Healthy treats that can be given to a young rabbit?

[Moonlight_Wolf]

Hi I was wondering what healthy treats I could give my 3 month old Holland Lop. I want to try and clicker train her but I don’t know what treats are good and that her young stomach can handle. I gave her Parsly too young and she had a little diarrhea so the veggie treat is not good. I want to try and train her but I don’t know what I can feed her that will not upset her stomach and be healthy at the same time.

Thanks, all help is apreciated.

[Beka27]

welcome here! is she eating veggies now? you said you gave parsley too young, but she should be old enough to handle it now.

you can give her regular food pellets as treats for the clicker training. just hold it in your fingers and it will work the same way. remember that a treat can be anything they like that you feed by hand. another thing i did when i was clicker training (which i want to start again… i took a two month break to bond my bunnies) was i bought matchstick carrots, the itty bitty sliver ones, and cut them up into tinier pieces. each matchstick carrot can be cut into 4 or 5 bite-size pieces. i used raisins also, and i cut the raisin into 2 or 3 pieces. what you want is for the treat to be a one-bite item. so it has to be impossibly small. this will also stretch out the treats so they last longer and your bun does not get too many. i would not give any treats at any other time except when you are training, since it is possible to overfeed them.

keep away from petstore treats. seed items, yogurt drops, and processed cookies are not healthy. natural fruits and veggies are better.

[Gravehearted]

hello welcome! I would recommend Beka’s suggestion of using pellets instead of treats.
I’m not sure how well such young bunnies do with clicker training, will you please let us know how it goes?

[Moonlight_Wolf]

Thanks everyone. I never thought of using her pellets as a treat. I tried it and it worked! She love her pellets! I will now do a few training sessions a day with her to teach her some tricks. I am starting with “Fern Come” and she is doing pretty well, but sometimes she gets bored and does not pay attention and then I have to stop. I am happy I found a treat that is not unhealthy and I can give her a fair amount (Untill she is full grown, then she will get fixed rations.)
Thanks everyone, I will let you know how her clicker training is coming along.

[Beka27]

please do keep us updated… like gravehearted said, she’s young so it might or might not work out until she’s a bit older.

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

Welcome!!

Rabbit’s do have a short attention span, so it’s best to ‘train’ in short short session that are frequent…If takes patience but it’s worth it!!

[TARM]

Would you use this method to teach them their names? We’re eager to teach the boys some stuff but since they’re still so young we know we can’t really start now.

Also, they’re eating romaine lettuce without any problems. Should we stick with the lettuce, alfalfa hay and pellets for now? How slowly should different foods be introduced? They’re about five weeks old right now.

[Beka27]

i would not introduce any more veggies until they are 8 weeks. they are still sooo young. at 8 weeks you can start introducing one new veggie (give it every day for a week), the next week introduce a third veggie, and so on from there. continue to feed the romaine too.

they should be able to learn their name just by hearing it. this does not mean they’ll respond tho… lol!

[MooBunnay]

Thats great that the pellets worked! And it sounds like you are making a lot of clicker training progress, you’ve inspired me to try again with my bunnies (apparently I am the one with the short attention span because I never really follow through with training them )

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