Hey guys!

I have a 6 year old holland lop. All his life he has hated eating hay and his diet consisted of mostly greens and pellets. We didn’t realize the importance of hay until recently when he got GI stasis. Luckily he recovered and we changed his diet. It was near impossible to make him start eating hay because at this point I don’t think he even identified hay as food  However, eventually he got hungry enough (we withheld other foods from him so he would get an appetite for hay) and began eating it.

Everything was going well until we gave him to his babysitter for the weekend (with all the instructions of how to feed him). When we brought him home his poop was the size of a period and he would NOT eat hay. We got his poop back to a healthy size so we know his gut is still moving. However, weeks later and he has not touched a single strand of hay. We tried withholding greens and pellets again, we tried EVERY single type of hay out there, we tried mixing food he likes with his hay, we tried putting hay in every location that he tends to sit. Nothing works.

He still has a huge appetite for greens and pellets as he’ll beg for them and try to jump into the fridge. But he would rather starve himself than eat hay. He has become a startlingly low weight (vet just said to feed him 1/3 cup of pellets per day) and I’ve depended on syringe feeding him critical care. It seems like a lose-lose situation where if I don’t give him greens/pellets he’ll starve to death but if I do give him greens/pellets, it will discourage him from ever touching his hay again.

If anyone has any suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated. I’m so worried about him