Healthy but not eating much hay

[BunnyLass568]

Someone I know is having trouble with her buns. They’re normally great hay eaters. She gets her hay from a farm and her rabbits have always eaten it however she just got a new bale and they’re barely touching it. She knows they’re healthy because they just got a check up and everything is fine. She doesn’t have money to try the foraging trick but she did try putting lettuce in their hay since it’s one of their favorite foods but they ate the lettuce and very little hay. Got any tips for her?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Pets-Passed away: Hailey (9 years old, half rat terrier and miniature pincher, Feb-5-2019),Monster (13 years old, mixed breed, Lhasa Apso and some form of terrier, Sep-14-2020), Demon (14 year old Lhasa Apso, Aug-3-2022) Blossom (6 year old bunny breed(s) unknown, April-7-2024) Thumper (6 year old bunny breed(s) unknown, April-12-2024)💔💔💔💔

[Cinnimon&Ollie]

Is the hay good? Not brown, or musty. How much veggies and pellets do they give the bunnies. They may be eating the pellets and veggies instead of the hay. Did they check the bale no bugs or anything like that, it may cause the bunnies to not eat it.

[BunnyLass568]

It’s a golden color (if it was a hair color it’d be a light blonde if that helps at all to describe it), 2 cups of veggies, 1/8 cup pellets and from what they’ve seen no bugs.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Pets-Passed away: Hailey (9 years old, half rat terrier and miniature pincher, Feb-5-2019),Monster (13 years old, mixed breed, Lhasa Apso and some form of terrier, Sep-14-2020), Demon (14 year old Lhasa Apso, Aug-3-2022) Blossom (6 year old bunny breed(s) unknown, April-7-2024) Thumper (6 year old bunny breed(s) unknown, April-12-2024)💔💔💔💔

[Cinnimon&Ollie]

Is it normally golden? What type of hay is it? Oat hay is supposed to be golden, but it should only be fed little because it makes them chubby. Orchard and Timothy hay should be green.

[BunnyLass568]

It’s supposed to be Timothy hay and when they pick up hay it normally is a golden color. I wish I could show you the picture she took but I can’t seem to do that weirdly. It looks kinda like this: https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-golden-hay-texture-background-close-up-image30344192

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Pets-Passed away: Hailey (9 years old, half rat terrier and miniature pincher, Feb-5-2019),Monster (13 years old, mixed breed, Lhasa Apso and some form of terrier, Sep-14-2020), Demon (14 year old Lhasa Apso, Aug-3-2022) Blossom (6 year old bunny breed(s) unknown, April-7-2024) Thumper (6 year old bunny breed(s) unknown, April-12-2024)💔💔💔💔

[kanin]

Timothy hay is typically supposed to be a nice green color. When it’s yellow like that it’s dried out and won’t be as appealing to any animal you try to feed it to (I work with horses and they’d snuff that.) Sometimes there are just batches of hay that bunnies just won’t eat, and if multiple of them aren’t eating it then you know it must not taste very good. 🙂

[Cinnimon&Ollie]

They should get hay somewhere else. I would recommend small pet select hay, but it is a little more in the pricey side. Oxbow is good for hay too and not super pricey, or maybe it was just a bad hay bale.

[BunnyLass568]

The picture of the hay in question is in my photos (https://binkybunny.com/members/2dbfa7e16d20d42b/photos/ ), I dunno if you can see it or not. Let me know if you can’t then I’ll think of something else in order to show it. She says it doesn’t feel to rough and that her dad said “hay doesn’t go bad.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Pets-Passed away: Hailey (9 years old, half rat terrier and miniature pincher, Feb-5-2019),Monster (13 years old, mixed breed, Lhasa Apso and some form of terrier, Sep-14-2020), Demon (14 year old Lhasa Apso, Aug-3-2022) Blossom (6 year old bunny breed(s) unknown, April-7-2024) Thumper (6 year old bunny breed(s) unknown, April-12-2024)💔💔💔💔

[Bam]

Green hay is generally considered a better quality than golden hay (with the exception of oat hay). This is not an absolute truth though. There are unscrupulous hay merchants that even dye hay green.

A friend of mine raises race horses. He grows his own hay for them and lets it dry for 5 days in the field. It gets a little more yellow, but the risk of mold is lower than for hay thats collected sooner and dried inside the barn with big fans. Direct sunshine makes hay more yellow, but it also causes vitamin D to develop in the long strands of mown hay. My friend sends his hay in for analysis, to make sure that his horses only get top quality feed.

Hay is something of a science in itself. One batch is not like the next batch. We bun owners often have to try a variety of hays until we find one that our buns approve of. And then next year’s hay from the same supplier can be so different that the buns just “Duh, like I’m eating this 🙄”

It’s not possible for the human nose to identify mycotoxins (toxins produced by certain types of mold). Hay can look and smell perfectly fine to us, but rabbits have a vastly superior sense of smell.

[LBJ10]

A golden color doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. But if there is something off with the batch, bunnies will often pick up on that. Your best bet is to just try a new batch of hay to see if it passes your bunny’s taste test.

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