So, I have a question for you. When did you realise that you didn't know enough about rabbit behaviour? For me, I was 20.
I was standing in the corner of a sweltering consult room. The room smelt very strongly of the German Shepherd that had just left. We were running behind schedule, so the vet's patience was fraying, and I was kind of trying to shrink into a corner of the room.
So the next up is a rabbit consultation, vaccination, 2 year old female, should be pretty straightforward. The owner came in and she answered all the vet's questions about her rabbit's health, but she clearly had something else on her mind. Minnie seems very scared all the time.
She spends all her time hiding under the sofa. And my last rabbit was really friendly, but Minnie just doesn't seem to like me at all. There was an awkward pause.
The vet clearly had no idea what to suggest, and I didn't either. Well, she seems pretty healthy. Some rabbits are just friendlier than others, I guess.
The consult finished pretty quickly. But as the owner left, I couldn't help wondering what she was going to do for the next 8 or so years of her rabbit's life. Would she continue to pay attention to the rabbit's health when she barely saw her?
Would she be motivated to provide the best environment that she could? And would such a stressed rabbit even survive that long? Unfortunately, I worried I already knew the answers.
Helping owners to resolve behavioural problems in their pets is one of the biggest things that we as veterinary professionals can do to improve animal welfare. We can help owners to make changes that will improve their own lives and the lives of their rabbits. My name's Gwen Bradbury.
I'm a vet with a special interest in rabbit behaviour. I work with the Rabbit Welfare Association and fund, and I have a textbook on clinical behavioural problems in rabbits. So what are we talking about today?
These are the objectives, you'll have seen them already, but fundamentally, most rabbit behavioural problems are a result of poor welfare. The first step's always to check the rabbit's health, improve the rabbit's welfare, and then to alter our own behaviour to address a specific problem. And this is what I hope you'll get from today's session.
OK, let's get started. First of all, how much is this really a problem? Well, the answer to how often do rabbits have behavioural problems is more often than you might think.
There have been various different studies and surveys looking at the percentage of rabbit owners who say that their rabbit shows behaviours that they don't like. And they consistently find that the incidence of behavioural problems in rabbits is pretty high. The most recent PDSA poor report that reported specifically on behavioural problems in rabbits found that 56% of owners said their rabbits showed at least one behaviour that they'd like to change.
That's more than half of rabbit owners. More than half of them have rabbits that show unwanted behaviours. And this is a problem because unwanted behaviours often indicate that the rabbit's stressed, they cause the owner stress, and often both.
That's a lot of unhappy rabbits and owners. So what are these problems? Well, I usually think about 4 different categories of undesirable behaviours in rabbits, unwanted behaviours towards humans, towards other rabbits, towards the environment, and elimination problems.
So that's problems with toileting, litter training, etc. That although that last category often overlaps with the other three, it's so common that I usually consider it as a separate group. So unwanted behaviours towards humans includes aggression, fear, and sexual behaviour.
Towards other rabbits, also aggression, infanticide, so killing babies, bonding difficulties and over grooming. Towards the environment, digging, chewing, wallpaper stripping and more, and in undesirable elimination behaviours include urine spraying and difficulties in initial, initial litter box training, and also if the rabbit then loses that litter box training. But in this, in this webinar, I'm going to talk about the commonest of these problems that the owners perceive, which is lack of litter box training, both urine spraying, which is for communication and eliminating outside the litter tray, destructiveness and fear and lack of affection towards humans, as in the story that we started with.
But first, most rabbits who have behavioural problems related to stress show more than one problem because they're trying to cope in a difficult environment. So rabbits that are fearful are often more destructive and more aggressive. So improving the rabbit's diet, companionship and environment is the really crucial piece of reducing any unwanted behaviour.
And if we don't do that, it's often not possible to actually resolve the problem behaviour as it stands. So in this talk, I'm going to talk about this generally, so how we set rabbits up for a better life, and then we'll look at a couple of problems in a little bit more depth. Also, before we get started, I should mention that behaviour problems seem more likely in entire females.
Also in rabbits that are acquired before weaning, so very young rabbits, and rabbits between weaning and puberty are more likely to show compulsive disorders and inappropriate urine elimination. These two behaviour problems also seem more common in rabbits from breeders and pet stores, but I think there might be quite a confounder here in the literature because often it's more inexperienced owners who tend to buy baby rabbits from pet shops or breeders rather than rehoming them. So I think there might be a little bit of bias in the data there.
So I mentioned why we should try to resolve behavioural problems in rabbits, and that's because unwanted behaviours often indicate poor welfare in rabbits, and they cause poor welfare in owners. They usually suggest that the rabbit is stressed and the welfare is not optimal. Because they cause the owner stress, they this often affects their relationship with their rabbits, and owners who have rabbits with problems are often less attached to them.
So if we learn that a rabbit is showing behaviours that the owner doesn't want, if we can help the owner to improve that situation, then we can improve both of their lives. Now I said that most unwanted behaviours have their roots in poor welfare, with rabbits coping with a life that is deficient in some of the things they need. On this slide, you'll see the five domains framework for thinking about welfare.
I'm sure you're all familiar with this framework, but for a quick recap, it says that an animal's welfare status, then that's right at the bottom here, welfare status, is a product of the balance of the positive and negative effects in its life. So how it feels, are the, is the, are the good parts of life sufficient to outweigh the bad parts? A rabbit with mostly positive effects here has good welfare, one with mostly negative effects has poor welfare.
And the rabbit's experience, which is the, the positive and, and negative effects, its mental state, is a result of how its needs are met in different domains at the top, is physical and functional domains. So these include nutrition, environment, health, and behaviour. Now in this next section, we're going to look at what rabbits need for good health and welfare, and what behavioural problems occur when they don't get what they need.
And this forms a real foundation of our understanding of how to manage behavioural problems, because I said, a major part is improving the rabbit's welfare. So let's go back to the framework for a minute. Top left, rabbits need good nutrition, they need enough food and water, and a varied and balanced diet.
What does that actually mean? Well, in the wild, rabbits spend between 11 and 13 hours above ground each day in a home range of between 4000 and 20,000 square metres of grassland. And they spend about 30% between 30% and 70% of that time grazing.
Now grazing is fantastic for rabbits. That's what they're evolved to do. Because it requires ongoing movement, balanced with food intake.
And so there's a point where the effort of finding the food outweighs the value of eating it, which is when the rabbit stops grazing. But grazing is intrinsically really pleasurable for rabbits because you've got the rabbit has to kind of browse and select what it's going to eat, which is stimulating. The chewing means that the rabbit is moving its jaws and its its teeth correctly.
The silica in the grass wears down the teeth, and the water content means that the energy density is lower, so the rabbit chews for long enough. Grass also has lots of cellulose which selects for the correct microbes in the guts. Grass for many reasons, is the best food for rabbits, but rabbits also eat other leaves from plants and trees.
They strip and eat the bark of trees and branches. They will eat fruit where they find it, but it's not that common in the ecosystem where they've evolved. However, I said that grass is the best food and I stand by that, but most owners can't provide grass and growing plants all year round.
So the best substitute for that is good quality hay, and plenty of it. Now what a rabbit eats affects how it behaves. Fortunately, muesli foods are much, much, much less common nowadays, thanks to some, some great initiatives by some of the big retailers.
But if rabbits have a lot of free choice of very high energy density foods, the rabbit can very quickly eat enough. So either it overeats, which means that it gains weight, especially if it's eating kind of the refined carbohydrates that we've got in this picture. It doesn't need to search for its food, it doesn't need to chew as much, and that means that not only does the rabbit have poor nutrition.
Look, maybe poor health, but actually it's just got a lot more time in its day. And we can see that. So if you look at this graph, this graph is a graph looking at how rabbits behave, how much time they spend doing different activities when they eat just hay, that's light grey, nuggets and hay, muesli and hay, or just muesli.
And what we can see if we look at the, the, the, the tallest columns, the, that's inactivity. How much time does the rabbit spend not eating, not grooming and not moving around. If a rabbit just eats muesli, it spends a whole lot more time more like being inactive.
So about 2 it's about about 50% more time inactive if it just eats muesli. So if a rabbit is bored or frustrated, it's also much more likely to show behavioural problems. So for any behavioural problem, it's really important to get the the a rabbit primarily eating hay because that means it has less time in its day to perform the unwanted behaviours.
So that's nutrition. Environment's up next. So rabbits need a comfortable and pleasant physical environment.
What does that mean? Well, as I said just now, rabbits are accustomed to having a very, very big home range. They live in complex social groups, typically spending about 11 to 13 hours per day underground in a warren.
And as I said, they spend a lot of time grazing. Now this environment's clearly very hard to replicate in a domestic setting, and when we don't provide it, we start to see problems with physical and emotional health. But as a guide, when we're thinking about a rabbit's environment, we need to make sure that it gives rabbits enough space, and it gives them the motivation to run, to jump, to stretch up, to dig, and to forage and explore.
Now a rabbit's environment clearly affects the behaviours that it can show, because the more complex and stimulating the environment is, the more the rabbit can explore and perform different behaviours. In one study, rabbits that were confined to a small enclosure for more than 16 hours per day were much more likely to show abnormal stereotypic behaviour than other rabbits, especially stereotypic pacing and stereotypic gnawing. So environment is clearly very important.
Health also, we're veterinary professionals, we think about health first and foremost. Rabbits clearly need good health and physical fitness for good welfare. Why is health so important for behaviour?
Well, if a rabbit is healthy, it's got enough mental capacity to learn new behaviours, to behave in different ways. It finds it, it finds it easier to adapt to new environments, and it's much more motivated to do new things. This means that healthy rabbits are easier to train and they're less likely to show unwanted behaviours.
And when we have a rabbit that is sick, it is really important that we look at that when we're doing, we're trying to resolve any behavioural problem. We're obviously veterinary professionals and so we always think about disease first. And this is why it's so important to check a rabbit's health first when you're trying to deal with an unwanted behaviour, because it's so much harder to change the behaviour of a rabbit that's sick.
If a rabbit is weak or in pain, it's more fearful, it's less tolerant, and it doesn't have those physical reserves to cope with stress. Maybe the owner will find they're more aggressive, the rabbit's more aggressive to them or to their companions. Maybe the rabbit is more timid.
So if we want to fix any behavioural problem, we need to address any causes of pain and disease. As we all know again, for good welfare, 4, rabbits need to be able to express normal behaviours. So what are these behaviours?
These are behaviours that are rewarding and that make them feel good. And without these opportunities, rabbits can show various behavioural problems, including stereotypic behaviours. So this is, these are, these are companionships.
So the most important thing that a rabbit needs for normal behaviour is other rabbits. Partly this is because rabbits are prey animals, so they spend a lot of time watching for danger. And when there's a, when a rabbit is with other rabbits, there are more pairs of eyes alert, and that takes the pressure off each individual.
But it's not that simple. Rabbits also just find other rabbits extremely rewarding. So it's not just about managing stress.
It's a really crucial part of a rabbit's experience of life is to be, be with other rabbits. If we don't give rabbits space to provide, to perform normal behaviours, they're more likely to be sick, they're more likely to be frustrated, and they're more likely to show problem behaviours. In this image, we can see a rabbit on its own in a small hutch.
And actually, this was my own rabbit when I was a small child. Had I known then what I know now, I would have kept Bum very differently. Just, just caring about an animal, even if you really care about that animal, is not enough to ensure that it has good welfare.
So we mentioned companionship, and this graph shows the difference in behaviours when rabbits are kept with other rabbits or if they're kept alone. So the light grey bar is rabbits that are kept with other rabbits or kept in the dark grey is ones that are kept on their own. And you can see that the categories of of how they spend their time is slightly different from the previous, the previous study.
But in general, rabbits kept with other rabbits spend a lot longer performing comfort behaviours, so that's grooming themselves or grooming their companions, marking and investigation behaviours, and they spend less time performing maintenance behaviours, so standing, resting, feeding and eliminating. Obviously, if you look at agonistic behaviours, that one is 3% just in from the left, they're only performed towards another rabbit. So if a rabbit is on its own, can't show those behaviours.
Yeah. But the, the one that really stands out to me is right on the right hand side. That's on stereotypic behaviours.
So these behaviours weren't observed at all in rabbits kept in groups, but actually really seen fairly frequently in rabbits kept on their own. So what happens when rabbits don't get what they need? So this is the bottom section from that, that 5 domains framework, zooming in on the mental state.
When the rabbit is not getting the nutrition, environment, health, or behavioural opportunities it needs, then it starts to experience many more negative effects than it does positive effects. And that leads to poor welfare status. And this leads to both acute stress and chronic stress.
So we're gonna spend a moment just looking at what owners see when they when they have a stressed or frustrated rabbit. So this is a modified stress escalation ladder and it contrasts with one that is very well accepted for dogs. But it shows the behavioural escalation during an acutely stressful situation.
When a rabbit is not stressed, its goal is to satisfy normal life behaviours, such as feeding, mating, or exploring its environment. When a rabbit senses danger, it needs to assess the degree of threat. So it's heart rate rises, it's respiratory rate rises, so it can escape as soon as it needs to.
When it feels like the threat is is sufficiently severe, it tries to increase the distance between it and the threat by running away. Often rabbits thump to warn other rabbits of the threat. And if a rabbit can't escape that threat, then it uses aggressive behaviours to try and force the threat to retreat.
So what this means is that usually owners who complain that their rabbit is aggressive have a rabbit that's repeatedly feeling very stressed. And aggressive behaviour also causes stress because it requires the same nervous and hormonal activity. So if you have a rabbit that repeatedly shows aggressive behaviours, it means that it's frequently in a high stress state.
And this is a real problem. If you have a rabbit that is repeatedly, repeatedly stressed and stressed and stressed, we can end up in a situation where we have a rabbit that enters into chronic stress. And this also causes behavioural problems.
You can see these listed in red around the edge of this diagram. Chronic stress causes increased release of the stress hormone cortisol, which drives brain changes at a cellular level, and that actually decreases the regulation of cortisol release. And when we have an abnormal level of cortisol, this affects immunity, resilience to other stressors, which results in worse physical health.
Chronic stress behaviours can look quite different in different rabbits, but fundamentally they all reduce the time that the rabbit spends looking after itself, eating and exploring. So these behaviours might include restlessness or hyper hyperreactive behaviours to stimuli that aren't threatening, lack of interest and lethargy, hiding, stereotypic behaviours, and sometimes lack of self-care behaviours like grooming. So reducing stress by improving welfare is really important for resolving unwanted behaviours.
OK, we've looked at what rabbits need, and we've looked at how they behave differently when their needs are not met. Now let's look at what you can do as a veterinary professional. Maybe you're in the fortunate position of being able to offer behavioural clinics, but this is really very uncommon.
Usually what you'll find is you'll be having a consultation just like we had with Minnie at the start. And this, these questions come up during a routine appointment. So what can we do?
Before we can give any advice, we need to know about the rabbit's specific circumstance. And this is why really good history is important. You'll find that most owners understandably want to tell you about the problem first.
So try, ask them about the behaviour. When you're thinking about any behavioural problem, you're trying to understand the A, the B, and the C. Where the A is the antecedent, what happens before, the B is the behaviour, and the C is the consequence, what happens afterwards.
So as an example, if the if an owner tells you, my rabbit's really aggressive, you need, you want to find out a little bit more, so ask more questions. To whom is the rabbit aggressive? Does the rabbit growl, bite or scratch?
And when does the rabbit show this behaviour? What does the owner do, or what has the owner tried? There's lots of advice online, some good, some questionable, so it's worthwhile finding out what the owner's already tried.
Now at this point, you probably have an idea of some things you could suggest, but you need to hold your horses because there are other things to check first before we start getting towards what owners can do. So you've talked about the, you've talked about the the problem itself. The next piece is to understand a little bit more about the rabbit's general welfare.
It might help you to think through the five domains framework. I often actually ask people how they describe their rabbit's personality, because then I get an idea of the pattern of their other behaviours, not just the problem behaviour. I ask about diet, about environment.
Does the rabbit always have access to a large run, or do they have to be moved by the owner during the day? Crucially, do they live with another rabbit? Ask if the owner often picks the rabbit up.
Once you've got an idea of how the rabbit is kept, you've got an idea of what health conditions you might be looking for. Poor diet, think dental disease. Limited environment, lack of space to move around, think osteoarthritis and pain.
This is all, all of these, these pieces that you learn here are gonna help you, help you think about your next part of the investigation, which is checking the rabbit's health. And just as in any consultation, first up is a full clinical examination of the of the of the rabbit. At a minimum, check the rabbit's eyes and ears, check incisor length, move the jaws side to side and feel very carefully for lumps or pain along the upper and lower jaw tooth roots.
Look at the rabbit's body condition score, see how it's breathing, check the breathing is quiet. Examine their anal genital area for matting, faecal soiling, or urine scalding. Check their hind feet for potodermatitis, especially if it's severe and might be painful, because it's very common.
If you can, check that they're moving comfortably, but this can be hard to assess when they're stressed in a veterinary clinic. But what you're looking for is painful conditions that owners might have missed that could be contributing to the problem behaviour. So now you've asked about the different aspects of the rabbit's welfare, and you've checked its health status, and you've learned about its behaviour.
You probably have a pretty good idea of some of the things that the owner could do to see if they can improve their behaviour. As we've said before, good welfare is the absolute foundation for changing behaviour, and if you don't improve the welfare, any gains that you're likely to get will probably be small and short-lived. I'm not going to talk about diet again, but I am, I do want to mention again the importance of keeping rabbits with other rabbits in a big enough space.
And I'm also going to discuss briefly how owners should be interacting with their rabbits. So this is just a pictorial reminder of why rabbits kept in pairs or groups make better pets. Rabbits spend a lot of their time alert for predators.
When there's a few of them to do that, they can all be more chilled. So, first thing to recommend to owners to improve welfare is to get another rabbit. And because rabbits can be notoriously hard to introduce to each other, suggests that they look at rehoming a companion rabbit from a local rescue centre that will bond the rabbits for them on site.
I always point out that it's also incredibly good value because they will pay about as much for a vaccinated, microchipped, and neutered adult rabbit as they would pay for a baby rabbit from a pet shop. But introducing a companion is enormous for improving behavioural problems. Secondly, rabbits need to have an appropriate environment, and unfortunately, most rabbits do not.
So in the UK the minimum cage size for UK laboratory rabbits is 1.2 metres by about by just under half a metre. Now 22% of pet rabbits in one study lived in hutches that were smaller than this.
That's almost 1 in 4 pet rabbits. A recent study looked at the rabbit hutches advertised by 8 popular online retailers, and almost 2/3 of those of the 1st hutches available didn't even meet the legal requirement for meat rabbits. Now, new rabbit owners may assume that because these rabbits, these hutches are legally available to be purchased, then they must be suited to a rabbit's needs.
But this is far from the case. So what does the Rabbit Welfare Association fund recommend as the minimum space for a rabbit? Well, it recommends a sleeping area that is, at a minimum, 1.8 metres by 0.6 metres.
And that needs to be permanently connected to. An enclosure with a footprint of 3 metres by 2 metres. It suggests that this this allows the rabbit some room to move, so the rabbits should be able to perform 3 hops in one direction, stand on their hind legs, which is why it's a 1 metre minimum height, and provides enough space to separate the food, toilet, and sleeping areas.
But this is still very limited. Rabbits with a permanent exercise area of this size should also still be able to have supervised exercise in a larger space. Now how commonly are rabbits given this sort of space?
Shockingly, 84% of rabbits live in enclosures that are smaller than this. And only 9% of advertised rabbit enclosures from the online retailers met the Rabbit Welfare Association and funds guidelines. So it's clear that most rabbits do not live in good environments.
And thirdly, owners need to interact with rabbits appropriately. There are 3 things to remember about interactions with rabbits. 1, don't pick them up.
2. Give them a choice. And 3, touch them on the head.
So why shouldn't we pick rabbits up? Because being picked up is intrinsically stressful for the rabbit. My rule of thumb is that it's fine to pick up animals that have hands.
Why? Because if a baby animal has hands, it has parents that have hands. And if a parent has hands, it probably picks up its babies.
And animals that have an evolutionary memory of being picked up by hands from animals of the same species are likely to have good associations with this. On the other hand, if you have animals that don't have hands, then the only time they're likely to be picked up is by a predator. So being picked up is intrinsically much more stressful.
We know that rabbits who are frequently picked up are much less likely to approach their owners, for example. So it's important, if you want a rabbit that wants to spend time with their owners, to find ways to avoid, for the owner to avoid picking them up. Another important factor in any interactions with rabbits or in animals generally, is to give them some choice and control over what happens to them.
If an animal feels that it can change the situation, it's much less likely to feel cornered and fearful. In this image, you can see how rabbits solicit interactions from other rabbits. If you spend time watching a pair or a group of rabbits, you'll see the rabbits quite frequently nudge their head under another rabbit's head to try and in in in the hope of getting groomed.
And sometimes a rabbit will lower its head to another rabbit, and then the second rabbit will put its head even further underneath, so the second rabbit gets groomed. Usually the rabbit higher in the hierarchy gets more of the grooming. So in the top image, you can see Peter, who's a small grey rabbit on the right, licking Babbitt, who's got her head down.
In the lower image, you can see that I've, I'm offering exactly what Peter, what she offers. Peter offers her and she offers Peter. I put my fist down in front of her her head and nudged her.
And she's dropped her head under, under my fist to ask me to stroke her. So if you put your fist in front of a rabbit's head, it's a good way to ask whether the rabbit wants to be stroked. If it lowers its head like Babbit, that means yes please, stroke me now.
If it lifts its head or moves away, it's not in the mood. But when you give the rabbit choice over how it interacts with you, it makes your behaviour much more predictable to the rabbit and helps the rabbit become more confident. The final point about interactions is that rabbits have certain areas where they like to be touched and others where they don't.
And we can predict areas that are good by looking at how rabbits interact with each other when they're grooming each other. Rabbits typically focus the grooming attentions on the head, especially around the eyes and forehead, but sometimes on the ears as well. They very rarely touch each other on the back or the rump, unless they want to mount or mate with the rabbit.
So the back and rump are a bit more loaded, not the places you want to touch unless you have to. They also almost never touch another rabbit's belly unless they're fighting, and they almost never touch each other's paws. So when we're touching rabbits, we should focus our attention on the head, cleaning the eyes, feeling around the jaws, rubbing around the base of the ears.
And you'll find that rabbits often relax and chatter their teeth when you're doing that. Now many people who don't know, don't know that much about rabbits and how they interact with other rabbits tend to stroke them along the back. It feels nice, it feels soft, and you feel like you're a little bit further away from the teeth.
However, if you're wanting to do something that is, is pleasurable for both you and the rabbit, don't touch them on the back unless you have to. And definitely don't touch the paws, tail or belly, if you can help it, because these are definite no go zones. To touch a rabbit here is considered at at best impolite and at worst, overtly threatening.
So, once you've addressed the general problems, the next step is to think about the specifics. And we're going to look at destructive behaviour, problems with litter training, and fearfulness. So rabbits, like most animals, manipulate their environment so they can eat it or move more easily through it.
When they're in their natural habitat, this looks like nibbling through grassroots or or brambles, digging to create warrens or scrapes or to make a path easier, and stripping bark off trees to eat. But when we keep rabbits in an unnatural environment like a home, these behaviours cause much more of a problem. And this is why destructive behaviour is usually a complaint from owners who keep their rabbits indoors.
Now if you've ever owned rabbits, you may have thought it was a useful evolutionary advantage for an animal that repeatedly chews through electrical cables to have such furry, electrically insulated feet. Rabbits can't help themselves. If they see something hanging that might at some point be in the way, they'll remove it.
They also like to dig in enclosed corners, maybe that's to try and construct an escape route, should they be trapped. Now rabbits are much more likely to destroy valuable things if they're not given the opportunity to express normal behaviours on normal substrates. So a rabbit that is given fruit tree branches to strip the bark off is much less likely to strip the wallpaper off the wall.
A rabbit that's got deep litter deep hay in its litter tray to manipulate is much less likely to dig. And a rabbit that has various different things to chew that are tasty, fresh branches, fresh grass and hay, much less likely to chew on less tasty substances like leather or plastic. Now here's a reminder that destructive behaviours in rabbits can cost owners a lot of money.
I was asked to comment on why this rabbit had chewed so many expensive possessions. I was very diplomatic and I said that this was a normal behaviour in rabbits. I didn't say that there were likely other problems with the rabbit's welfare, because I didn't want to make the owner look bad publicly.
But I will see that the, say that the rabbit doesn't look very happy in that photo. Litter training problems, OK, so pets that urinate and defecate around the house are much more likely to be rehomed than those who don't. And rabbits are no exception.
No one wants a house that smells of animal excrement. Neutered males are more likely to house soil than other rabbits. Now the first thing to find out when an owner says that their rabbit is soiling around the house, is to find out if it if it's urine or faeces.
Rabbits leave urine outside the litter tray for two reasons, as I mentioned earlier. Either urine spraying to mark territory, or because they don't want to eliminate urine in the litter tray. Now it's important that owners have reasonable expectations around it around elimination for rabbits, because a rabbit's not 100%, but it is reasonable for owners to expect that the rabbits should almost always urinate, urinate in the litter tray.
Get the owners to describe if they've seen the rabbit urinating outside the litter tray. If it runs past and flicks urine at the sofa or wall, that's urine spraying. If it sticks its bottom out and and urinates a large volume, then it's urinating.
Now, it's slightly different for for faecal pellets because some rabbits defecate occasionally when they're moving around, so having occasional pellets on the floor is to be expected. But if the rabbit's leaving piles of poo on the floor, it's not litter trained. So let's talk first about how to deal with urine spraying.
As I said, it's a urine spraying is much more common in unneutered rabbits, especially in males. Obviously the, urinating outside was, was different. But urine spraying is used to mark territory or as part of a sexual display.
The most effective way to reduce urine spraying is to neuter the rabbit. Because that will reduce the hormonal drivers to mark territory. But if the owners don't want to neuter the rabbit, they should at least make sure that they thoroughly clean the places where the rabbit has sprayed with an enzymatic cleaner designed for pet urine to reduce the rabbit, keeping the keeping spraying in the same place to top up their scent mark.
If the rabbit is not litter trained or has stopped being litter trained, it's slightly different from urine spraying. But it's very important to do a full clinical exam to make sure there's no cystitis or bladder stones, making the problem worse. Still very important to clean any soiled areas with a pet urine specific cleaner, and then the owner needs to start anew with litter training.
Now litter training's got two components. You want to make it very easy for the rabbit to urinate and defecate in the right place, and you want to make it very hard for them to get it wrong. To make it very easy, you need a very appealing litter tray.
So, rabbits like to eat when they toilet. So put plenty of fresh hay in the litter tray every day with newspaper underneath so the hay doesn't get wet. Cat litter isn't great for rabbits, it's not very comfortable in their paws, and it's not very motivating for them to want to spend time in there.
I have several litter trays next to each other, so my rabbits have plenty of choice because you always want to have more litter trays than you do rabbits to avoid competition. Now to make it hard for the rabbit to get it wrong, you need to restrict the area initially to make it very easy for the rabbit to get to the litter tray when it needs to go. The further away that the litter tray is, the more likely it is that the rabbit doesn't make it or decides to go elsewhere.
Some house rabbits need litter trays in every room. But as the rabbit gets more and more reliable, then the owner can gradually increase the space in which the rabbit can roam. So that's litter training, let's move on to the last, the last one, which is on fear.
Now as we saw in the story right at the beginning, rabbits that are very scared of their owners don't make good pets. They're not exciting to interact with. They don't show interesting behaviours, and they're much harder to manage.
The two biggest things to check with a fearful rabbit are whether the rabbit lives with a companion and whether it's frequently picked up, because these two factors, if they're not met, if they're, if they're, if the rabbit is on their own and picked up a lot, it's very hard to encourage them to be less timid. Owners should rearrange their environment so they no longer need to pick the rabbit up. That might be connecting the hutch and run, it may be avoiding any free range time until they have trained the rabbit to respond to simple commands.
Once the rabbit's welfare is good, the owner should then start to hand feed them most of their food, and if possible, teach them a few simple trained behaviours. This helps the rabbit to associate the owner with positive experiences, and it provides the rabbit with alternative behaviours that it can do that get rewards, rather than fear behaviours which do not. So what would I say to the owner in the story at the beginning if she asked the same question about Minnie now?
I'd say that sounds really tough. It's hard when we feel that our pet doesn't like us. Can you tell me a bit more about why you feel she's scared of you?
What does she do when you approach? Has she always been like this? What have you tried already?
And then I'd ask some more general questions, what's Minnie's diet like? Where does she live? Does she live with another rabbit?
How do you interact with her? I'd have done a clinical exam as part of the vaccination consult, so I'd have a good idea about her health status, and with a conversation with her owner, I'd have a good idea about Minnie's welfare too. My advice would probably be something along the following lines.
It sounds like Minnie really doesn't like being picked up, and the, the fact you have to pick her up to put her in her run every day seems to be really undermining your relationship. What do you think you could do so you wouldn't have to pick her up? I think that could make her feel much more relaxed around Jean.
Studies have shown that rabbits are much more likely to approach their owners when their owners don't pick them up. I'd then follow up with what the owner, what the owner said, I'd talk through her plans, how she could, how she could see ways that she wouldn't have to pick many up. And then I'd also say that rabbits kept without other rabbits are much more likely to be scared of people.
I'd ask her if she'd ever considered getting a companion for Minnie, and if not, I'd, we'd talked through the barriers to her getting another rabbit, and I'd gently mention how much happier Minnie would be. And if she had ever thought about getting another rabbit or was open to it. We'd talk about what she, how she could go about that.
And then on that hot summer's day, I would hope that Minnie's owner would walk out of that surgery, feeling less worried and preoccupied, armed with ideas to improve her relationship with Minnie, and feeling much more optimistic and hopeful about the next months and years to come. So, what to take away from today? Well, most rabbit behavioural problems are a result of poor welfare.
The first step is always to check the rabbit's health, then improve the rabbit's welfare. And then to alter the owner's behaviour to address the specific problem. Thank you.