Rabbits may be cute, cuddly, and friendly, but these fluffy little friends cannot tell you whether they are sick or not. Fortunately, their urine and poop can tell you their health condition. But first, you need to know how often rabbits pee and poop to determine their health problem.
How Often Do Rabbits Pee and Poop?
Rabbits do love to eat. They love to munch on hay, grass, vegetables, and even fruits! Unfortunately, because they eat a lot, they urinate and poop anytime.
However, each rabbit is different from the others. One may pee and poop twice a day or thrice a day, and both may have a healthy digestive system.
So, how often do rabbits pee and poop? What are the average and ideal counts per day?
Rabbits may pee around eight times a day. But this depends on whether the rabbits are spayed or neutered. If the rabbits are not fixed, they may pee more than average.
On the other hand, rabbits drop up to 200 plus fecal pellets per day and a couple of cecal.
Fecal pellets are those round droppings that rabbits eliminate daily. These round droppings are primarily dry and odorless. While cecal are those droppings that your rabbits eat.
Cecals are also called cecotropes, a particular type of rabbit’s poop. These poops contain vitamins and minerals, including amino acids and proteins that your rabbits need.
Don’t be alarmed if your rabbits start eating cecals, as this is normal behavior.
But don’t mistake cecals for fecal pellets. While fecal pellets are round and dry, the cecals are small, soft, and sticky, which rabbits usually eat at night or early in the morning. They are entirely harmless to the rabbit’s immune system.
However, if the rabbits eat the round and dry fecal pellets, you may need to monitor them. The rabbit may get some internal issues, and your pet rabbit may need to take some medication.
It is usual for rabbits to pee and poop multiple times a day. However, what is alarming and concerning is if the rabbits don’t pee or poop within 24 hours.
What is the Normal Rabbit Urine Color?
A rabbit’s urine is like a human’s urine, where the color and consistency indicate whether the person is sick or not. If you have a rabbit at home or plan to get one, you must know these primary urine colors that may tell your rabbit’s health.
The rabbit’s urine color may reach from pale yellow to golden orange most of the time. The colors within this range are considered normal rabbit urine.
However, any rabbit urine color that does not fall under this group may need to be monitored, especially if the urine comes with sand-like crystals or blood in it.
Different Rabbit Urine Colors
Sometimes, it is not about how often rabbits pee and poop but what is the color of the urine and poop, instead. Since food and water intake also play a significant role in rabbit urine colors, the rabbit urine may be darker than the standard urine color, but the rabbits’ health may still show normal.
Look at the table below to know what a specific rabbit urine color means.
| Rabbit Urine Color | Indication |
| Transparent | Normal |
| Yellow | Normal |
| Normal | Dehydrated |
| Red | Diet-induced urine color |
| Brown | Possibly dehydrated |
Transparent Rabbit Urine Color
This urine color is the standard rabbit urine color. However, if this rabbit’s urine color is accompanied by other symptoms like increased thirst or excessive drinking, your rabbit must be having trouble with its health. The rabbit might have diabetes or kidney problems.
Yellow Rabbit Urine Color
Pale yellow or yellow-colored pee indicates that your rabbit’s urine is normal, and they don’t have any kidney-related problems that you may worry about.
Orange Rabbit Urine Color
You might get a bit worried when your rabbit’s urine color is orange. Fortunately, the orange urine color is standard. But it may indicate that your rabbit is dehydrated. If your rabbit has this urine color, try giving the rabbit enough water to drink.
Monitor how often the rabbits pee and see if there is an improvement in their urine color.
Red Rabbit Urine Color
While it is alarming to see that your rabbit’s urine is red, you must remember that their diet mainly causes it. The color of the food and the liquid the rabbits take may cause their urine color to be red.
Do not worry if your rabbit’s urine is red, as it will return to its normal color after a couple of days.
However, if your rabbit’s urine stays red for over a week without eating or drinking the food and water that causes the urine to turn red, you may need to bring the rabbit to an animal clinic to have it checked.
Brown Rabbit Urine Color
A brown rabbit’s urine color may mean that they have health issues, but it usually tells you that your rabbit is just dehydrated. Thus, make sure to put enough clean drinking water in their hutch.
Common Rabbit Discharges Found in Their Urine
In some instances, your rabbit’s urine may be cloudy or show red spots and white discharges. These things and how often rabbits pee and poop may tell you that your rabbit is battling a deadly disease.
Red spots may mean blood spots in their urine, and the white discharge tells you that your rabbit is passing extra calcium in their urine. While cloudy urine may mean that they have a gall bladder or urinary tract infection.
Thus, if your rabbits fall into any of these conditions, contact the nearest vet in your area.
How to Tell if Your Rabbit’s Poop is Healthy?
This might be a little gross for some, but to check how healthy your rabbit’s poop is, you need to check their droppings manually.
It is advisable that you must check the fresh rabbit poop and not those that were left for how many hours or days since their poop can quickly get harder as it dries up.
Healthy rabbit poop is soft and breakable that a bit of pressure can cause them to break into small pieces, powdery and dust-like. While the interior of the rabbit’s poop should have a golden yellow to green shade.
There are two different rabbit poops that you must know. One is the normal, dry yet soft fecal pellets and the cecals or the cecotropes, which contain your rabbits’ vitamins and minerals. It is normal to see that your rabbits will eat the latter but not the former.
Cecotropes or night poops are produced through hindgut fermentation, a process that certain mammals with a single-chambered stomach undergo. The process involves the whole digestive system from the animal’s mouth to the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and colon.
Then the food that the rabbit ate will then be set back to the cecum, which connects both the small and small intestines.
Usually, the process will take around 4 to 8 hours, and once the ingested food finishes the process, the rabbit will pass it through their anus, which the rabbits will then re-ingest.
Cecotropes provide healthy nutrients to your rabbit. Thus, maintaining a good quality of cecotropes is necessary.
To do this, all you need to do is to stock hay of good quality. Make it a habit to monitor their hay supply in your rabbit’s hutch and ensure that they are getting fresh hay every day.
Give them enough hay that they need to consume within the day. Ensure that they will eat hay not less than their required amount. Consuming hay below its ideal fiber consumption per day may also cause health problems like enterotoxemia.
However, do not overfeed your rabbits with hay, as fiber can cause constipation. Instead,
Why My Rabbits Poop Are Not Dry and Soft?
A healthy rabbit’s pee and poop mainly depend on what they eat. So, they must have a balanced diet.
It is also important that you must not feed the rabbits with seed-based treats and sugary treats as it will upset their stomach.
Here’s a quick tip, feed your rabbits with around 70 percent to 80 percent of hay for them to get enough fiber for the day.
Are Rabbit Poop Harmless?
Rabbits regularly groom themselves. The rabbits’ pee and poop are just like a human’s poop. They carry bacteria and maybe parasites. Some common parasites that you may get through a rabbit’s poop are tapeworm and roundworm.
Though some research says that it cannot be transmitted to humans, it is still best to avoid contacting any of these parasites. Thus, you must clean your rabbits’ hutch regularly and pick up their droppings immediately.
Summary
Sometimes it doesn’t matter how often do rabbits pee and poop. Unless signs and symptoms accompany the frequency of how many times they pee and poop, your rabbits’ health is whacked.