Rabbit a pet that is delicate and has sensitiveness toward cleanliness despite being prone to get dirty by its own playful behavior. By that premise, it means rabbit is quite a chore to be maintained as a pet because, including their daily necessity, you have to take care of their cleanliness despite their behavior make them prone to get dirty.
Just to make sure, even though you find your pet rabbit looks clean, try smell your pet rabbit. A Healthy rabbit is not smelly, they are odorless. So if you smell something funny with your rabbit, either you didn’t take care of your rabbit good enough or your rabbit has struck an illness. You might want to read this “12 Symptoms That Your Rabbit is Sick”article should you want to know how to know if your pet rabbit is sick or not.
So, as a responsible pet rabbit owner, you have to make sure your pet rabbit is always clean and one indicator that your rabbit is clean is there is no funny odor A.K.A smelly. So, here are few ways to stop your rabbit from being smelling.
1. Train Your Rabbit To Use Litterbox
By using a litterbox, you will have an easy time to clean your pet rabbit habitat as they will have a designated place to defecate and urinate you have to watch out for. Also by letting your rabbit using a litterbox, it will minimize the stain your pet rabbit will have on its foot soles. Minimizing the smell of ammonia should the rabbit urinate and have their feet stomp on their urine and make it smelly. Read this “How To Do Litter Training For Your Rabbit?” to help you train your rabbit with its potty train.
It is recommended to use a litter pellet as the content of the litter box as it commonly safe for your pet rabbit and avoid to use any clumping litter or wood shaving which can cause harm to your rabbit.
2. Spay or Neuter Your Pet Rabbit
While doing so will make them less aggressive, it will also with making them not spraying everywhere to mark their territory. Your rabbit will be more inclined to chill down and just do its nature call in more designated place, hence helping you should you want to potty train them on litterbox. Because of that, your rabbit will become least prone of being smelly due to excessive spraying or stomp on their sprayed territory area.
Also, did you know that if your fixed (spayed or neutered) rabbit is more likely to avoid cancer than the rabbit that not fixed?
3. Clean and Replace The Content of Litterbox
Once in a while, regularly clean and replace the content of the litterbox with the new one, especially when the litterbox itself become smelly due to urine’s ammonia. While you can cut the smell by spraying the safest disinfectant for rabbit (water mixture + vinegar) into the litterbox and its surrounding, replacing the content and thoroughly the litterbox once a week is recommended.
4. Keep Your Rabbit Feet Clean
Rabbit really like to walk around to play and explore, including stomp their own urine and their dropping which make sole of their feet prone to be dirty by hardened dropping or yellow stain of its urine. Well trained pet rabbit and well-placed litterbox will reduce the chance of your rabbit to stomp their own dropping and moist urine. But nevertheless, should you find your rabbit feet soles getting dirty, you have to gently clean it. Read this “7 Tips to Clean Your Rabbit’s Dirty Feet” article for a detailed and safe guide to clean your rabbit feet.
5. Clean Your Pet Rabbit Bottom if You Find It Messy.
Your rabbit will become smelly or soon-to-be-smelly if you let your rabbit have a messy bottom. Neglecting you rabbit that having messy bottom also harmful for your rabbit. A moist messy rabbit bottom has a chance to make it infested with maggot, and you don’t want that to happen to your pet rabbit.
You might need other people to help to hold your rabbit while doing “butt bath” your rabbit. Wet clean any matted fur by using your hand gently and slowly. After “butt bath” your rabbit, fully dry its bottom gently. Please be advised that this bath is only used for medical or urgently necessary. Absolutely, do not bathe your rabbit as the rabbit is not meant to be wet by its nature! Rabbit might get a serious health problem like hypothermia, shocked and have a heart attack if you carelessly bathe them. Read these “8 Easy and Safe Ways to Bathe Your Pet Rabbit at Home for Beginners” article to know how to properly bathe your rabbit should they urgently need it.
6. Make Sure Your Rabbit Cage Not Smelly
Smelly cage means a dirty cage. While cleaning rabbit cage can be quite a chore to clean. You can minimize it by clean it regularly like once a week or more if necessary while doing a thorough clean once a month, especially their bedding. Read this “4 Ways of How To Keep Rabbit Cage From Stinking“ article to for more detailed way on how to clean your rabbit cage more effectively.
7. Try To Not Put The Rabbit Cage on Outside Environment
Rabbit pet nowadays is different from their descendant, the wild rabbit. They will have a hard time to survive if left alone on the outside environment. Putting your rabbit outside, even with the cage protection, and make sure predator unable to reach inside, it can halve your rabbit lifespan around a half on average. Due to the external environment, rabbit cage that placed outside is more easy to get dirty, making it hard to maintain its cleanliness.
8. Reach Your Vet for Checkup if Your Rabbit Still Smell
Your rabbit looks clean and fresh, it’s cage also properly maintained for its cleanliness, the rabbit also has been spayed or neutered, but why your pet still smelly? Normally, the rabbit is odorless so if it’s still smelly, there might be a serious health issue that requires expert help to know the problem and get proper medical attention. You can ask for help from your local shelter to locate a recommended vet for your pet rabbit.
Here are 8 ways to stop the pet rabbit from smelling. Hopefully, this article and some helpful links will provide you with helpful insight on how to keep your rabbit stay healthy and not smelly.