Space Monkey
Well-Known Member
Disclaimer: This is about my rabbit and my rabbit only. You should follow professional and veterinarian recommendations and standards of care for your rabbit(s) as much as you possibly can. If your rabbit(s) is anything like mine, you might find some comfort here.
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I posted about this awhile ago. Freya (11 months old Mini Satin) has been a poor hay eater for as long as we've had her (8 months). She had Muesli in her food dish and no hay in her cage when we bought her at the State Fair last summer. At the time I didn't know this was a bad thing because I didn't know about rabbit care. I was under the assumption that rabbits ate carrots like the cartoons taught us as kids. Thankfully we couldn't take her home the day we bought her because she was being shown the next day - and after the show was when we could take her. The extra night gave me the time I needed to research rabbit care, and thank God I did. We would have killed her or at the very least made her ill and/or unhealthy had I not done my research.
She came home to us to find a large pen and large cage set up, toys, somewhere to hide, a litter box, plenty of hay and water, Oxbow pellets, and after a couple of weeks, leafy greens. She started out ignoring the hay almost completely. Once in awhile she would nibble on a piece, but she never ate more than a couple strands, certainly not enough to call it her "food". Most days she would ignore it, some days she would eat enough for us to be able to tell there was hay missing from the hay manger, but not nearly enough.
Then came trouble. About a month and a half into having her she stopped pooping and needed to see an emergency vet who knew rabbits. She was put on some meds I had to give her every day for I think 5 days or a week or something like that. We thought maybe it was the arugula we had given her because that was the newest thing she'd eaten. The xrays showed way too much food matter in her system almost like a blockage, which then lead us to believe it was the carpet fibers she loves pulling up. Maybe it was the carpet fibers. And maybe this wouldn't have been devastating had she been eating her hay to push it out. She's since had arugula regularly and does perfect with it. She's got about a dozen regular leafy greens now. Anyways, it was a constant battle. Her poops would get very, very small even after this. A lot of the time it wasn't nearly enough poop. She was staying under weight with us trying to give her minimum pellets and a standard amount of greens to force hay eating. Eventually she stopped eating the hay all together no matter what we did or how little food she was getting anywhere else.
So I threw my hands up. She was staying under weight and was clearly having poop abnormalities, all because of this attempted force feeding of hay that the books said was required. A few months ago we stopped buying it and therefore stopped serving it. We decided to let her free feed Oxbow Adult Rabbit Pellets out of her dish, it always remains full. She gets her daily large salad that consists of 4-6 different leafy greens. She gets her 3 or 4 banana chips.
What has happened in these 3 months? No small poops, no irregular poops, great consistency, and she's now a normal weight. She isn't a glutton with her free feeding. We should have done that well beforehand. I was going to tough it out with her on the hay, I really was, but after some time I wasn't going to watch her starve herself, make herself sick, and not poop. I'm curious if the hay thing is exaggerated, after all, most domestic animals, humans included, don't eat exactly the way the books say they and we should. And yet we're alive.
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I posted about this awhile ago. Freya (11 months old Mini Satin) has been a poor hay eater for as long as we've had her (8 months). She had Muesli in her food dish and no hay in her cage when we bought her at the State Fair last summer. At the time I didn't know this was a bad thing because I didn't know about rabbit care. I was under the assumption that rabbits ate carrots like the cartoons taught us as kids. Thankfully we couldn't take her home the day we bought her because she was being shown the next day - and after the show was when we could take her. The extra night gave me the time I needed to research rabbit care, and thank God I did. We would have killed her or at the very least made her ill and/or unhealthy had I not done my research.
She came home to us to find a large pen and large cage set up, toys, somewhere to hide, a litter box, plenty of hay and water, Oxbow pellets, and after a couple of weeks, leafy greens. She started out ignoring the hay almost completely. Once in awhile she would nibble on a piece, but she never ate more than a couple strands, certainly not enough to call it her "food". Most days she would ignore it, some days she would eat enough for us to be able to tell there was hay missing from the hay manger, but not nearly enough.
Then came trouble. About a month and a half into having her she stopped pooping and needed to see an emergency vet who knew rabbits. She was put on some meds I had to give her every day for I think 5 days or a week or something like that. We thought maybe it was the arugula we had given her because that was the newest thing she'd eaten. The xrays showed way too much food matter in her system almost like a blockage, which then lead us to believe it was the carpet fibers she loves pulling up. Maybe it was the carpet fibers. And maybe this wouldn't have been devastating had she been eating her hay to push it out. She's since had arugula regularly and does perfect with it. She's got about a dozen regular leafy greens now. Anyways, it was a constant battle. Her poops would get very, very small even after this. A lot of the time it wasn't nearly enough poop. She was staying under weight with us trying to give her minimum pellets and a standard amount of greens to force hay eating. Eventually she stopped eating the hay all together no matter what we did or how little food she was getting anywhere else.
So I threw my hands up. She was staying under weight and was clearly having poop abnormalities, all because of this attempted force feeding of hay that the books said was required. A few months ago we stopped buying it and therefore stopped serving it. We decided to let her free feed Oxbow Adult Rabbit Pellets out of her dish, it always remains full. She gets her daily large salad that consists of 4-6 different leafy greens. She gets her 3 or 4 banana chips.
What has happened in these 3 months? No small poops, no irregular poops, great consistency, and she's now a normal weight. She isn't a glutton with her free feeding. We should have done that well beforehand. I was going to tough it out with her on the hay, I really was, but after some time I wasn't going to watch her starve herself, make herself sick, and not poop. I'm curious if the hay thing is exaggerated, after all, most domestic animals, humans included, don't eat exactly the way the books say they and we should. And yet we're alive.
Since you mentioned humans... we've all heard stories of people who ate horrible diets, never exercised, and yet lived to ripe old age. It just happens. Those anecdotal cases, of course, shouldn't negate sound health advice.
