mine were gentle as well. If you want to cut back a great deal on smell - build a 2X6 wooden frame under the cages and put plywood with a bunch of real small holes in it inside of the frame. What you want is basically a wooden tray with holes to drain water if any gets into it. Go to lowes or home depot and buy the cheapest topsoil you can find. Put that on top of the plywood inside of the frame. Then go to a bait store and buy a couple of boxes of fishing worms and throw into the dirt. You can sell the worms too.They will eat the rabbit shit and turn it into dirt. I started out with 50 worms. In about 6 weeks I probably had several thousand or more. Most people I have heard make more money off of the worms than the rabbits.