Sir Puff is definitely a suitable name.

How old is he? Young buns are OK to eat alfalfa-based pellets, but once they get into adulthood, it’s a little too fattening and can also lead to digestive problems. For adult rabbits, it’s highly reccomended that your pellet should be timothy hay based.

Some buns simply don’t like pellets! My friend’s bun doesn’t even eat them at all. Your bun can do just fine on greens/veggies and hay! Pellets are much more of a convenience food for rabbit-owners than a healthy meal, anyway. I wouldn’t fret.

My guys get Oxbow Bunny Basics T, a timothy based pellet.  They only get 1/4 of a cup per day for the three of them.  We like to give our guys fruit treats, an they get lots of oat hay, so limiting pellets keeps their weight down.

I would start introducing greens to him one at a time. Think of how much plant life he would actually eat in the wild! If you don’t know bunny-friendly veggies and leafy greens,

Here is an in-depth webisite about how the bunny’s digestive system works, appropriate eating habits, etc:
http://www.rabbit.org/journal/3-4/pellets.html

And here is a great list of good greens/veggies for your bun from the HRS!
http://www.rabbit.org/care/veggies.html

welcome to binkybunny SirPuff’s Mom!

My buns get 1/4 cup each (they all weigh about 5 pounds) of Oxbow’s Bunny Basic-T one time a day. Anytime you change pellets, you want to slowly transition foods over several weeks, since it can cause a shock to the system and most bunnies will refuse the new pellets. I would recommend transitioning his over to timothy based pellets , since pellets with all the other junk in them are not a healthy choice for rabbits.  They will pack the weight onto a rabbit and are very high in calcium, which can cause health issues too.

As digxmexnow suggested, SirPuff would benefit from having greens every day. I would also recommend trying new things one at a time – dark green veggies like carrot tops, flat leaf parsley, dandelion greens, chard, dill, romaine are all good choices. Broc and spinach can be ok in small quantities, since they can cause gas. My bunnies get about 2 cups a day of greens each.

If you look in the bunny info section of the site, there’s a  helpful page on bunny diet.

I use American Pet Diner Timothy Rabbit. It is the ONLY pellet I know of that is NOT made with sugar. It is made with Molasses Dried Beet Pulp which gives the pellets the same sweet taste, but without adding sugar. Oxbow & Kaytee Timothy are ok alternatives, but they contain ridiculous amounts of sugar. If you have buns who are high strung or fight each other, you may want to try a sugarless pellet. At a nearby rabbit shelter where there are 50 buns living in a herd, they said that the buns were more aggressive and started fighting after feeding of Oxbow pellets (because of the sugar) vs. no fighting after feeding of sugarless pellets.

There is more information about APD pellets above, but I found this especially interesting, "Each complete pellet ration contains yucca extract, an odor inhibitor, which after feeding for 2 to 3 weeks, will substantially reduce the odors associated with the animal’s urine and droppings."

A note about Ecotrition– one of its main ingredients is ground corn, which is best to avoid for all types of animals.

I’ve weened my bunnies off of pellets. They are on a no pellet diet. They have all the hay they can eat with lots of veggies-mostly romain, parsely and cilantro, with other veggies into the mix. Then at night they get one papaya tablet each, and that’s their treat.

I feed my rabbits as well as my shelter buns Purina Rabbit Chow. It comes in a green bag with the words in big white letters on the front. Its one of the good pellets that is considerably cheaper than many of the others out there. You can find it at feed stores and working farms that have stores. I have also found it in Complete Petmart which does not sell any animals-it is a supply only store.

I have found they have 25lb bags for $6 and 50lb bags for $12. You cant beat that!

To see if they carry it in your area you can go to:

http://www.rabbitnutrition.com/rabbit/index_rabbit.html

Really poopy? I’m reading the list of ingredients of my Oxbow BBT: Timothy Grass Meal, Soybean Hulls, Wheat Middlings, Soybean Meal, Cane Molasses, Salt, Limestone, Yeast Culture and vitamin & mineral supplements.  I do not see where it "contains ridiculous amounts of sugar."  Compared to the American Pet Diner, the molasses dried beet pulp which is also listed second on the ingredient list. Do you have more info on the molasses dried beet pulp and how much sugar it contains compared to molasses from cane? This is very interesting.

OK I did some research myself, cane molasses contains not less than 46% total sugars expressed as invert and beet molasses contains not less than 48% total sugars expressed as invert. This is the source:

http://rcrec-ona.ifas.ufl.edu/mol.pdf

My understanding is that the molasses beet pulp is dried with the molasses in it and was not removed and thus it contains a lot of sugar as well.

Dried Beet Pulp/Dried Molasses Beet Pulp

Beet pulp is normally dried at the factory or is combined with molasses and dried to form dried molasses beet pulp. These feeds are palatable, bulky and slightly laxative.

Source: http://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/livestock/beef/baa05s15.html#4

That is very interesting. When I was referring to the sugar, yes I was referring to the Cane Molasses. I’ll contact the manufacturer when I get back from vacation to see if I can find out more about it. I do remember the people at the shelter telling me something about how the pulp is at the bottom or something, thus not part of the sugar cane.

OK So I finally contacted American Pet Diner to ask about the beet pulp and sugar content. Here is what they said:

Melinda,

Molasses Dried Beet Pulp is fiber left after sugar extraction, it is highly digestible fiber. We add beet pulp to increase fiber, if you add all timothy meal to get fiber the pellet doesn’t hold together so you have to add other forms of fiber to get the pellets to hold form. Therefore it is added after the sugar is extracted and the sugar % would therefore be very minimal.

Tina Wilson

Sales and Marketing

HC 62 Box 62505

Hwy 278 and 9th Street

Eureka, NV 89316

PHONE: 1-800-656-2691

FAX: 866-243-3329

No clue whether that is reliable, but this is still my pellet of choice! We need a vet on these boards to figure it out for us.

Hmm, I’m still not sure about that either.  I totally agree, sometimes we need a bunny savvy vet here, but I’m going to stick with Oxbow.

I’m not too useful but I do have to say you “Puff” is extremely adorable! I just want to pull him out of the screen and hug him!!

Wow, very interesting about the APD pellets – it’s been awhile since I’ve even used their pellets because I haven’t liked their consistency in the past (too dusty). I kind of mix mine up – right now I’m using a brand called Zupreem that I found on BunnyBytes and I also use Oxbow Timmy Pellets. I haven’t looked at the Zupreem as closely as I should – I did look at the ingredients and stuff but haven’t really studied it like I should – I always say I will but I don’t but I will the next time I purchase it. I spoke with the owner of Bunny Bytes and she recommended it, she’s feeding it to her rabbits and she did the research on it and liked it or I guess she wouldn’t sell it (I know not a great reason not to look into myself) but it is a timmy based pellet and it seems to have less dust too than the Oxbow which can sometimes be very dusty – the last bag I got was 1/2 dust but the shipped me another bag.

That’s weird Sarita, my bag of APD had the least amount of dust I had ever seen in my life, which is partly why I like the pellets. There was absolutely no crumbling of the pellets at all. Did you order them straight from the manufacturer? I am running out, and figured I would buy some on the website, but now that you’ve said that maybe I won’t. The last bag I had bought from a Bunny center, where I no longer live nearby anymore.

I’m pretty sure at the time I ordered it from APD – it has been awhile since I’ve used their pellet so maybe they changed the way they are binding them. I’m not opposed to trying them again though so maybe once I use up my current 50lb bag of Oxbow, I’ll buy a small bag of APD’s to see how it is. Luckily my rabbits aren’t too sensitive to change with pellets.

I have Coney on the Oxbow bunny basics and connor is slowly moving from the ecotrition to the bunny basics. He is so picky, I think he likes it because of all the extras in it, that is what he always eats first. Right now he is eating around the oxbow. He must have a great smell because he can’t see the difference.

My goodness…I have to comment that I would love to know more about Sir Puff because he looks *identical* to my Finn!  They even have the same mark over the eye!   The vet speculated that Finn was an Angora Dwarf…maybe you know what Sir Puff is?

I am feeding Finn the Brown’s Jr. Bunny pellets right now. It’s a timothy-based pellet but has alfalfa in it. It has many nutrients that I am pleased with.  It’s got an 18% min crude protein which is excellent, and also uses dried molasses as the sweetener. My vet does not recommend alfalfa based pellets because she feels it causes intestinal blockages and is more a "filler" than Timothy hay. Because Finn was *only* exposed to pellets and no hay or fresh veggies were available in his life before joining our family, I am trying to jst very gradually introduce fresh greens.  Finn eats the Timothy hay like it’s going out of style, and seems to enjoy these pellets as well.  The Brown’s Jr. Bunny formula appealed to me because of it’s Timothy base, and because it is catered to the young bunnies during their peak nutritional needs as they grow.  I’d like to eventually get Finn on a pellet-free, more natural diet, but especially now as his system is so delicate and young, I want to keep him stable with foods he is familiar with. 

Happy birthday to Sir Puff! 

PocketFaeries – Alfalfa is okay to give baby bunnies up to 7 months.   Check out http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/diet.html#young
Some good natural diet info that I think you may be interested in http://www.rabbit.org/journal/3-4/pellets.html

I know there is an article somewhere dedicated to a pellet free diet, but for some reason, I can’t seem to locate the one I am thinking about.

http://www.leithpetwerks.com/Bunfun/nonpellet.html

Here’s a link to the non-pelleted diet.

Sarita

I feed Thumper Zupreem nature’s promise…out of all of the choices that were at PetCo, this seemed the best. Anybody ever use this? I like it, not dusty at all and Thumper loves it!

Yes, I have used the Zupreem – my rabbits like it very much and I think it’s very good stuff too. I agree it’s not dusty at all. I get mine from Bunny Bytes.

Oops…I didn’t realize you mentioned it! This is the analysis of the pellets:

I’m glad you had the breakdown, I didn’t.

Here is an excellent article on Pellets from Carrot Cafe:

http://www.carrotcafe.com/f/pellets.html

The Zupreem seem pretty close to her recommendations.

Sarita

Great!  Seems like we’ll be sticking to Zupreem.

Sarita, thanks a million for that wonderful article link to the suggested course of action for creating a pellet-free diet!   My mind is always turning its wheels in the nerdy "but wwwhhhyyyyy" department, so I am very happy to read not just the diet itself, but the explanation for WHY it benefits pet buns!

In reading the article, it raised a question for me that maybe you guys can help guide me on.

The vet in the article suggests building gradually up to feeding a "veggie pile the size of your rabbit, every single day, then your rabbit has no need for pellets at all."  My question is this:

Even at this young age, Finn is a very fluffy bunny!  Most of Finn’s "size" is actually fuzzy fluffy fur.  Would I make a goal to feed Finn a pile that is as large as the BODY and not including that fluff puff, OR would I want to graduate to a pile of veggies that is as large as Finn INCLUDING the fluff? Sorry to be so technical…but I am imagining that there is a significant difference in the amount of veggies between those two measurements.  Finn’s body itself is probably HALF the size of the "whole" body including fur!

Also, would it be prudent to serve this is "a pile" as the vet describes, or perhaps split the veggie serving up to a morning and evening portion?  Thanks for any thoughts on this!

I can tell the difference between a sucky pellet and a good quality. I say, if your bunny is at a perfect weight and the pellets are always fresh and smell nice, then it works for your bun. Some bunnies exercise more than others, and some get less treats than others. I think it’s a bit like us. Some have fast metabolisms that make us eat more, while some of us have slower metabolisms, making the slightest thing go straight to our hips. Lol.

I do support the pellets as being only an additive to the diet, however. My buns only get 1/4 a cup a day. The rest they get in greens and hay.

The reason I worry more about alfalfa is because it contains more calcium and some bunnies have adverse effects to it and can lead to serious health problems. So, I do suggest that adult buns get off alfalfa.