Do rabbits have to eat ALL their cecals?

[Tweetiepy]

I've had Peaches now for about 7 months, and I never knew what those cecals looked like. Today my son pointed out that Popcorn (9 week old male) had left some poop - I looked and it was smelly, wet and grape-like. I tried to get him to eat it but he wouldn't. Do they have to eat ALL their cecals? This is the first time I've seen cecals and I'm worried that maybe the baby hasn't learned how to eat these. We've had him for about a week - so I'm not sure if he has some every day or if he just didn't know what to do with these. He had maybe one batch and a few stragglers later. He's a very fuzzy ball of lionhead bunny. Is it possible he ate too much during the night and wasn't hungry for these? Should I be worried? If he absolutely must eat these all the time, how do I get him to eat them? How often do they have these?

Is he too furry to maybe be able to eat them? Peaches is a lionhead too and he always eats his.

 

[Happi Bun]

I wouldn't worry about the occasional uneaten cecal, which I do believe can happen with babies. When you start finding them daily then I would become concerned. You can try putting the uneaten one in a bowl but if it's still there after 24 hours I would just toss it. I believe they are usually produced daily and commonly at night. Most times the rabbit will eat it before it even touches the floor.

 

[jcottonl02]

Rabbits should generally be eating all their caecals. Recycling the goodness they didn't extract before.

It doesn't necessarily mean anything bad if your rabbit leaves some (the occasional one doesn't matter, but if it's a few a day etc.) it just means their diet is too....'good' I guess. That's not terrible, but what it does mean is they have a much higher risk in sitting in their uneaten caecals and attracting flies.
So you want them to eat them really. So if they keeeep producing extras, just cut down a little on their pellets and push their hay.

With a baby though, I don't know. I wouldn't cut their pellets. Like Happibun said, this may happen in babies. I really have no experience with babies. Didn't have Benji as a baby, and Pippin's 'babyhood' just flew by in a flash before I realised lol.

Jen

 

[elrohwen]

It's pretty common for babies to leave uneaten cecals as they're getting used to new foods. I wouldn't worry unless it becomes common and a bigger issue.

Also, once they are deposited on the floor, bunnies generally won't eat them, so there's no way to try and get him to eat them - just clean them up so he doesn't step in them and track them all over. I'm sure he knows how to eat them and is able to do it, he's just overproduced and didn't need to eat all of them that day.

 

[Nancy McClelland]

With several of ours we never see any and assume they get eaten. The rest leave some here and there and never eat them. This was a mechanism developed over the generations to make up for a lack in the wild rabbits daily diet of dried grass. Ours however get a much better diet every day, so, if they don't eat them, I wouldn't worry and I wouldn't store them up either.