Weird Behavior When Given New Hay

[kjsx988]

Thankfully my rabbit is back to his normal behavior, but I’m really curious to find out why the heck he was acting so crazy this morning.

Last night my husband cleaned out his cage and litter box like we always do. We ran out of hay so I went to buy more. I went to a different pet store than normal (it’s the same chain, just in a different town) and they didn’t have the same big bag of timothy hay I always buy, so I bought a smaller bag from the same company. I noticed when filling his litter box that it seemed stringy-er…it just seemed different than normal, but it was the same exact stuff from the same exact company. This morning when I went to let him out of his cage he was FURIOUSLY making a giant mess of his hay and throwing it all around and gathering it his mouth (he looked like he had a giant mustache) but he didn’t look like he had actually eaten any of it. I opened the cage and he didn’t even notice, he was so busy doing his thing (which is REALLY unusual…by that point he is jumping all around waiting for me to let him out and bolts for his pellets). Even when I filled his bowl he STILL kept making a mess and just being really weird. When he went to go eat some of his pellets a few minutes later, he still had the bunch of hay bundled up in his mouth and was trying to eat his pellets while holding onto the hay. I was like “what the heck are you doing!?” and took it out of his mouth. He barely ate, just went back to making a giant mess and gathering the hay. He then started hopping around the house with it in his mouth. It was just really weird. I told my husband because I had to leave and after I left my husband called me and told me he saw the rabbit running around and making such a mess with the hay that he was overheating and his heart was racing he was so worked up! So he re-cleaned the cage and took all the hay out and he has been fine since. I went to the store I usually go to and bought the regular big bag of hay and he hasn’t been acting weird, thank God.

Any idea what his issue was?? It was so strange!

[Sarita]

I used to have a neutered male rabbit that would do that on occasion – never figured it out other than maybe stress (not ever sure what stressed him out). It kind of reminded me of what I think nesting behavior in females. Sometimes you really cannot know what is going on with them – it’s really just a guessing game.

He didn’t do it often and none of my other rabbit’s did either…I thought it was kind of cute though.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Maybe he was mad because he didn’t like the hay? My buns are really fussy with hay. I always buy the same brand but often the hay varies a bit from bag to bag, sometimes it’s more coarse or less sweet smelling. My Bindi will often make a mess when he’s displeased.

Cute pic, Sarita

[kjsx988]

Haha okay, good! It was pretty funny at first until he started to seem to go really mad. Luckily, he is back to normal!

[Bam]

Even if you buy the exact same brand of hay, hay is never uniform. It varies from crop to crop, depending, I think primarily, on the weather. Big suppliers probably buy from many different sub-contractors. If it’s a quality brand, the hay is tested to make sure it meets the requirements, like nutritional value and over-all quality, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the rabbit is pleased with it. A rabbit has a sense of smell that vastly surpasses that of a human. Texture is also a big deal with rabbits. Some hay just isn’t worthy and thus it must be obliterated from the face of the earth.

My buns make a huge mess of all hay, always. It’s rather tiresome. But as long as they eat the stuff as well, I’m happy.

[kjsx988]

Haha well from his reaction this hay most definitely needed to be obliterated! I never saw him to intense!

[Author]

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