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FORUM DIET & CARE hay transition

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    • silverbinky16
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        hello! I’m currently feeding my bunny alfalfa hay since she’s  very young…. however I want to introduce her to timothy hay at a young age so she won’t get picky at her hay. But no matter how hard I tried she would not touch the timothy hay( from Oxbow) . I’m currently  feeding her the A-ok Alfalfa ( it’s from a farm) the hay they sell are super nice it’s way better than oxbow hay I’ve tried. Please give me some advice so she would start nibbling on timothy hay. 


      • flemishwhite
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          I’m reading that you want to transition your rabbit from farm bought alfalfa to store bought Ox-Bow timothy.   The first thing that came to mind for me is that our rabbits, when given a heaping plate of green veggies, they will first eat the veggies bought from the farmer’s market and then eat the store bought veggies.  Similar with apples.  They will only eat Fuji apples bought from the farmer’s market and will not eat apples bought from a grocery store.  I can best rationalize their preference for farmer’s market stuff by guessing that it’s fresher than the store bought stuff.  This leads me to wonder if this is an issue here…maybe the store bought Ox-Bow timothy doesn’t have the freshness quality that your farm bought hay does.   I take it the farm where you buy your alfalfa from doesn’t sell timothy.  Does the farm sell oat hay?  Oats a preference hay for people with horses, so a farm that sells hay should have oats available.  As far as I know oats are good for adult bunnies.  It’s also abrasive and helps keep their teeth from overgrowing.   We’re going on 12 years now of feeding adult buns oat hay.  Our current 12 pound Flemish rabbits chomp through quite a bit of oat hay every week.  We also line their litter boxes with oat hay.  We have three litter boxes in the house for them, changed daily.  We go through 3 flakes of oat hay a week.  A flake is $5.  There’s 8 flakes in a bale.  A bale of hay is $20.50.  Hope this helps with a solution!!!


        • tobyluv
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            Although Oxbow is a good brand, you may want to try some other brands or other varieties of grass hay, such as orchard grass. If the farm you currently get the alfalfa from doesn’t sell any of the grass hays, would they know of any other local farms that might have any?

            You can do some searches here and see the various brands of hay that people say their rabbits like. Besides Oxbow, two good brands are American Pet Diner and Small Pet Select. The American Pet Diner Timothy Gold is a second cutting, which is softer. The bags I have gotten are always fresh smelling and green. They sell that brand at Petco or several places online. I usually get it at drsfostersmith.com. Small Pet Select can only be bought online.


          • silverbinky16
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              I live in Canada so Small pet select is not my option. The place ( farm) do sell timothy hay but I didn’t buy it because I thought I might waste my money. The other issue is that if I want to get the nice hay it’s around 2 hrs drive and my bunny go through her hay super fast ( which is good but at the same time it’s troublesome). My parents are super busy most of the time so I barely get a chance to go. I’m really stuck here. There is one local pet store around 30 mins that sell timothy hay but it doesn’t look green to me , It’s like brownish green color plus it doesn’t smell fresh at all. so that place is out of my list as well. Any Canadian rabbit site that sell nice hay?


            • tobyluv
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                Since the alfalfa hay you are getting from the farm is nice and fresh, hopefully the timothy would be too. That is a long drive, but if you have room to store some extra hay, could you get more than usual so that you wouldn’t have to make so many trips?

                Here is a recent thread dealing with hay in Canada. I don’t know if any of the places mentioned are near you or not.
                https://binkybunny.com/FORUM/tabid/54/aft/144587/Default.aspx

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            FORUM DIET & CARE hay transition