# Do rabbits smell?



## carlyanne (Jan 14, 2014)

Hi everyone! You might have seen a couple of my posts already and here I am again.
So I'm planning on getting two rabbits later next week and keeping them in an xpen in my room. However I was wondering, what should I put underneath it to stop the mess from going on the carpet? 

Also my dad has forced me to ask, do rabbits smell out rooms? Like for instance the urine/poop or food. And is there any kind of spray I can use around rabbits to make my room smell better or is it toxic? He is also worried that the food will 'attract mice or rats'. 

Thank you all


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## pani (Jan 14, 2014)

Felix plays in half of my living room, sectioned off with an xpen. Our living room is tiled, but there's also a rug which can get a bit mucky sometimes! Luckily he'd never peed on the carpets before he was litter box trained, but I've taken to putting down a throw rug underneath the messier parts of his play area (like where his food is), so I can easily scoop it up and clean it without worrying about digging poop and hay and bits of food out of the rug. 

Generally, rabbits don't smell! If you notice your bun is smelling, it's probably just a matter of cleaning his anal glands - they can sometimes get a waxy build-up, but it's a lot less gross than it sounds. Just a matter of wetting a q-tip with warm water and gently prying the build-up off. Their litter trays can smell, too, since their urine is a bit, um, potent... as long as you clean the litter box regularly, you shouldn't really notice it though.


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## Sophie's Humble Servant (Jan 14, 2014)

Yes rabbits smell.....

....Like hay and whatever else you use as their litter.

They will only stink if a person doesn't clean their cage and litter pan enough. Or if they have something medical going on... Otherwise they are very clean and neutral smelling animals, which I guess makes sense as they have to evade possible predators.

I wouldn't advise using a spray for the room. Rabbits are very sensitive to things like that and it could actually be harmful to them, depending on what's being sprayed.

And unless you already have rats and mice in your house I wouldn't be worried about attracting them to your room


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## lovelops (Jan 14, 2014)

carlyanne said:


> Hi everyone! You might have seen a couple of my posts already and here I am again.
> So I'm planning on getting two rabbits later next week and keeping them in an xpen in my room. However I was wondering, what should I put underneath it to stop the mess from going on the carpet?
> 
> Also my dad has forced me to ask, do rabbits smell out rooms? Like for instance the urine/poop or food. And is there any kind of spray I can use around rabbits to make my room smell better or is it toxic? He is also worried that the food will 'attract mice or rats'.
> ...



My 4 dogs smell worse than any of my bunnies! No my bunnies do not smell out room and I've had friends visit who were surprised I had 4 rabbits in the house.. however that being said, to protect the carpet from spills from the food bowl, water bowl, treats, etc I have mini tarps that I bought from the hardware store and also I went to the thrift store to buy larger throw rugs that I can put underneath, take outside my back door and shake out and then wash and put back down if I need to. That way the main carpet in your bedroom is saved. I wouldn't spray alot of things around the buns
it might make them sick. The only thing I have in my house is the air wick
automatic air freshners that have the batteries that spray every 9-30 minutes depending on how you set them up but I keep those HIGH and elevated away from the dogs and bunnies. Remember with the bunnies being low to the ground you don't want anything that they would be breathing in that could cause _respiratory problems... 

Keep us posted!

Vanessa 
_


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## Nancy McClelland (Jan 14, 2014)

We have seven bunnies in our house and no on can tell. I can go into anyone's house that owns a cat and tell they have one immediately. We clean the litter pan daily and their hutch get a weekly cleaning. Our dog is way more "fragrant".


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## Nadege (Jan 14, 2014)

My bunny is in my room, and it smells absolutely nothing (I am actually quite sensitive to smells). Of course I clean her things and change her litter very often. I use some recycled paper litter and it's been very good at absorbing urine odor so far. And as far as my bunny herself is concerned, like someone said above she just smells like hay lol. I don't get any nasty smell on my hands after I've been petting her either, contrary to some experiences I've had with other animals. Hope this helps


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## Chrisdoc (Jan 14, 2014)

Same here, I have 3 and as long as I clean litter trays regularly no smells. Ialso have friends who've been and say that you can't tell there are bunnies in the house.


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## Imbrium (Jan 15, 2014)

Rabbit poop is totally odorless (unless they leave cecotropes behind for some reason, which smell if they get squished - those are normally ingested as they're produced, but sometimes babies forget/don't bother to eat them. Adults should never leave cecals behind (if they do, some possible causes are that they're getting too many pellets or that they're obese, arthritic and/or injured and can't comfortably reach down to eat them).

Their pee smells. Spaying/neutering sometimes helps a little, but it doesn't work miracles - their pee may stink less, but it still stinks! Cleaning their litter box regularly is important, of course... but in my experience, how you fill the litter box (ie what substrate you use and how much of it you use) is more important than how often you clean.

I'm honestly really bad about litter boxes. I have so much to do around the house, plus we have two cats, three bunnies and four sugar gliders so there's an awful lot of cages and litter boxes to keep up with. I was better about it at the house, but I'm living in an apartment temporarily and have to dig out the garden hose, walk a couple apartments down to plug it in, then make sure all the water is out after I'm done so it doesn't make a mess when I bring it inside. Man, I can't wait to live in a house again!

I try to do the bunny boxes every week, but sometimes it ends up being more like a week and a half, heh. Even leaving them that long, I can't smell them when I walk into the room... or even when I bend over to stuff more hay in the hay manger (which hangs right over the litter box). It's not until I actually take out the grid (which stops the bunnies from sitting or digging in their boxes) and dump the box over that the stench of rabbit pee suddenly hits. [I should also note that my litter boxes measure about 16'' x 27'' around the bottom and I put a 3-4'' layer of substrate in them; also one of my rabbits is kept separately from the other two, so it's only 1-2 bunnies using each litter box.] I've been on my hands and knees right beside the litter box while interacting with the rabbits and don't even smell it then.

I buy bags of wood pellets (sold as horse bedding) from a feed store for our litter boxes - it's $5 for 40 lbs (depending on where you live/what feed store you go to, it'll anywhere from $5-9), making it the cheapest bunny-safe substrate you can buy. The pellets are kiln-dried pine; kiln drying removes the harmful phenols that would otherwise make pine unsafe. Wood pellets are wildly popular amongst bunny owners for more than just the fact that they're cheap and safe - _when a bunny pees on wood pellets, the pee gets sucked down to the bottom instead of just soaking into the top layer_... meaning you don't smell the pee until you dump the box and expose the bottom layer. I think the fact that I use at least 3-4'' of litter plays a big role in not noticing the smell - once the pee gets pulled down to the bottom, it's pretty well buried.

If you dump the box out inside (which I do, as the boxes are heavy and I'm lazy), the smell dissipates quickly - I'll dump them into a garbage can, tie off the bag, take it and the box outside (bag goes to the dumpster/box gets hosed off) and the smell is long gone when I come back in (this was still true at the house, when I wasn't outside more than five minutes or so).

Before I discovered wood pellets, I once bought "rabbit litter" (some sort of paper pellets) from Petsmart... not only did it not cover the pee smell, but the stench of the pellets themselves was *awful* before I even put them in the litter box. The pee seemed to stay at the top of the box, which I think is why it smelled even when it had been cleaned recently. I've also used Carefresh in litter boxes; it was better than those paper pellets but nowhere near as good as the wood pellets. [For what it's worth, I've heard a lot of positive opinions about paper pellets - I think it was just the specific brand I tried that sucked. That said, wood pellets are still TONS cheaper!]


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## Imbrium (Jan 15, 2014)

Oh, and I forgot to mention hay... most folks buy it by the bale because it's SO much cheaper than the pet store stuff (and fresher, too). I actually buy it in bulk online, which is much pricier than feed store bales but still a lot cheaper than pet store hay (I'd rather get the feed store stuff but my girls are *really* picky and won't eat it). I've had two 20 lb boxes of hay stored in a very small bathroom before and the smell wasn't even noticeable; there's probably 80+ lbs in my living room now and it doesn't make the room smell like hay. It's all enclosed, but not in anything air tight.

When you actually open whatever box or bale bag you've got a ton of hay crammed into and rip off a handful to feed it to the bunnies, the smell is *very* strong; however, it dissipates quickly. Hay will still smell once you put it out, but you have to get pretty close to it (a couple feet or so) to really notice - it's only overpowering when you're first ripping it off the bale and quickly fades to a soft, hard-to-notice background smell.

You can have a pair of bunnies and maybe even a bale of hay in a small bedroom without it smelling like a barn - just pick a litter box substrate that's good at odor control, clean the litter box regularly and keep the hay in bale bags, plastic storage tubs or unscented trash bags + cardboard boxes so that the smell is mostly contained and the only bunny-related smell you should notice (if you notice anything at all) is perhaps a faint "meadow-y" smell. Some people actually buy air fresheners that are "meadow fresh" scent or whatever, so there's something to be said for getting the smell for free 

My bunnies create far more messes than any cat I've ever had but in the year and a half I've had them, they've only ever smelled up a room the way a cat box tends to ONCE (and that was a rare exception). I attempted to free-range them a month or so after moving in with my boyfriend and his cats. Jay and I happened to have sinus infections that week and as we started to regain our senses of smell, we discovered that the "litter box trained" bunnies had made a full-time job out of peeing on *everything* in the living room that belonged to the cats or was supposed to be shared between the bunnies and the cats (beds, mats, furniture, etc.). Nala and Gaz are far naughtier than your typical bunnies, though - most bunns don't get *that* spitefully territorial towards cats!

Bottom line is that if the room your bunn(s) are in smells like "bunnies" (ie rabbit pee) and/or a barn, that's not "normal" and *can* be remedied (as opposed to something you just have to learn to live with, like occasionally finding hay in your underwear).

Oh, and as for the actual bunnies... mine sometimes have a very faint "bunny" smell; it's hard to describe, but it's a vaguely sweet, "clean" smell with a hint of fresh hay... like they've been frolicking in a pretty meadow. They kinda smell like they've just been bathed and blow-dried, lol, which of course they haven't. What I'm getting at is that it's a pleasant smell that you only smell when you press your nose against them (and even then it's very faint).

If your bunny itself smells of anything unpleasant, that's always indicative of a problem. The most common causes are standing in a soiled litter box (especially if you don't use a grid and have a litter where the pee stays up at the top), having a urinary tract issue that causes them to pee on themselves (which can lead to urine burn and needs to be addressed ASAP), needing their anal glands cleaned and failing to eat all of their cecotropes, then sitting on them and squishing them into their fur.


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## carlyanne (Jan 15, 2014)

Imbrium, you are amazing at answering questions!! Thank you so much


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## carlyanne (Jan 15, 2014)

And thank you to everyone else as well


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## Azerane (Jan 15, 2014)

When Bandit's inside, I find that it smells more after I've cleaned the room, he probably goes around chinning things or something to make it smell like him again, haha. Just when it was all fresh and nice, lol


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## Ape337 (Jan 15, 2014)

IMHO I would rather clean 1,000 rabbit boxes than 1 cat box again. I also use softwood (horse stall) pellets and they're awesome! The only odor I smell is hay. I love bunnies &#128522;


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## Imbrium (Jan 15, 2014)

carlyanne said:


> Imbrium, you are amazing at answering questions!! Thank you so much



*Blushes* Thanks! My bunnies have trained me well!



Azerane said:


> When Bandit's inside, I find that it smells more after I've cleaned the room, he probably goes around chinning things or something to make it smell like him again, haha. Just when it was all fresh and nice, lol



Sugar gliders are even worse! Lemmy is especially bad (and potent) when it comes to scent-marking because he's intact - neutering helps significantly with their "manly stink", but since I'm a breeder, I'm kinda stuck with it . Cleaning has to be done on a rotation - if you deep-clean gliders' entire cage (even females/neutered males) and their pouches/toys/wheel at the same time, they go utterly insane trying to stink it all up again.

The worst is the pop-up mesh-walled tent (for interactive play-time). I can never seem to get all the stink out when I clean it and they go all-out to mark it up; made worse by the fact that I have two pairs (one pet only, one for breeding) who live separately and I use the same tent for both pairs (though not at the same time, of course!). I remember when I first brought Hobbes home and he'd been in the tent, the next time Lemmy was in it he was systematically going across, down, across, down, etc., rubbing his chest all over the sides of the tent - I told Jay he reminded me of that old Atarii game, Space Invaders!


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## ceilpaws (Jan 15, 2014)

Rabbits, as a general rule, should not smell. They prefer clean environments and are quite adept at keeping themselves clean as well. The exception to that is a bunny that may be ill, injured, or otherwise unable to care for itself. Even then, with proper husbandry, the bunny should not have a strong odor.

My bunny is housed in a large dog crate. He has a litter box in the corner that he uses religiously as well as a fleece blanket to lay on. My bedroom, where he is kept, is carpeted and, while I have only had him a short time, he has not caused me a reason to need to keep the floor covered. I use paper pellet litter and have not had an issue with odor (and I've used these in the past with success as well). Rabbit poop is odorless and dry. Cecotropes, however, are moist and quite stinky. But, as stated earlier by another poster, they are usually eaten by the bunny before they can cause an issue. Urine, on the other hand, smells strongly. Altering a bunny does help with the smell, but nothing works better than cleaning the litter often. Even so, it is not so offensive as to smell up a room. Even with multiple bunnies when I was younger, I never had an issue with smell.

Hay does smell, but most think the scent is nice. I keep my hay in cool, dry part of my apartment. It is contained and I only pull out what is needed. Even though hay gets kicked around sometimes, in the quantities I have out, it isn't a problem. Pellets have a slight scent, but it's undetectable to me. And, greens should smell fresh and never be left out long enough to get slimy or begin smelling. 

As far as mess is concerned, a litter trained bunny makes things rather easy. In my experience, most bunnies will leave the occasional stray poop when out and about, but, if successfully litter trained, that should be the extent. Spaying and neutering also helps with training a rabbit to use a litter box. Be prepared for hay to get strewn about as well as toys, pieces of grass mats, and cardboard. However, I tend to clean up after my bun right after play time and that keeps it very manageable. I find it similar to having and caring for a cat or dog in terms of work-load. Where rodents and insects are concerned, once again, proper husbandry will prevent an issue unless you already have an issue with mice, rats, or the like. Get your pellets, hay, and bedding from reputable sources and store them well. In all my years of having bunnies, the only time I ever had an issue was when we got hay from someone and it turned out to be damp. It turned moldy, musty, and attracted moths. But, we tossed it and the problems were dumped with it.

Cleaning products I use are white vinegar with water to clean and disinfect and gentle soaps and detergents. I am very cautious with what I use around my rabbit. I also use a baking soda powder for my rug. It's homemade and has just a touch of essential oil to help it smell pretty. But, it is completely harmless and all natural. Even so, I always vacuum well before bringing my bun back into the room or letting him out of his cage. I've used the same products and regimens since I was young and in 4H. I haven't had a problem yet, but it does pay to use caution.

All in all, bunnies are excellent little pets who do require care. But, they are not odorous and they are generally clean. Tell your dad that they won't stink up your bedroom or attract rodents or insects. And, keep arming yourself with information - it'll help and you'll soon be a confident and conscientious house rabbit owner!


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## smitchell721 (Jan 20, 2014)

New bunny owner here as well. When I got my little mini Rex, Rocky Road, I tried several different litter options. Even cleaning his boxes daily his feet seemed wet and stinky. I'd clean his box before bed and by morning his feet were wet when I pick him up. Now I have his main box, under his hay feeder in his hidey hole, is a double box. I took a small cat pan and drilled holes in it. I have another solid pan and I line it with lots of newspaper. Setting the "holey" box on top, I fill it with the paper litter and a thin layer of aspen shavings on top. The Aspen is not as absorbent so the urine soaks down to the litter and the under layer of newspaper. MOST days, he now stays nice and clean and dry. I also have an extra box on his lower level of his hutch that I didn't double up. Here is a pic of his box in his ex pen. 
. he tends to also drag some hay into it.


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## Plymothian_Sophie (Jan 22, 2014)

My bun doesn't smell, just my room smells a bit barn-y I use woodshavings as a substrate, and use the same in her litter tray. It tends to absorb the pee to the bottom so I guess it stops the smell getting out lol
Some shops sell scented substrate to stop rooms smelling barn-y, I personally don't use that for my animals as I don't dislike the smell of the shavings. Depends on your animal husbandry on whether it will smell or not.
I have studied animal care for 4 years and I volunteer in a zoo so I'm used to doing daily cleaning etc so my bun and hammy as well as my other animals are always in immaculate condition  (also probs due to my OCD)
But yeah, totally depends on how much you clean, rabbits keep themselves clean so generally they themselves don't smell, they only smell if they're not cleaned often enough


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## flemish giant (Feb 23, 2014)

If you wanted something just to make sure your house smells good and won't hurt the rabbits, get scentsies.


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## BlueMoods (Feb 28, 2014)

No they don't smell so long as you keep cleaned up after them. Yes, the room I have my cages and of course the liter pans in does smell a bit like a hay barn but, that's because there are 4 bales of hay in there, rabbit food, treats, and all the rest for them and it has been a rabbit room for 10 years. Of course it smells like the things that are stored there. It does not smell like urine, wet dog, a cow barn or anything unpleasant. 

Rabbit food does not attract vermin or bugs badly though, if you already have a problem (mice or roaches for example) or your area is very prone to them you will want to keep the food in plastic bins with lids rather than leaving open bags of it around to avoid any possibility of unwanted critters coming into your home.


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## MustNotBuyMore (Feb 28, 2014)

I've had experiences with older unneutured bucks stinking. Smells like a goat buck. They can put off stinky smells, and some bucks will even spray pee onto you... but usually they are just fine and don't stink with regular cleaning.


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## Bunny-Benard (Apr 16, 2014)

I have a Netherland dwarf, and he stinks! I think it's his wee... Very strong smell and can smell it


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## Bunny-Benard (Apr 16, 2014)

Ignore my last message!! I have a Netherland dwarf, and he smells really bad. As soon as I open the for I can smell him! I'm now wondering is this something medical? May he have a medical problem?? Also, his cage is changed every other day. He has an indoor and outdoor cage, but sleeps indoors...


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## squidpop (Apr 16, 2014)

I have a quick suggestion for what to put under a exercise pen... see if you can buy some left over floor vinyl from a flooring shop- if you buy the end of a roll its cheap. http://flooringsolutions.co/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Rolls_-of_Vinyl_Flooring.jpg


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