Not enough water and hay??

[ZanesMom]

Greetings!  Feeling like a pretty bad rabbit parent after reading some of these posts!!  But…we have a rabbit that seems to have practically stopped eating his hay altogether.  He used to eat it in spurts but I feel like it has been a few weeks since I refilled the hay bin.  I feed him veggies in the morning along with a handful of pellets.  In the evening, I give him a handful of pellets along with a little bit of dried fruit.  The morning veggies consist of 2 romaine lettuce leaves, several stems of cilantro and 2-3 baby carrots.  Is that too much?

As for water…I just feel like we aren’t refilling his bottle very often.  Should we switch to a bowl?  Have both??

In case it helps…Rocky is a mini-lop (I think!) and he is not a year old.  We got him in February so he might be coming up on a year??  Not sure how old rabbits are when they are old enough to be sold.  (We got him from a pet store…where the teenage employee told me I was getting a female…but discovered about 2 weeks ago that poor Pebbles needed a new name.)

Thanks for any and all advice you can provide!!

[VivaLaBunz]

How often do you offer fresh hay? I’ve noticed that the “less tasty” pieces of hay get strewn around and used as bedding or litter, while the tastier pieces are eaten. I offer fresh hay 2-3 times daily and pretty much every time I do my bunny starts eating it. I’ve noticed this with the rabbits at my work as well. If I give them fresh hay they get very interested and begin eating it right away!

As for water you can try a bowl (many people like putting the bowl directly under the bottle as the bottles tend to leak) and offer fresh vegetables to up his water intake.

[graysonbun]

I would for sure try and switch to a bowl for the water if you notice the bottle level isn’t changing much. Make sure the bowl is heavy enough so you bun will not be able to flip it over! From my experience, most rabbits like the bowls better. You can also try and investigate the amount of urine in the litter box, or cage, to try and see if he’s been drinking any water! Hope that helped with that issue!

[sarahthegemini]

Like VivaLaBunz, I’ve also noticed my bunnies like the excitement of ‘new hay’ Whenever I top it up (or look like I am!) they have a new interest and start munching excitedly right away.

[tobyluv]

Rabbits really do prefer fresh hay. Hay that has been sitting in their hay rack (or however they are fed) for even one day loses some desirability. You may also need to try different varieties and or brands of hay. Some rabbits like softer hay, like second cutting of timothy, or they like sweeter hay, like orchard grass, or they like harder, crunchier hay like oat hay. Experiment and see what is most appealing to your rabbit.

Carrots have a good bit of sugar, so they should be treated like fruit and given in limited quantities. Two or three baby carrots, especially if they might be some of the thicker baby carrots, is probably too much. One a day would be better. And dried fruit can be more concentrated in sugar, so watch the quantity of that. There are a lot of good greens that you could add to his diet, just do so slowly. Here is one link to a good article on the best greens for a rabbit:
http://rabbit.org/suggested-vegetables-and-fruits-for-a-rabbit-diet/

It’s hard to determine how many pellets he is getting when you say two handfuls a day, but that may be too much. A medium sized rabbit, 5 to 7 pounds, should get around 1/4 cup of pellets a day. Rabbits that eat much more than that are probably not going to eat as much hay. If you are feeding more than that amount, you should cut back gradually. You could still split up the feedings, but give a little less.

Some rabbits aren’t big water drinkers, but fluids are of course important to them. Most rabbits prefer a bowl. Use heavy crockery bowls.

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