smelly bunny

Question
My daughter has a beautiful bunny, she is well fed and watered and kept very clean. Her cage is cleaned 2-3 times per week, and she is cleaned often as well, but she smells horrible no matter what we do. She always smells like urine. Do you have any ideas on why she smells, or what we can do to get rid of the smell?

Answer
Hi Jennifer,

one, if she smells like urine, I would use a better litter that absorbs liquid away from her feet and vent area better.  The best and least expensive is something called "wood stove fuel pellets" found at your local home stores.  They are compressed hardwood sawdust pellets, they absorb liquid great, they are safe for rabbits, inexpensive compared to other litter products, and easy to get rid of only the used litter and replace with fresh.  They actually combat urine odor a bit as well.

Second, the odor you may be smelling may not be urine.  It could be her scent glands, one on each side of her vent area.  She could also have some matted cecal pellets in her fur around her vent area that would need to be removed and cleaned off.

Things that can influence urine odor are things she eats.  If you know how asparagus affects many people, you know what I mean.  Her diet should be mostly hay (timothy hay, or orchard grass hay).  She should have very small portions of greens if she is used to them, they are not a necessity.  She can have a small amount of food pellets without extra junk like seeds/fruit/nuts - just pellets.  No more than 1/4 cup per 5 pounds body weight per day.  She should not have high calorie items - avoid the high sugar, high starch items.  A small sliver of carrot or a small piece of papaya is more than enough per day.  If you feed her exotic or esoteric things they may affect color and smell of urine.

I suppose also, just to consider, is that sometimes odor could mean a yeast imbalance or some kind of infection.  If you would suspect that this could be it, I'd get her in to your vet for an exam.

Lee