How old is your rabbit?

There’s a lot of information that I would call required reading on the informational portions of this website. Please read it to find out the vital facts for rabbit care, which will include hay type and varieties.

Can you provide information on your rabbit and your set up? Hay is a principle, if not the most important component of rabbit care, so it’d be good to run through your rabbit’s habitat, diet, and care routine to ensure everything else is good too.

Short answer: Alfalfa hay is the best hay to feed to a young rabbit (under 6 months old) because alfalfa is high-protein. Once your bunny is over 6 months of age, he/she should be transitioned to a lower-protein, high-fiber grass hay, which should be the cornerstone of their daily diet (at least 75% per day, in “unlimited” quantities which in practice means at minimum a big handful equivalent to your bunny’s body volume; more is better). Timothy is the most widely-available grass hay but other grasses such as oat, brome, meadow/orchard, and Bermuda are good too. Most rabbits like timothy hay but individual tastes will vary, sometimes dramatically. Feeding your rabbit plenty of hay per day is one of the most important things you can do to keep your rabbit healthy, particularly for their gastrointestinal systems and teeth.

Be careful not to overfeed your bunny carrots and fruit; carrots are stereotyped as rabbits’ standard food, but they actually have high sugar which makes it unwise to feed to them in large quantities. I’d recommend finding some fresh green herbs such as parsley, mint, dill, basil, sage, cilantro and the like, those make good treats and are very healthy.

You’ll need to find out what sex your rabbit is eventually, as you’ll need to have him/her spayed or neutered. Even if you don’t plan to get a bondmate for your bunny, this is extremely important to do for behavioral reasons (unaltered bunnies tend to turn into little teenage punks when they hit sexual maturity ) and health reasons (especially for female rabbits, or does, which have an extremely high risk of contracting reproductive-system cancer by 5 years age if left unsprayed).

As far as hay goes, there are quite a few rabbit-rescue organizations in the LA area as well as the local House Rabbit Society chapter. My own local rabbit rescue (Friends of Rabbits in the Washington, DC metro area) sells mixed hay bales from local farms for very cheap ($24 for a full bale, as little as $6 for 1/4 bale which is about 2 1/2 weeks worth of twice-daily hay feeds for my two buns) and I would strongly recommend you to contact the LA-area rabbit rescues to find out if any of them sells hay as fundraisers; you ought to get better prices from them for more hay than you would going through a pet or feed store. The best option is to be able to get mixed hay, which gives your bun a variety of hays; in addition to the digestive benefits, your bun’s teeth will benefit from eating several different types of hays because each kind of hay requires a different way of chewing which promotes tooth wear (and I’m sure you know how important keeping teeth worn down is for rabbits!)