Rabbit Not Eating Pellets

[Jayh]

I’m new at posting here so I hope I’m doing this right.
My rabbit Hope, She is 3 years old (4 in December).
Everything was fine about a month ago besdies that she wasnt eating enough hay.
So I switched her from Kaytee to APD High Fiber (American Pet Diner) .
But now she’s so ‘obsessed’ with this hay that she isn’t eating her normal pellets?
I have her on Small World from walmart. She’s been on that since she was 5 months old. No problem.
But now I’m thinking on changing her over to Oxbow or APD Pellets since she just wont eat any of her pellets. I’ll leave info on her below if anyone has any advice.

Name: Hope
Age: 3 Years
Pellets Currently: Small World
Hay Currently: American Pet High Fiber
Breed: Mini Lop

Any questions just ask. Any advice please?

[tobyluv]

It’s great that Hope is eating a lot of hay. APD is good quality hay. Both the high fiber and the second cutting Timothy Gold are favorites with my bunnies. Some rabbits are fed a pelletless diet, but to make up for the lack of vitamins and nutrients they may be missing, you are supposed to feed them a great variety of greens/veggies each day. Something like 15 different varieties, which may be hard to accomplish, plus being expensive and causing you to spend more time prepping the veggies.

Sometimes when a rabbit stops eating a particular food, it can be due to teeth problems, but it sounds like in Hope’s case that she was eating pellets before due to not liking the Kaytee hay and now that she loves the new hay, she isn’t interested in pellets. Is she still eating her greens as before? If you do see her having any trouble eating hay or greens, you should have her teeth checked out.

You can try scattering her pellets in the hay to see if she will eat them that way, or you can go ahead and try a different brand of pellets. Both Oxbow and APD are very good products. I’m not sure that Small World is as good.

[Jayh]

She is still eating greens as normal. She munched down super fast on baby carrots the other day so I dont think teeth are the issue since she tried to nibble on my finger before hand and they do not seem over grown. She normally is not a nibbler unless she smells food on my hand. She’s just eating everything else like normal besides pellets.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Pellets are the least important part of a bunny’s diet. So as long as she is not showing any other symptoms of concern (weight loss, drooling, strange poops, etc) I wouldn’t worry about it. As Tobyluv mentions, unlimited good quality hay and the appropriate amount and variety of healthy veggies is all a bunny needs.

[Jayh]

Thank you TobyLuv and LittlePuffyTail.
It’s always worrying when you think something might be off. We never want our babies to be sick. I’m going to order Oxbow and APD Pellets and try both out to see what she does. Hopefully that will make a solution. And if not I’ll look into upping her variety in green and veggies. Thank you so much.

[Deleted User]

Hi! I’m new here also.
I would recommend add banana.
A way to get rabbits to eat pellets is to mash a piece of banana (about 2 – 3 cms long) and then ‘massage’ it through some pellets so it slightly coats the pellets.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Careful with banana since it’s so high in sugar. Bunnies should have no more than 1TBSP of treat foods (including fruit) per day.

[sarahthegemini]

Posted By stream26 on 6/13/2017 4:09 AM

Hi! I’m new here also.
I would recommend add banana.
A way to get rabbits to eat pellets is to mash a piece of banana (about 2 – 3 cms long) and then ‘massage’ it through some pellets so it slightly coats the pellets.

The trouble with that is they might start to ‘rely’ on the tasty banana to get them to eat the pellets and then you’ve got to try and wean them off it lol.

[Author]

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