Shared or individual food/water dishes?

[joea64]

Right, so I’m working up a schedule for feeding and caring for my future bunnies, and I actually have a small puzzle here: can they share the food and water dishes/bowls, or is it better for each bun to have bowls of their own? I’m meeting one of the pairs I’m considering adopting on Sunday afternoon and I’ll be quizzing their foster about their at-table (at-bowl?) habits, but I’m mainly concerned to make sure that one bunny doesn’t go hogging all the pellets and vegetables and get fat by eating too much. I’m figuring about 1/4 – 1/2 cup timothy pellets per day per rabbit and anywhere from 1 – 4 cups/day leaf green vegs, depending on the briefing I get from their foster; I’ll also need transitional supplies of whatever they’ve been eating to ease the passage from old diet to new diet. My current plan is to give them pellets in the morning and salad in the evening, with hay and water refreshed at both mealtimes, but again their foster will know what their mealtime schedule is.

[tobyluv]

My bunnies share a water bowl and they share the veggies, which I spread out on a quilted cotton place mat, but I do have separate bowls for their pellets. I didn’t want to take a chance that one would hog the bowl and make the other rabbit mad or get more than their share. After eating from their own bowl for a while, they switch and check out the other bunny’s bowl. They evidently want to make sure that the pellets aren’t better in the other bowl. Some rabbits can share a food bowl very contentedly, taking turns getting pellets. But there are some rabbits who eat faster than others and tend to hog the bowls. One of my bunnies is about twice as big as the other and she eats a lot faster. If any bunnies you are considering share a bowl now at their foster home, it should be fine for them to keep doing so.

[sarahthegemini]

My bunnies share a water bowl, it’s big enough for them to drink out of it at the same time. They’re currently not on veggies but when they were, they shared a big dinner plate. Pellets get hand fed.

[Bianca]

Mine share a water bowl. If I put their food in a bowl they would share that, but I just scatter it in their litter tray and let them sort through it. They seem pretty good at sharing. I have found a lot of bonded pairs will go for the same bit of food, share that, then do the other. I don’t feed pellets, so can’t comment there.

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