# Rabbit Eating Poo and urine soaked Newspaper???



## City Bound (Jan 24, 2009)

What is going on, why is my little guy doing this? Is there something wrong with him?


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

clean his cage and give him some hay or a branch to chew on.


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## akane (Jul 19, 2011)

Eating certain poop is normal. They make 2 droppings and 1 is full of useful bacteria, vitamins, and minerals they need but can't get by normal digestion so they eat them. This is normal with several animals including guinea pigs as well. As an example humans and other carnivores plus many omnivores can't get b12 from a vegetarian diet. The bacteria that makes it does so after the area of the intestine that can digest and absorb it so we require some type of animal product from those that can get b12, fortified foods, vitamin pills, etc... unless we wanted to eat feces which contain it. Rabbits make up for things like that plus repopulate the digestive tract with useful bacteria needed to digest food by eating their dropping. They have a lot less harmful bacteria than carnivores and omnivores so you do not get unhealthy bacterial infections from fresh herbivore droppings.

Now licking up their own urine is odd and I would say something is missing from the diet. Are they eating only pellets and is it a good quality pellet or some small brand of mystery ingredients and byproducts? Do they have any trace mineral blocks or hay?


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## City Bound (Jan 24, 2009)

akane. it was eating the soil paper not licking up the pee.

I feed the rabbit manna pro rabbit food. I was giving it straw until i learned that rabbits do not like straw, so I just cleaned out the cage and gave the rabbit some hay. Other then that I feed the rabbit fresh greens like dandelions, chard, beet tops, some carrot, and it has a salt block to lick.

Our water is treated with chlorine here. The chlorine might be killing the cultures in his intestines.


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## Caprice Acres (Mar 6, 2005)

City Bound said:


> Our water is treated with chlorine here. The chlorine might be killing the cultures in his intestines.


Could be. I know people drink it with no major problems, but perhaps a gut-fermentor like rabbits are affected. 

That's easy enough to fix, though. Just leave a bucket out about 24hrs. Chlorine naturally dissipates relatively quickly.


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## City Bound (Jan 24, 2009)

mygoat, i am going to do that.


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## akane (Jul 19, 2011)

> Just leave a bucket out about 24hrs. Chlorine naturally dissipates relatively quickly.


No longer true. Most places do not use plain chlorine but chloramine which is bound with ammonia to treat water. This is specifically because it does not dissipate when left open to the air. Aquarists have had to stop leaving water sit and start using dechlorinators in most cities for their fish tanks because it doesn't do anything anymore to leave water sit. A dechlorinator binds the ammonia and gets rid of the chlorine. I would imagine it's safe to drink water treated with fish dechlorinator. Personally I prefer the stuff that goes through the drinking water filters you can buy at stores. Tap water and chlorinated water in particular makes me sick otherwise. I grew up on well and bottled water. Those pitcher and small container filters will do a better job and remove other things. 

However I have over a dozen rabbits in the house on chlorinated water right now from newborns to 5 year olds without issue. Too much water to use bottled on them or burn through filters. Amako drinks like she's in a desert when the temp is 68-74F. At 4lbs she empties 32 oz more than every 24hrs and soaks her cage in pee. Always has. She seems perfectly fine. I've got a bunch of 6 and 7 week olds all fine. Fostered 2 week old bouncing about. Some who just left the box and started eating and drinking solids. Also fine.

Rabbits will eat newspaper and cardboard. Perhaps it's just coincidence it's also soiled and he doesn't care. I throw mine cardboard containers and balled up paper as toys which get mostly eaten and peed on. Sometimes in the opposite order before I get them removed for a new one.


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## Macybaby (Jun 16, 2006)

rabbits like to chew, and maybe it's not that they want to eat the stuff, but feel a need to knaw. Give them a good chuck of softwood, maybe an apple or willow branch and let them have at it. 

Some animals will chew on things out of boredom, so it's best to give them something that won't cause a problem. It's one reason metal cages are preferred over wood.

I don't think anyone said that straw was bad for rabbits, just that it's not a good source of nutrition. I've used it for bedding often, until I ran out. When we bought the place there were about 20 small bales of straw in the hayloft, but it's all gone now. 

My rabbits also drink treated water. Though mine does sit out as I fill 2 gallon buckets that have nipples on them.


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## City Bound (Jan 24, 2009)

my rabbit is crazy, I gave him some scraps of wood to chew and he does not even touch them. I gave him some wood blocks that hang from from the cage, he does not touch those. He does not play with any toys. All he likes to do is walk around the house, attack the throw rug in the bathroom, and then relax all day.


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## a7736100 (Jun 4, 2009)

rabbits are picky as to what wood they chew. They usually love chewing the bark off branches and leave the wood.


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## Haven (Aug 16, 2010)

Mine prefer to chew and eat live branches. If I feed them berry canes or branches, they chew the green bark off the outside and leave the woody center.


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## Qhorseman (Jul 9, 2010)

Entirely normal for rabbits to eat their feces. In fact they will die if it is deprived.


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## PD-Riverman (May 24, 2007)

Qhorseman said:


> Entirely normal for rabbits to eat their feces. In fact they will die if it is deprived.


I never seen my rabbits eat theirs. All my cages are wire floors so when they poop it drops through. I have several rabbits that are several years old.

Did you get this info out of a book? I would like to read it. Thanks


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## akane (Jul 19, 2011)

You can find that info anywhere. It's on every website, forum, book, etc... Studies have even been done on it.

Rabbit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
rabbits general


> Rabbits practice coprophagia. They should re-eat their caecotrophs (soft, dark, mucous-covered faecal pellets that look a little like currants) straight from their anus. Passing the food through the gut twice makes for very efficient extraction of nutrients from the food. They will not re-eat them if the diet is too rich, they are in pain or void them out when frightened or stressed. These caecotrophs are sticky and if not consumed stick to the skin around the anus This can cause a local dermatitis and increases the risk of fly strike, leading to a maggot infestation.


Scott Veterinary Clinic | Bedford | Veterinary Practice | Cats | Dogs | Rabbits | Horses | Exotics - Coprophagia
[Influence of caecotrophy (coprophagia) on t... [Reprod Nutr Dev. 1986] - PubMed - NCBI


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## City Bound (Jan 24, 2009)

Haven said:


> Mine prefer to chew and eat live branches. If I feed them berry canes or branches, they chew the green bark off the outside and leave the woody center.


Like raspberry and blackberry canes?


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## Haven (Aug 16, 2010)

City Bound said:


> Like raspberry and blackberry canes?


Yes, they love them.


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## Haven (Aug 16, 2010)

PD-Riverman said:


> I never seen my rabbits eat theirs. All my cages are wire floors so when they poop it drops through. I have several rabbits that are several years old.
> 
> Did you get this info out of a book? I would like to read it. Thanks


I have never seen mine eat the caecotrophs either, but I have seen a few on the wire and they are much too large to pass through the wire, so I can only assume they are eating them. Otherwise the entire cage floor would be full of them.


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## Elsbet (Apr 2, 2009)

I've seen mine eat theirs. Straight from the bum, it never falls to the cage floor, much less through the bottom. They usually do this at night, it seems, so unless you are in your rabbitry in the wee small hours, you might not catch them at it. Or you might just think they are cleaning their hind quarters.
I spend every minute I can with my critters, even in the night- for one thing, if i'm prone to wandering out to check on them at strange hours, it's harder for various predators to work out a routine.


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## Guest (Apr 5, 2012)

PD-Riverman said:


> I never seen my rabbits eat theirs. All my cages are wire floors so when they poop it drops through. I have several rabbits that are several years old.
> 
> Did you get this info out of a book? I would like to read it. Thanks


They bend under and take it directly from the anus as it's being expelled. You can see one doing it in the video below. 

If they are prevented from doing this (as has been done in laboratory experiments), they WILL die. That's a scientific fact.

[YOUTUBE]Ml2AjX4iFQo[/YOUTUBE]


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## PD-Riverman (May 24, 2007)

Thanks for the info!


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