There is a slight possibility that the dogs are eating some of the stray poops around the edges of the pen. I thought they had simply stopped trying to eat them altogether, but they might have just gotten sneaky about it… I don’t think they did, but it could be.

Oh, and before it started raining today I would sit outside with her for about an hour each day in the evening, which is when she is most active. I don’t really notice her pooping a lot then, but I also would never be able to find anything in that grass, so I have no clue what she might be dropping during that time. I don’t think one hour of poop would be enough time to make a noticeable difference, but who knows?

Could the flip side to more hay be that the hay is more digestible and thus creates less waste? While dogs and cats obviously have a very different digestive tract, I know from personal experience feeding them certain diets can severely reduce the amount of waste they produce. I just switched my youngest dog over and his poop has been reduced to about 1/3 of what it was before.

How do they even poo so much when they get upset?! It is like a super power or something! Do they constantly have a backlog, just thinking “hey, I might need these later to really let them know what I’m all about if they try to mess with my stuff!”?

I think I am slightly more jaded to the territorial marking because Eclipse is very much a bunny that wants to be alone and I had such high hopes that she would bond. I never could get her to play nice with another rabbit. Maybe her original name of Toxic wasn’t so off the mark… She seem to enjoy the cat and dogs though. Our cat also dislikes other cats, but loves the dogs and rabbit. Why do I always end up with the odd ones?

So what about greens? She is getting about double or triple the greens she was getting before. Are those more digestible (article suggests not) and possibly result in the reduction?

From the looks of it, based on the article (thank you so much for linking btw!), the timothy pellets (Oxbow, which is what she has been on) will have a slower digestive rate, but because they are mostly made of hay, will result in pretty much the same overall digestibility of hay (that is, crushing the hay into pellets does not break open the cellulose wall to aid digestion). So overall stool amount should be the same based on that alone, assuming that volume is the same.

But the pellets are a bit easier to eat, so maybe she is eating less hay compared to the amount of pellets she was eating before? Like I said before, she is definitely a little overweight, which I know is because of the pellets. I also know that rabbits can’t get fat on grass hay, so there is a difference in there somewhere. Other than the fiber thing being a problem, which I know is very important, could a rabbit get fat on a purely ground grass hay pellet? That is, with none of the additives that are put in the pellets.

I think I just need to look at calories per ounce maybe/look at the nutritional breakdown for a true comparison. Since I make my own dog/cat food now I seriously hope that I am getting better that understanding these things (for my dogs’ and cat’s sake!). Thank goodness that despite the rabbit digestive system being much more complicated that my dogs/cat, feeding her is a lot more straightforward. In the end, I find it all far too fascinating and could ramble on about it for days…