Rabbit won’t eat hay

[moonbunny]

Hi everyone!

My pet bunny Nibbles (Dutch; 4 years old) usually has a healthy appetite but has always disliked hay. A few days ago, she became ill and wouldn’t eat. We rushed her to the vet and now she’s back home and on the mend. Her diagnosis was inconclusive, but she recovered well after being hydrated subcutaneously and put on antibiotics and pain medication.

Now that she’s back home, I’m determined to get her to eat more hay. However, I’ve run out of ideas. In the past, I’ve tried: 

• feeding her different kinds/brands of hay
• increasing the amount of hay and decreasing the amount of pellets
• placing the hay where she poops
• mixing her hay and pellets together

However, nothing seems to work. She’ll finish the rest of her food (nuggets and fresh greens) and only eat a few stalks of hay. When I mix the hay and pellets together to encourage her to “forage” for the pellets by chewing at the hay, she selectively feeds.

Does anyone have any advice/tips for rabbits who dislike hay?

Thank you,

Laura

[sarahthegemini]

You could try hay cookies? See if that sparks an interest in hay? Does she eat hay if you hand feed it to her?

[Boston's Mama]

I hide my ones pellets in their hay when they need enticing

[Azerane]

Tough one. I know you’ve said you’ve decreased the amount of pellets, but how much are you feeding?

And I just want to clarify, you’ve fed different kinds/brands of hay, so that includes, orchard grass, oat hay, timothy, meadow and whatever else you have available there. Are you only feeding bagged branded hay? Have you tried getting hay from a fodder store or direct from a farm? That hay tends to be fresher and have more of a smell which can be more appealing.

[moonbunny]

Hi Azerane,

I feed her pellets from the Burgess line. At the moment she is eating the ones made for recovering rabbits, but she usually eats ones with mint or oregano. At the moment I’m following the Burgess guidelines and feeding roughly 55g per day.

Unfortunately, hay products (and bunny products in general) are very rare where I currently live. Most of the bunny products available are imported from the UK, and hay tends to be hard to find. I’ve only come across teff, timothy hay and those “hay” bags that don’t have descriptive write-ups on them. At the moment, timothy hay imports are running low so I could only get teff from the vet hospital.

Getting hay from a farm might be difficult since I live in a city but I’ll definitely look into that.

[moonbunny]

Do you know of any recipes to make hay cookies? Or do you buy them pre-made?

Unfortunately she doesn’t eat hay out of my hand. She’ll only eat it once all the other food is finished. I’ll refuse to feed her again, and then sometimes she’ll resort to eating the hay because she’s hungry.

[Author]

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