It’s crazy, but most pet stores sell pine and cedar shavings and bedding, and will tell you that you should use it for your small pets…but it’s as good as slowly poisoning them until their health fails…in fact, it IS slowly poisoning them until their health fails. Softwoods such as pine and cedar contain phenols that your bunny will inhale, especially after it’s been urinated on. These phenols are toxic to your bunny as well as any other small animal. In fact, if you were to get down to your bunny’s level and breathe with him, it may also be toxic to you.
If you want to do some more reading about it, you can check out these two links, or do some google searching and find lots of others.
This link will give you some insight about your health an phenols in commercial products that you probably have in your house http://www.e-nujag.cm-uj.krakow.pl/materialy/higiena/main.pdf
This link will tell you a little more about phenols and your bunny’s health http://www.rabbit.org/care/shavings.html
And this one gives some examples of testing to find the health problems in bunnies, as well as a chart of different litters and potential problems. http://www.rabbit.org/journal/1/liver-disease.html
We use wood pellets for a number of reasons. They are made of 100% hardwood with no chemicals, they are very absorbant, they mask the urine smell so well that you can litterally put your nose to the box and smell almost nothing, and they are CHEAP. You can get a bag of these pellets labeled for pets in the pet store for about $18 fo a 40 pound bag, OR if you’re smart, and I think you are…you can get them at any place that sells wood pellets for pellet stoves, and pay about $6 for a 40 pound bag. Pine shavings are cheap…please throw them away and get your bunny started on one of the healthier litters in the chart mentioned above.
