Hey,
I’m looking for some advice from more experienced bunny-owners.
20 days ago I adopted 2 new adorable litlle sweethearts, they should be around 9 to 10 weeks old now.
I don’t know their exact breeds, but they’re both dwarfs
The plan is that they’ll become full-time outdoors bunnies in a few weeks. We have an enormous yard and I have a nice big pen set out for them where they’ll be able to dig their own burrow an play like bunnies should. But for now they can’t move in yet for multiple reasons: the grass in the pen still needs to grow, the bunnies are still a litlle too small (we have lots of stray cats strolling around) and I’d like too wait till the weather clears up, … .
So for now they stay in a medium sized carrier at night, during the day I let them outside in a pen. On rainy days they stay inside and get a small pen in the garage. It’s not perfect, but it’s only temporary
every day my bunnies get a full 1l container of food. with a selfmade a mix of mostly hay, a bunch of veggies, an egg cup of pellets (I must admit the pellets aren’t of the best quality ) some fresh grass and weeds or leaves from our yard. and a tiny amount of ‘surpise deliciousness’ like carrots, small pieces of fruit, ….
I give them around 3-4 extra handfulls of my own selfmade hay during the days and they always have hay laying around everywhere they go (but this is kinda old, not so tasty hay)
I use small pieces of romain lettuce as treats during bonding-time
they spend atleast 6h /day outside in a pen with grass
they also get branches from our aplle tree and I made a litlle hut of weeping willow branches that I put in their carrier as hidingplace + chewing toy. The hut got absolutely destroyed within 1 week, so now I made them a willow tunnel. They’re litlle chewing machines.
And now for my question:
everytime I bring my bunnies any kind of food they act like they haven’t eaten in a week. Even when there is still some food leftover in their cage (obviously their least favorit food) or while they’re outside, surrounded by grass.
They also act very enthousiastic when I come to play with them without having food on me, but it’s a different kind of enthousiasme.
When I got them they where really skinny, the smallest one was really just bones with furr.
They feel and look a lot healthier and happier now, so they have been gaining some weight
Now I’m wondering wether I should give them more food (because they act like they’re starved)
Or if they get enough and are just a litlle greedy (since they are gaining weight) I don’t want to overfeed them either.
Or maybe I should just change something in their diet?
I hope somebody can give me some advice on this (or maybe some general advice?)
I owned bunnies before, but I must admit I was a pretty terrible caretaker, they had a fun, but unhealthy life, I was only a child tho.
This time I really want to take good care of my sweethearts