How long would this food last for?

[Katie Alice]

Hi guys! I’ve been hoping to adopt a bunny for a while now & was wondering how long a 10lb bag of timothy hay would last for one bunny? I found a good seller and it’s reasonably priced but don’t bunnies eat like crazy, haha!

[Sarita]

How old is your rabbit – they only need unlimited pellets the first 7 months of their lives then you would decrease the pellets. So really it depends. If you rabbit is over 7 months old, you would ration pellets based on weight and pellets would be the smallest portion of their diet.

[Peony]

Depends on the size of the rabbit too.

I think it was said 50 pounds would last mine 3 months? but she is fairly small.

[Sarita]

50 pounds would last me years :~)

[LBJ10]

Are we talking hay or pellets?

[Sarita]

LOL – okay I see it’s hay not pellets…my mistake. I guess I saw food in the title and when I read pellets….

[Katie Alice]

I’m looking at adopting a regular sized bun, no dwarf or giant, from a shelter so it will probably be an older bunny.
I’m talking hay here yes, haha! I’m just trying to figure out how much it would be costing me (:

[LBJ10]

It depends on how good of a hay eater your bunny is. Some are little cows and will graze on hay all day long. Others pick at it here and there. Or anywhere in between. LOL

[Peony]

I was talking about western timothy hay :3

Did you ask the shelter if they have hay to buy? Mine had it pretty cheap compared to most stores, buy in bulk, less often :3 They sold me a 50 pound box of hay.

  Could ask the shelter that question, since they should know the personality of the rabbit for reasons like LBJ10 said

[tanlover14]

50 lb of hay is what I buy and it lasts me about 4 weeks = 12.5 lbs of hay per week for me. And I have 6 rabbits so thats about 2 lbs of hay per week per bunny I believe. Mine are all about 4 lbs. I sprinkle some hay over my litter so a little of it is wasted in that per week also. So I would estimate 10 lbs to last one of my rabbits about 5 weeks Hope that helps you a bit!

[tanlover14]

^ If I messed up any math, feel free to correct me! ;P I’m terrible at math.

[Katie Alice]

Hopefully I don’t end up with a cow LOL and no, didn’t ask but I don’t think they sell it

So on average does anyone know if it lasts 2 weeks or a month or what? How long would it last for your bunny?

[LBJ10]

Let’s see, depending on the kind of hay it is, my buns can eat one of those little bags in ~ 3 weeks. They aren’t particularly hay crazed, but they do eat some hay every day. So 10lbs would be 3 months. Maybe. Not sure. I always buy the small ones since there is no where to put it.

[Katie Alice]

Sorry tanlover14 I didn’t see your post haha, that helps a lot!

LBJ10 are you bunnies dwarfs?

[LBJ10]

I have a Jersey Wooly (less than 3lbs) and a Holland (less than 4lbs). They eat a decent amount of hay, but I don’t think they would be winning any hay eating contests. LOL

[Stickerbunny]

I buy 50-80lb bales of hay for two rabbits (6 and 8lbs) and it lasts about 1-2 months. They waste a lot though. They pick out the “good” strands and leave “the bad” strands all over their floor. Which ones are “good” and which are “bad” I have no idea, they all look fine to me and I can’t tell the difference. They can though. A big handful may only have one or two bites of “good hay” in it. Or the entire handful may be good. lol

If anyone near you has horses, you could try asking them where they get their hay. It’s way cheaper to buy bales than bagged rabbit hay.

[Katie Alice]

There are people that sell hay bales around me.. I didn’t think you could feed it to rabbits! That probably sounds stupid but I thought they only ate Timothy hay which is green.. So basically those big beige-ish bales of hales can be rabbit food?!

[MoveDiagonally]

You still want “green” hay. There’s “Cow Hay” which is not good to feed to rabbits and “Horse Quality Hay” which is okay to feed to bun-folk. So if you go to a feed store (or call one) you want to ask if they have “Horse Quality Hay” or “Horse Hay”.

[Katie Alice]

So horse hay is green, correct?

[LBJ10]

Stickerbunny – That’s funny because mine typically eat every strand.

[MoveDiagonally]

Unless it’s oat hay it should be green.

[LBJ10]

Yep, oat hay isn’t very green. My buns like it A LOT.

[Bam]

10 lbs would last a year for my two boys. Most of it would not be eaten, only scattered, stepped on and dragged around. My buns weigh about 2 kg each, that’s like 4,4 lbs each.

[MoveDiagonally]

I go through about 80lbs of hay every 45-60 days with 5 rabbits… So each one of my bunnies go through approx 7.8 – 10.5lbs of hay a month. I think budgeting 10lbs a month isn’t a bad idea until you know exactly how much your bunny will eat.

 My rabbits are 6, 7. 10, 10, and 10 lbs. So it’s likely that some eat more or less than others. I’m just averaging it out. 

[Stickerbunny]

Posted By LBJ10 on 01/13/2014 07:13 PM

Stickerbunny – That’s funny because mine typically eat every strand.

Yeah. I don’t know what is up with my two, they are brats. Sometimes if I pick the hay up that they discarded, PRETEND I am getting them new hay from the bale and give them the discarded hay, they will eat it like it’s “new hay” But, they tend to poop/pee into the discarded hay, so I usually can’t do that (though if the hay is outside their room they won’t mess it, then I can and they may or may not eat some of it). When I go to clean their room or litter boxes, I end up with a full trash bag of discarded hay. Which is why I am glad the big bales are only $5 in my area! lol

You want GREEN bales of grass hay horse quality – you don’t want the alfalfa mixed bales either. Brome, timmy, oat (oat tends to be more yellow than green, which is fine), orchard, etc are fine. Locally all that is available for me is brome, so I buy that in big bales and buy small bags of oxbow from the pet store every now and then for variety. They are still bratty about the oxbow though – Stickers only eats orchard, Powder prefers oat and they waste half the bags.

[Peony]

My rabbit is like that and my mom tries to figure out the “good strands” of hay and feeds them to her. Sometimes they get bitten in half and gets thrown on the floor. Sometimes i use the “bad hay” in the littlebox on the bottom since it is likely not get eaten anyway.

[LBJ10]

I’m not saying mine don’t pick through it to find the “good” hay. LOL
They definitely do that, but if I freshen it up by adding a little more hay then they eventually end up eating everything. I don’t really keep hay in the litter box though because I’ve found that it makes too much of a mess. Most of their hay goes in a box and they seem content eating it out of there. And oddly, they don’t feel compelled to poop/pee in it either.

[Stickerbunny]

Posted By LBJ10 on 01/14/2014 04:45 PM

I’m not saying mine don’t pick through it to find the “good” hay. LOL
They definitely do that, but if I freshen it up by adding a little more hay then they eventually end up eating everything. I don’t really keep hay in the litter box though because I’ve found that it makes too much of a mess. Most of their hay goes in a box and they seem content eating it out of there. And oddly, they don’t feel compelled to poop/pee in it either.

I tried a box, it turned into a litter box. I tried a hay holder, they found a way to crawl into it and turn it into a litter box. I even tried a laundry hamper turned into a hay holder thinking they couldn’t possibly get into that and they just yanked hay out of it and peed beside it instead. o.O If it’s in their room and  has hay in it, it’s a litter box. If it’s out of their room though and has hay in it, it’s not.

[Peony]

Yeah I try reuse it in some way, she does eat it all or can at some point.

Stickerbunny, I laughed at that :3

[DaisyBunz]

Rabbits get through hay fast anyways….at least mine do lol.
And I agree with you Stickerbunny, the good hay has nice green pieces but there are always these brown curly things, the bunnies hate those. The piggies too.(guinea pigs)

[Author]

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