According to my vet, oat hay is the second best to timothy, followed by orchard. It isn’t fiber content that makes them fat, its protein and fat content. Either oat or orchard is good to switch too, if there are allergies. Both are well liked by bunnies too

With hay you can just switch over all at once, but you may want to introduce slowly just in case bunny doesn’t like it, that way you have some of the other hay around in case he doesnt eat the new.

I’m allergic to hay that is extremely dusty. Orchard is a go-to, but I’ve found Timothy that doesn’t hurt my allergies at all. It goes with how dusty the hay is. Oat isn’t bad at all Specially during times of shedding!

I switch between Oxbows Western Timothy and Orchard. I tend to buy whatever bag looks to be green and the best quality. Sometimes I mix them.

Since you have 3 buns, have you tried getting farm store hay? I have just one bun, and it is super cheap, like 14 dollars for 55 lbs of hay! Just a tip It is a great money saver, and provides tons of hay for your little ones!

We can’t get Timothy here other than in kilo (2.2lb) bags, so I picked up a square bale of oat hay (what about 40lbs) from a feed store for $18, 6 weeks and I’ve probably gone through a quarter of it with two bunnies who just love it, they get a good handful morning and night.

I have to go to another nearby city to get hay, but it isn’t too far. It is normally a feed store. I buy the whole bale and it can be stored in 70+ qt plastic tubs. Maybe you could get a large plastic garbage bag and put the hay in that as you transport it from car to apartment?

Is it possible for you to do the hay work and have him avoid it?

This is how DH and I do things since he has a pretty bad allergic reaction to handling the hay (strangely, I don’t, though I am technically allergic and am the one who is on allergy shots!). I like using timmy hay because it’s so much easier to get than the others, so it’s worth it to me to do all of the hay handling so he can avoid it.

Just a thought! The others you mentioned are perfectly good (the main purpose of hay is the fiber, which they all have).

Alfalfa is a legume and timothy is a grass (other standard hays mentioned in this thread are also grass, which is why they have the same basic nutritional profile as timothy). Since they’re such different types of plants, it’s not surprising that he’s allergic to one and not the other.

Hay is consumed mostly for fiber anyway as hay is pretty sparse nutrition wise — which actually is great for a bunny.  They need to eat a lot of it.  Their digestive system is meant to get the most nutrition out of the nutritionally sparse food.  

 And Oat is great fiber wise, and much better for the humans who have allergies. 

Like others have said, the nutritional overages you have to worry about would be fat and protein.  I have never heard of a bunny getting too much fiber. Fiber is what they need to have access to at all times. 

You had asked about variety and I do like offering a variety.  Each bunny though is really different.  It won’t do anything “bad” to them, it’s just what will make them eat more.  My bunny Jack used to eat a ton of an Organic Orchard Hay I was able to get (they went out of business) — He could eat that one hay more than any other food. He loved it and he would eat much less hay when I offered him other kinds, so for him I chose to stick with his one favorite hay.   With my bunny Vivian, she eats more hay if I switch.  She will eat tons of Timothy for a week, then slow down, UNLESS, I give her a new hay of Orchard, and then Oat, and so on.  Sometimes I will just put all the hays together and mix them, and she does seem to like it, but for some reason, she eats hay with more gusto when one new type of hay is given at a time.