that means they are eating too much calcium, which can cause kidney stones.

It is also normal for rabbits to have cloudy urine. This is due to the three main types of calcium-containing crystals: calcium carbonate monohydrate, anhydrous calcium carbonate, and ammonium magnesium phosphate. Rabbit’s urine cloudiness can be anywhere between “apple juice” and “coffee and cream”.

Flooring

Depending on the flooring you use in your rabbit’s pen, will depend on what you do to clean it. No matter what you choose as a floor, it will need to be disinfected at minimum, once a week.

The use of a rabbit-safe spray cleaner, a clean microfibre cloth, and lemon in water will do. It would be a good idea to let the flooring dry in the sun, that way any bacteria you have missed will die in the UV light. It is a good idea to disinfect the flooring outside, with lots of water and a disinfectant like this. It is important to let any indoor pen floor parts to be out in the sun for the day.

Always use a good quality and trusted brand of cleaner, that way you will know that the ingredients will be rabbit-safe.

Wooden and Plastic Items

Any removable items should be wiped over with lemon and water, and left outside in the sun to dry.

Toys aren’t really important to disinfect, but by putting them in the sun will kill bacteria.