?Rose’s? strange eating behavior

[BunnyLiz]

Lets start with her past: A good samaritan observed a person dumping her and 4 other rabbits by the side of the road. The good samaritain picked them up and handed them over to IHRS. She was quite skinny for a rabbit her size and had gained over 3 lbs. while in foster care. It toke well over a month to help her gain weight and be healthy enough to be spayed. It was obvious that she was starved or at the least extermely under feed.

Now my concern: She ignore her salad at first but ate it about an hour later, i think she just needed time to catch her breath. But she perfers pellets over salad!!! She will finish a days worth of pellets in 5 minutes. I tested this out and tried to feed her greens, no go. Then i tried to feed her pellets, gone in a second. While she munched of a leaf of romaine, i filled her pellet bowl that was behind her. When she herd the pellets hit the bowl she dropped the romaine and finished off all the pellets.  When i reach for her empty greens bowl she is fine. But has thupmed when i reach for her empty pellet bowl. Help!

I think that because of her past she may have a slight complex with her pellets. Not being feed has really affected her mentally and she thinks she has to eat all the pellets asap before they are gone and none come for a few days or something. I also thought that maybe with five rabbits her previous “owner” didnt house them seperatly and she could have had to fight for food. Please help!? How can i help her and let her know thats all in her past and her present and future is promising her food and love? I really want to help her, but she needs to go on a diet as well. And this could cause  serious issues when she and Hammer are together forever. Hammer may never get pellets then! Any advice or past experience?

[Sage Cat]

I bet your instincts are correct about her being affected by hunger and maybe having to compete with other buns for food. It might just take her a little time.
My buns take about an hour to completely eat their salad. Their pellets, too. But, at first they gobbled it all down very quickly.
Have you thought about giving her pellets throughout the day instead of all at once?

[BunnyLiz]

yesterday i did give it all at once, but today im breaking it up. I forgot to mention she had been adopted and returned due to their landlord. And has been in foster care for somewhere around a year. I would think she would be over it by now, having been well cared for for about 2 years. Am i looking at a never ending thing that ill just have to adapt to?

[Sarita]

I think they never get over this especially when they’ve been starved. I think Sage Cat’s idea of breaking up the pellet meals is a good one. She is probably more familiar with pellets as well since I bet that’s all she ever got before she was starved. Poor bunny.

[Beka27]

this is actually very common with many buns. mine are the same way. i would suggest you feed pellets and greens about 8-12 hours apart. we had a thread a long while back about how the digestive system digests pellets and veggies differently, so since then i feed them separately. you could do the day’s greens in the morning, pellets around bedtime, and of course, hay is available 24/7. i do this and mine will graze on their greens all day long, in betw/ naps and hay-munching… in the evening they wil sit next to their empty pellet bowl waiting for me at about 8pm.

i would let her settle in your home for a bit before you start drastically reducing pellets. doing it too soon might make her more food aggressive. when you do, do it slowly… just a few pellets less a day until she’s where she needs to be. also, the vet will let you know how much (if any) wieght she does have to lose. she’s a big girl, so it’s normal that she will eat more than Hammer for now. don’t worry about feeding them together until the time comes. one thing at a time.

[kralspace]

I have kinda the same problem. Lola is on a diet and only gets a few pellets when she comes to her name which means poor Daisy doesn’t get them either. But since Lola is always demanding to be out and about, as soon as she streaks out of the condo I give Daisy a small portion in their hiding box where Lola won’t notice. He usually manages to finish most of them before Lola comes back for a break.

[BunnyLiz]

They get two salads a day, so ill try to work out times for salads and greens. Maybe greens in the morning before i go to school, pellets when i get home from school, another salad around 7 and the rest of the pellets around 11. Maybe that will help some. I guess im just so used to my perfect baby Hammer lol. As for the diet her foster said she got 1/3 of a cup, a salad and next to no treats. But I dont know if i believe her lol. But thats what she is getting right now, plus one more daily salad. Is that enough for a 8lb bunny. The HRS says 1/4 to 1/2 of a cup per 6 lbs.

[Beka27]

fewer pellets are not bad, as long as they have plenty of greens and hay. some people don’t even feed any pellets, or they feed just a teeny tiny amount.

[BunnyLiz]

So do you think fewer then 1/3 would be fine? Maybe 1/4. They do get a variety of unlimited hay and the two salads are over sized lol. Id say Hammer gets 3 cups of veggies a day, So she would get.. like 4 to 5 lol

[Beka27]

like i said, for now i’d keep her with what she is used to, let her transition, get used to the new house, bond with Hammer. get into a good schedule with salads and such… as time goes on you can gradually reduce her pellets. since she had an iffy background, doing it suddenly might bring up a bad reaction from her.

[BunnyLiz]

O yea of course! For now she can stick to her normal amount. Once we are all settled in with her and with her and hammer together ill start to try and alter her amount.

[Beka27]

when are you planning to start bonding? i started with Max and Meadow the second day he was here and they were bonded within three weeks… for me, not waiting worked to my advantage.

[BunnyLiz]

Im thinking once i get back on my feet lol. The rescue didnt give me but two days notice so i didnt have anything. I need more bedding, more hay, another large litterbox, need to go shopping for more veggies, more bowls.. the list just goes on lol. I was at my dads so all i had to get ready was Saturday night. I thought i might take a quick date in a basket on the dryer tonight. Thats quick and almost no preparation. I have alot to do still lol. Bunny laundry is the top of the list for now, but i think i can swing a 5-10 minute session tonight.

[Alicia Conklin]

Maybe start feeding her and Hammer next to each other? So she can see that when he eats he’s not stealing her food?  Even through the bars might work.  I found that once I started feeding mine through the bars next to each other the between bar agression stopped.  They now lounge and look at each other for hours at a time.  And it’s the calm “ahh this is the life” look now and not the “I’m gonna kill you!! stop looking at me!!” look that they used to give each other.  

 As far as scarfing down her pellets ..Drue does the same thing.  Tucker goes back little by little but Drue eats them all at once.  I think each bun just has different eating prefernces.  If it becomes an issue when they’re bonded maybe you can make pellet time during a time that you are around?  I like to pet mine at their dinner time because it’s nice and quiet in the house (I feed pellets late night before I go to bed) and I can just sit and pet them and they don’t seem to mind and just go about their eating. 

One thing about feeding schedules though..whatever you do now just make sure it can be kept up on an every day basis.  I might be way off on this though so someone can correct me if I am wrong.  My buns get into their schedules.  I feed them greens every morning first thing, then new litter boxes with all fresh hay in the evening and then pellets before bed.  If I rearrange that schedule they get VERY annoyed.  Drue will sit and stare at me and he’ll go nuts and eat ALL his hay.   He takes it as if he’s never going to eat again because I got up and maybe had to do something else for an hour before feeding him.  And when I say all his hay I mean A LOT of hay.  Like more then he’d normally eat in 24 hours.  Tucker doesn’t really seem to mind but then again she’s always been well cared for.  Drue however came in with his brothers and sisters and I don’t know if there was starvation before they were rescued but I know they were not well cared for otherwise.  The one had severe urine scald on his butt, tail and back feet.  So I think Drue might rely on his schedule a bit more.  So basically, what I am saying is that if you start feeding more times a day just make sure that’s something that can be done every day because if she’s already worrying that she won’t get fed ever again if her normal feeding time comes and goes she might really start to panic.  I don’t think the time of day matters AS much with my two…it’s usually when I first come down in the morning.  So if I come down at 7am I need to feed them by 7:15, if it’s 8am I have til about 8:15 and so on.  They’re usually ok til about 9:30 or so as long as they’ve never seen me yet that morning. 

[BunnyLiz]

Yea Hammer gets mad and thumps if im late for salads or playtime. Thanks ill move their food bowls so they have to watch each other eat. Thats a great idea, I think that may really help!

[Balefulregards]

You know Coco turned up her diva nose a veggies for quite a while when we adopted her.

She was on terrible junk pellets, but did not get a regular “feeding time” and was frantic about water for a few months. Her bottle was bone dry when I took her – and I wonder how long she had been with out any water.

She is a little bun – about 4.5 pounds, so she gets two huge salads – one in the AM, one at about human dinner time. She scarfs her faves out of the salad and then picks at the less beloved greens through the day. I’ve almost never seen any left by the time the next feeding rolls around. As to pellets…Coco does love her some pellets. I suspect that they make her feel “Full” in a way that perhaps salad doesn’t – a less active eating, if you will. Kind of like Pasta for humans.

I use the little plastic medicine cups that come with Kids Tylenol – so she gets one scoop ( @ 2 tblsps) in the morning….and the last scoop ( another 2 tblsps) right before MY bed time.

And recently her new “food obsession” is Brome Hay, so she gets a heaping big handful of that and one other “surprise” hay – Orchard, Botanical or straight Timothy.

[BunnyMuffin]

Yeah – Noelle is a pellet junkie, as I’ve mentioned other places. She will definitely forgo salad until all the pellets are gone (I now scatter them around the living room or down the hallway in the evening to help slow her down, or else put them in a treat dispenser ball to push around). When I first brought Wally home he just kinda picked at his salad for the first few days – which I thought was odd because Noelle has always eaten hers all at once in a matter of minutes. But after a few days he started eating his salad in shorter periods and now that they’re bonded they’ll both munch away together until it’s gone. So she might just need time to settle in from the move before her appetite gets into full swing.

[Beka27]

Baleful: that’s a great idea to use the medicine dosing cup for a pellets scoop! i have so many of those things rattling around a kitchen drawer…

[MimzMum]

Pip went in reverse with this. She would ravenously finish her hay and ignore pellets when we first introduced them. Then she would eat all the pellets and ignore the hay. It took awhile, but she learned eventually that the pellet bowl refills every night at a certain time and she doesn’t get any more till the next night. And you’ve seen how nice and ‘well-rounded’ she is in some of her pix.

My guess is, Rose just doesn’t have a routine yet. Try to keep things going on a schedule and hopefully she’ll figure out sooner or later that she’s in a place now where she will be well fed and not have to compete with other rabbits (well, I’d advise Hammer to keep an eye on his pellets though) and I am pretty sure she’ll realize how yummy green food is eventually.

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

Awww poor little bun!! That’s so sad!! She’s going to be so happy when she realizes what a good home she has

Rupert was like that when I first got him as well, although he’d been at the shelter for six months. He was chubby but as a stray I’m sure did not feel he had enough to eat either. Chuck was also starved and is a big eater.
I manged to get them both to free feed. It took Rupert two days to realized he didn’t need to scoff his pellets down as they would just magically refill.
This is not going to be possible with all buns.

You could slow her eating down by a) scattering the pellets around her cage to make her forage b) putting marbles or golf balls in the dish to make it hard to gobble them down so quickly c) putting them in a treat dispensing ball designed for boredom relief for dogs e) putting them in a brown paper bag stuffed with hay f) putting them in a grass ball as sold on here and many pet stores g) feeding very small amounts during the day

I’m very sure in the long run she’ll realize she always gets food and can relax about trying to get it all down at once. We have many horses come to our shelter who were starved. Once they realize it’s ‘all you can eat’ they become very relaxed and stop the constant face stuffing. I’m just so pleased to hear such an unfortunate bun gets such a good home and a happy ending with you and hammer. That’s so sweet!

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