If you are considering getting rabbits for pets, or if you have just taken that step, then one thing you will have to ensure that you do on a very regular basis is that you clean the rabbit cages where you will be keeping them. For many people, this is an unpleasant task, but then again, a task that many rabbit lovers do enthusiastically, as a 'labor of love.' After all, if you are keeping rabbits as pets, then you probably love them. And if you love them, you won't begrudge them of the little labor in cleaning their cages, for 'to love is to serve' - or so someone said.
There are a number of reasons why you need to clean rabbit cages regularly.
The main one is because the urine of rabbits is one of the smelliest variety, you know, the sort that gives a pungent ammonia smell within a very short period of time if it is not cleaned. And so pungent is the smell of rabbit urine that their continued exposure to it (if you don't take to cleaning the rabbit cages regularly) could see them come to infected with conditions like pneumonia. In short, it is the strongest of urine smells, one that you wouldn't want to expose your rabbits to.
The smell-induced pneumonia issue aside, though, failure to keep your rabbit cages clean means that you are exposing your pets to a host of other illnesses that living in an unhygienic habitat has been seen to cause. This is important because study after study has shown that animals living in unhygienic habitats are prone to more illnesses than those living in cleaner environments.
Yet in cleaning your rabbit cages, you are not only doing the rabbits a favor, but also yourself. This is especially the case where you keep the cages indoors. Failure to clean them off the strong smelling rabbit pee could see your house start smelling like a miniature 'sewerage treatment plant;' obviously something you wouldn't wish for. In keeping your rabbit cages clean, you are also saving yourself the considerable sums of money you could have to pay for veterinary treatment, if your pets were to catch one of the infections caused by continued exposure to dirty living environments. As it turns out, veterinary treatment bills can be quite huge, even for animals as small as rabbits. And it is worth noting that although you may not see yourself paying the bills for the rabbit right now, it is something you would find yourself having to do sometime down the line when you have come to develop a soft spot for the pets. Now these bills are quite avoidable with as simple steps as keeping your rabbits' habitat clean.
Lastly, by keeping your rabbit cages clean, you also increase their life (make them last longer). On the other hand, if you fail to clean the rabbit cages regularly, you risk running into a situation where the highly corrosive rabbit urine seeps into the material used to build the cages, causing much damage.
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