Any experience with successful weight loss in bunnies?

[vanessa]

My bunny Guin is a BBB – a Big Beautiful Bunny. Super overweight. Thick dewlap, skin folds everywhere, including her ankles and feet and thighs. I brought her home as an overweight 5-month old. She is now an overweight 2/half-year old. She weighed 7.5 two months ago. California. Loking at her, I would think she weighs a lot more than that. Lovely thick layer of skin, can’t feel her skeleton. I have her down to 1/3 cup pellets a day, unlimited hay (she eats hay well), and 4 cups greens a day. Anyone managed to get their overweight bunnies to lose weight?

[Bam]

I managed to get my Bam to loose 300 grams (0,66 lbs) by withdrawing all treats, minimizing the amount of pellets and feeding lots of leafy greens (and unlimited hay, of course). It took 3 months. I weighed him every week. When he was down to his target weight I increased his pellets a bit again and let him have a treat (piece of fruit) now and then. He became more active after his weight loss.

[DaisyMae]

Our bun was only a pound over weight, but the vet let us know it, so I switched her to quality pellets, but only about 1/4 cup a day, and like you said, about 4 cups of veggies a day, and lots of hay. She still gets treats, but very few .. in fact, I use her pellets like treats and scatter them around to avoid the dangers of her eating them too fast. She also gets a lot of exercise because she’s out of her cage most of the day. Sometimes their weight can be deceiving. I thought the vet was going to lecture us again because our bun looked overweight but when she put her on the scale, she was right on target.

[vanessa]

Hmmm… thanks. Maybe I should ask my vet what he thinks – maybe she is supposed to have all those folds. Not too sure. She does have half a bedroom to play in, a second and 3rd level wrap-around condo. It will be a few months before her next annual checkup. I was wondering if all the veggies were the problem, but reading, veggies are low calorie compared to hay.

[Bunny Hugger]

Our vet told us that the original purpose of pellets was to fatten up bunnies for food and that they don’t actually need them as part of their diet. She said we should feed only a maximum of 2 Tbsp a day if we didn’t want to cut out pellets completely.

[Stickerbunny]

Ask your vet before you put bun on any sort of diet. Stickers is actually a good weight for her breed, but she LOOKS chunky, cause her breed is a bit stockier than some other slim buns.

Veggies – depends on WHAT veggies she’s getting. Kale is actually pretty high carb for a veggie, at 6g per 1cup. Carrot and the like are high in sugar, which can be fattening. So, for weight loss, you want to go with the low carb, low calorie veg options as much as possible and limit the ones with higher.

Unlimited grassy hay (not alfalfa blend) and cut down the pellets a little more would be my first thing to do, if I was going to try to get a bun to lose weight. Pellets are just to make up for the nutrition they don’t get in veg/hay (because most people can’t feed them the proper variety to give them everything they need) and are pretty calorie rich. If you want an 8lb rabbit to maintain weight, 1/3 cup is recommended by Oxbow.

[Bam]

Yes, you should ask your vet if she’s really overweight, skin-folds aren’t fat but make a bun look pudgy. In a girl a dewlap is quite normal.
My Bam was ordered by his vet to lose 300 grams – I hadn’t understood he was fat until I was told :/

[vanessa]

Thanks. It will be a few months before I get her back to the vet. Her weight isn’t an emergency, and I have had so many vet bills the past 6 months… I think I should at least cut her pellets to her current weight, I’m not trying to achieve an 8lb bunny! Interesting about kale. I didnt’ know it was higher carb than other veggies. My bunnies loooooove kale.

[Bam]

Kale is higher in carbs than dandelion, romaine, spinach, parsley, dill etc, but carrots are much worse. I think cutting back on the pellets is the most effective way to help a bun to a healthier diet – if there aren’t like lots and lots of treats involved

[LittlePuffyTail]

When I got Olivia she was quite overweight. She had a huge dewlap. She was eating junky pet store food so I switched her to a healthy timothy pellet (gradual) and gradually reduced the amount she got. Increased hay and got her on a feeding schedule which included veggies. Also made sure she got plenty of exercise. Cant’ remember how long it took but she looked so much better in a pretty short amount of time.

Are you feeding Timothy pellets and grass hay?

[vanessa]

They get oxbow terre bene organic and oxbow natural science, and timothy hay. But I got her at 5 months, already overweight. She was free-fed feed-store pellets and hay. I continued that – free fed her feed store pellets, and she lived outside, so she ate plenty of grass clover, chickweed, dandelion, etc. Now that my bunnies are all indoors, I feed them Oxbow in limited portions, and continue with the hay. She is 2.5 years old now – so all her life she has been a chunker. I’m feeding her and Lancelot completely separately now, to make sure she doesn’t eat his pellets too, which I suspect she does.

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