Wee or Vomit? Need answers!

[PhoenixTheMiniLop]

Hey guys I have just come home to Phoenix (11 week old mini lop) and I noticed this wee or vomit on the cardboard at the front of her hutch? I'll put a picture up but I'm just a bit worried to what it could be.. She is eating fine and drinking and doing her pellet poos I haven't seen her urinate though but she usually does it in her litter box (none in there right now) or in her hutch (naughty girl!!!), so I'm not sure..

She otherwise seems healthy to me? But I don't know a huge lot about bunnys so I need some answers!! She is my baby and Im worried..

 

[missyscove]

Looks like urine to me. Rabbits are physiologically unable to vomit. It has to do with the angle at which their esophagus enters their stomach and how tight the cardiac sphincter is there.
Their urine frequently has a lot of calcium in it which can leave that chalky white residue behind when the urine dries.

 

[PhoenixTheMiniLop]

So I have nothing to worry about? This is normal!!??

 

[JBun]

As long as it's not thick and gritty or creamy. Rabbits normally excrete excess calcium in the urine, resulting in whitish urine and chalky residue when it dries. It's only a problem when some rabbits have a buildup of it in their bladder, resulting in bladder sludge problems and the thickened urine. This isn't common in most rabbits, but can occur.
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Uro_gen_diseases/generalities/Sludge.htm

 

[PhoenixTheMiniLop]

When I wiped it up with a tissue it wasn't thick, it didn't build up on the tissue, it was just yellowish and smelt of urine.

Also I have another question: she is just under 3 months, her diet consists of alfalfa pellets, lucurne hay, and oaten hay as her bedding which she also eats and plenty of water. Are they the right things to be feeding an 11 week old bun??
I heard that you should stop feeding the lucurne as they get older, but still a bit confused so if someone could explain that to me, that'd be great

 

[PhoenixTheMiniLop]

Also I weighed her the other day and I'm pretty sure she was around 800grams.. how much pellets should I be feeding her each day with her weight...?

 

[Azerane]

Yep urine.

If you're feeding alfalfa based pellets you technically don't need to feed alfalfa/lucerne hay as well. It is correct that you'll need to switch to a timothy based pellet and change to a different hay as well (such as timothy, meadow, oaten etc). Alfalfa/lucerne is a legume hay, it's high in protein and calcium. As they mature it can be too rich and can cause kidney problems as well as bladder sludge. The other hay types are grass hays and are higher in fiber which is better for digestion

 

[PhoenixTheMiniLop]

She loves her lucurne though like she goes crazy over it! She gets it everyday as well as her alfalfa pellets. When should I cut the lucurne hay out??

And does anyone know how much pellets I should be feeding her if she weighs about 800grams??

 

[Azerane]

They say you can feed as many pellets as they'll eat up to the age of 6 months, but I think it's a little excessive since some bunnies will literally stuff themselves with pellets and not eat anything else. Given that the guideline for adults is 1/4 cup per 5 pounds of rabbit, and your little one is only about 1.7pounds, 1/4 cup is probably plenty. You can always measure it out, feed it, and maybe measure what's left the next day, or if it's all eaten by midday, provide a little more. It's hard for me to judge how tiny a rabbit that size is when I look at Bandit who weighs 3.1kg.

Since you're also feeding alfalfa pellets, you can start cutting the lucerne hay out any time from now, but definitely by 6 months. At the very least I would start adding handfuls of a grass hay to the lucerne, so that your bunny gets used to eating eat, some can be a bit fussy when trying to take them off lucerne.

 

[PhoenixTheMiniLop]

Yeah I don't think giving her unlimited pellets would be smart because she would stuff herself with them and eat too much haha. She is a little gobble guts! The other morning I gave her the pellets and she started choking on them, obviously not chewing properly so I removed them and gave them to her later that day. She hasn't done it again though which is good.
But thanks for letting me know the amount 😊

She urinates sometimes into her litter box (filled with paper pellets) but also does it in her hutch and poos everywhere, I heard it just takes patience to get them completely litter trained, how can I encourage her more to do her business in the litter box??

Also last night I woke up to her stomping her feet in the hutch and she did again around 6am. She has a pen around her hutch and all through the day her hutch is open so she can get exercise but of a night she is locked in her hutch so she knows it's bed time. It is my room so I'm not sure what could frighten her or make her feel uncomfortable. Do you know what it could be and why she's stomping??? Thanks and sorry for the essay!!!!

 

[Aki]

About litterbox training, you have to pick up all the poos she makes outside and put them in the box. Clean the pee with white vinegar to remove the smell. Put the hay in a hayrack in such a manner that the rabbit has to be in the litter box to eat it. That should do the trick. Normally, rabbits are pretty easy to litter train when it comes to peeing. Pooing is a lot harder and a lot of rabbits are never 100% clean.
About the stomping, it happens sometimes. Might just mean she heard a noise or something - I lived in the first floor of a building in a noisy part of Paris for years, I wasn't really hearing the noise anymore (habit, I guess) but the rabbits sure did and they regularly woke me up stomping...

But, are you quite sure you've got a doe? Being dirty, eating like a pig and stomping for no good reason sure sound like male behavior to me XD

 

[PhoenixTheMiniLop]

Yep I do pick her poos up and put them back in her litter box, been doing that since the day I got her haha. Her hutch is a tad small, I am going to get her a new one soon, so it isn't really possible to hang a hay rack near her litter box at this point in time.. but I will in the future.
That's good to know about the stomping, she has stomped at me once before when she got a bit mad but I just thought it was strange how she was doing it through the night.

Well I'm not quite sure! haha, the lady who I got her from said she was a little girl and that was the breeder but who knows!? How can I tell??

Also yesterday she was licking me on the finger but then bit me? What was that all about??

 

[PhoenixTheMiniLop]

This is her set up, she has her hutch opened all day long to hop around in her pen and she flops on the tiles where its nice and cool for her