Conditioning Help?

[Shaded Night Rabbitry]

I am finally sick of dealing with this. I can't seem to get it right at all.

My juniors (nethies) are doing fabulous on the amount of feed their getting. They could get perhaps a little more, but I figured with the amount of hay I let them eat each day, they should be fine on a 1/3 cup. (About 1.5 ounces of feed.)

But my adults are all over the place. For most of my does (brood and 'pet'), they're skin and bones. So I've upped their feed a little, and am waiting to see what happens. The does with babies are free fed, and still can't seem to keep weight on. (At the same time, I'm averaging 5-6 babies to a milking doe.)

And my show buck... I got commented on, at Spring Youth Fair, that he was getting fat. And all the fat was falling on his neck, which was making him start to taper the wrong way. So immediately I started a process to cut down on the feed. He's now eating about 1/5 a cup or so. About an ounce of feed. Now he's dropped down to under 2 lbs. His skinny along his back, but the neck pudge is still there. Starting tonight, I put him back up to 1/4. He's not starving, from what I can see.

I'm just at a loss for what to do. I know that the guide to raising better blahblahblah recommends about an ounce of feed per pound. So unless they're going into starvation mode from the lack of feed, and that's making them gain weight... idk. I mean. A cup of feed is too much for a dwarf a day.

 

[Shaded Night Rabbitry]

I should add. One 1/3 a cup for the buck, he was gaining about an ounce a month, until he got to almost 2.08 lbs. That was noooot cool with me. He's by no means a large animal, and the 2.02 pounds I bought him at (as a senior, still), suited his type quite well. I just can't seem to find a way to get rid of the neck pudge, and keep him around that weight.

 

[Rattiemattiesrattery]

I don't know much about the weights on showing rabbits yet especially for dwarfies, I only have mixed dwarf pet only...

However I have found that my buns (breeding and pet) are great on free feed, with about a flake of hay every couple of days for a cage with 2+ buns in it.
Plus all the veggies they are given. I have 8 of my own bunnies and several fosters at any given time.. I find the greens though and large cages help them regulate their food intake and their weight. (since none of mine are fat nor Skinny)

 

[countrybuns]

it sounds like the feed may be too high in fat but not high in enough in protein. i would maybe try switching feeds or even asking the breeder you got your buck off what food they were buying. good luck getting them into show shape

 

[OakRidgeRabbits]

Before jumping to conclusions about feed, I would worm them. It sounds like worms might be your problem.

You can use the Ivermectin horse paste. I've heard that people feed a pea size amount once a day for 3-5 days.

Or, I just bought the alfalfa pellets made for cattle that are like 0.5% Fenbendazole. I fed one pellet per lb. of body weight daily for about 3-5 days.

 

[Jaded]

I would put all rabbits on unlimited feed for now, if ind this happens in my rabbitry too, it is annoying and breeding is delayed until the get back up to there size, I also put my rabbits outside in a play pen for 1-3 hourse everyday.

 

[Shaded Night Rabbitry]

I did a small worming regimen lately. I just didn't have enough to do more than a few days, though. I found worms in the buck's poop a while back. It was just one day, and didn't see it after. A couple weeks later I wormed everyone for a few days.

However, it really shouldn't be the feed. It was happening before the switch, but I've just made the switch from a generic del's or alber's feed, to Pfau. It'd be weird if everything was so wonderful for 6 months, and then everything goes haywire.

I will say. Breeding has been no problem, other than genetic things that are unavoidable.