Ideas to mix up bun's food

[tab_b]

Hi,

We have two rabbits and on top of their hay (and a small amount of quality pellets) they get their fresh greens daily. It's normally a mixture of Asian greens like Bok Choy, Pak Choy and Kai Lan. Lately one of our rabbits has been tossing through, eating a couple of leaves and leaving the rest. She's still eating other things, and of course eats the occasional and rare treat, she just seems to bore of the leaves. Our other rabbit, who used to love them too, doesn't eat it right away but always goes back to it and is finished them by the next day's greens.

My question is, any ideas to shake up the food without increasing too much sugar? I know of course that rabbits like sugary fruits and vegetables, but I'm mainly looking at the greens. I'm worried if we introduce spinach or kale it'll give them diarrhoea or upset stomachs. We've started to give them a bit of parsley and basil and they seem to love it, but I don't want to give them too much of it. The first rabbit will toss the bowl over to sort through the greens to get to the herbs, so she's loving the change/taste of them.

Any ideas?
Thanks!

 

[Blue eyes]

There's nothing wrong with offering a wide variety of greens. However.... each new type should be introduced one at a time. If parsley is new, then offer a little bit on one day. If there is no change in poos, then offer a bit more on the next day. Continue offering a bit more parsley each day. After several days of no change in poos, then parsley can be added to the list of a tolerated green.

Then you can move on to the next new green. Do this with anything new. The reason you don't want to offer more than one new type at a time is because you'll have no way of knowing which green is causing a problem if they start to get mushy poos. By offering just one, you'll know for sure if a bunny can't tolerate a certain type of green.

Basil is a great choice and can be fed every day (once properly introduced). Kale, spinach and parsley are all high in calcium and/or oxalates. These should not be fed daily for long periods of time. They can be offered several days in a row and then stopped, replacing them with something else for awhile.

Other good options are red-leaf lettuce, green-leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, mint, cilantro. There's a list of other greens at the bottom of this page.

 

[Bribble]

As Blue Eyes said above, introduce everything to them one at a time. I shake things up quite a bit with my rabbits. Just about every fruit and veggie that lives in my kitchen will be fed to them at some point. When things like apples and strawberries get a bit mushier than my mother would like (she's very picky, but I assure you all they're still rabbit safe) we divide it up between all the rabbits. On any given day they could receive anything from apples and strawberries to kiwi or banana. In the spring and summer they get LOTS of veggies from our garden because we somehow always end up with too much. In this case, they absolutely LOVE watermelon and cucumbers.

I would try this "sporadic" feeding program. The rabbits are still getting what they need, but they never know what to expect next which keeps it interesting. Please keep in mind my rabbits are 100% adapted to this type of "feeding program", so I wouldn't just one day start to throw all your kitchen scraps in their cages.