Bunny lived with us for 11 1/2 years. She weighed about 8 pounds. After she died, we adopted two Flemish Giant sisters. I don’t know how much they now weigh. They are big! If I had a guess, I’d guess that they weight 13 to 15 pounds. All three rabbits were/are house rabbits….they don’t live in a cage, they had/have free run of the house.
My experience feeding house rabbits for the last 13 years……….we feed them all they want to eat. Heaps of green vegetables to munch on. They do get tired on the same thing. They’ll be happy eating carrot tops for a few weeks, and then they don’t want carrot tops. OK, next dill tops…once again dill tops and then they don’t want any more. Next fennel tops…same thing after a while they get tired of fennel. They do seem to be happy consistently eating romaine lettuce, and we do feed them additionally parsley, dandelion greens, bok choi, We get a lot of our veggies from the farmer’s market. We get the carrot tops, fennel tops free. Just for our two now Flemish rabbits, I think we can easily spend $20 to $30 a week on greens from the grocery store and from farmer’s market that we can’t get for free. Surprisingly the bunnies prefer farmer’s market greens from those we buy at the grocery stores!!!! I think they can sense freshness that we can’t sense.
Also, in season, the Flemish girls like Fuji apples from farmer’s market. Can you believe that when we buy Fuji apples from the grocery store…they don’t want them!!! For the greens and apples, they definitely prefer farmer’s market. Would you be so brazen to suggest we have spoiled bunnies?
When Bunny was with us and now our Flemish girls absolutely positively expect every morning to have banana slices. The bananas need to have a lot of green on the skin. They like their bananas a little tart. If the bananas are too ripe, they won’t eat them.
Additionally, a big part on their dietary intake is oat hay. They eat a lot of oat hay. This is good because it helps grind down their teeth. Oat hay has silicate abrasives. Bunny teeth are always growing and they need abrasive food to eat to wear down their teeth. They like to eat the oat hay because it has oat kernels which I think are really tasty to a bunny. Oat hay is a member of the grass family. Rabbits naturally like to eat grass.
…….and finally, we give them all the pellets they want. But I take care buying pellets. I try to buy pellets that don’t have sugar in them (molasses, corn syrup, etc). For caged rabbits to be fed entirely on pellets, the pellets have sugar in them to boost calories. My bunnies don’t need the sugar calories in pellets.
Feeding them all they want to eat hasn’t resulted in obese bunnies. All my bunnies have been girls, so they do have noticeable dewlaps, but they have not been really overweight.