5 Ways to Get Your Rabbit to Eat More Hay
Considering at least 80% of a rabbit’s diet should be hay (or grass) there is a worrying number of rabbits owners that report their bunny eats little or no hay. The high fibre content of hay is essential for maintaining a healthy gut and teeth, as well as providing a boredom busting activity for your rabbit.
Many common and potentially serious health problems are caused or exacerbated by the lack it of, including:
- Gut Stasis
- Excess Cecotropes (sticky poop) which can lead to fly strike
- Overgrown teeth which can result in tooth abscesses and gut stasis
So, below are my top 5 tips for turning your rabbit in to a hay eater.
1. Feed Tastier Hay
Hay is a bit like apples. It comes in lots of different varieties and flavours. Some people like crisp Granny Smiths others like sweet Cox’s, and cooking apples taste horrible (unless cooked). Likewise some rabbits can be quite fussy about the variety of hay they like.
When choosing hay avoid the finely chopped, brownish plastic packed varieties you find in a lot of pet shops. Look for green, long strands that smell nice and aren’t too dusty. Hay sold at feed shops and farms, for horses to eat, is usually good and a lot cheaper then pet shop bags.
Oxbow do a wide range of different hay’s you can try your rabbit with. You do not have to stick to one variety, mix and match to keep your rabbit’s interest.
2. Put Hay Where Your Rabbit Sits
Rabbits prefer to munch hay while they are resting and while they are using their litter tray/toilet area. Putting the hay in these places will catch your rabbit at the time he’s most likely to eat it. If you don’t want to put hay in the litter tray then hang a hay rack above it.
3. Incorporate Hay into Toys
Most rabbits like to play and throw toys around. Incorporating hay in to play activities can encourage them to pull, bite and chew at the hay. A willow ball or cardboard tube filled with hay can be hung from the cage or thrown around by your rabbit.
4. Add Garnish
You can make hay more interesting to your rabbit by mixing in food they like best. This could include dry food, fresh vegetables or dried (bunny safe) herbs. Whilst searching through the hay for the good bits hopefully they’ll eat some hay too.
5. Feed Less Dry Food
Most rabbits have bad hay eating habits because they eat too much dry food. A healthy adult rabbit should only be fed a small quantity of dry food (50g per average size adult rabbit per day is plenty). Dry food tastes good but it doesn’t provide the fibre levels and chewing action needed to keep your rabbit healthy. Reducing the amount of dry food you rabbit gets should help encourage them to eat more hay.
A change in eating habits can indicate teeth problems and should be investigated by a vet. If your rabbit stops eating hay, starts dribbling, has longer than normal front teeth or chews differently to normal then a visit to your vet is needed.
Tags: cecotropes, Diet, gut-stasis, hay, rabbit-health, teeth
I’m curious. Have you read the feedtag on your rabbit’s pellets? If so, I think you will notice that the bulk of the pellet is *hay*. Actually, a hard pellet is the best surface for the rabbit to use to grind their teeth against to prevent malocclusion. Having produced rabbits for many years raised exclusively on a pellet fed diet, I have not once encountered malloclusion problems. The few rabbits that I have purchased with elongated front incisors were raised on a softer more hay based diet that did not have the required surface roughage to properly wear the teeth.
I was wondering what this pellet fed diet is? Just as much as they can eat or what? I would like to know because these are the type of pellets I buy and my rabbit clearly prefers them to the hay.
Rabbits do generally consider pellets tastier than hay, just like children think sweets are tastier than vegetables. That doesn’t mean the are better for them though! It is important to restrict pellets too encourage hay/grass eating and prevent obesity. There is information on dry food here: http://www.therabbithouse.com/diet/rabbit-food.asp
It is not the hardness of pellets that causes wear, it is the rough surface of grass. If you run your fingers down a blade of grass or hay, you’ll find it catches. This is because the surface of grass is actually like abrasive sandpaper and that is what causes wear. Pellets are hard but they easily shatter into pieces, so this does not create the right kind of wear. If the roughness, rather than harness of the surface that is important.
Although a good high fibre pellet contains lots of grass based fibre, because pellets provide highly concentrated nutrition rabbits do not require large quantities of them. A pellet only diet may (possibly?) wear the teeth down sufficiently but they can cause a range of problems such as obesity, excess soft droppings, higher incidence of gut related problem etc. I wonder if you have experienced any of these?
Hay is less concentrated nutrition and is eaten in much larger quantities. Grass/hay may appear softer but it has a very rough surface texture. Unlike pellets which crumble, eating grass/hay involves much more chewing action. Different types of hay also have different levels of ‘roughness’, Timothy hay is one of the best.
I feed my rabbit only approx. 25g of pellets per day and likewise have not encounter teeth problems. They also do not experience the draw backs which can be encountered with pellet based diets either.
Not eating hay for the most part won’t cause dental problems, but it won’t correct them, either. Many are genetic, and a pellet diet won’t keep it in check. Short-face breeds like Netherland Dwarfs and Holland Lops are prone to molar spurs, which can be controlled by a diet that includes hay/grass/straw. The only one of my rabbits who won’t eat hay is the only one with molar spurs. All rabbit teeth are contantly growing and do need to be worn down, some more than others. My other ‘long-in-the-tooth’ rabbits eat tree bark, chew on wood blocks, straw toys, etc, and never need trimming.
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http://www.rabbitsonline.net
My rabbit is one of those who doesn’t much care for hay, any kind that I’ve tried. I mix his greens in with the hay and he accidently eats a bit that way. I also free feed pellets, but he only eats those when the greens run out.
I supply him w/ abundent greens. In the summer I pick wild clovers, wild carrot tops, grapevine, dandelion, plantain, and mulberry land oak leaves. In the winter I buy spring mix, parsely and a variety of lettuces.
I have had Hershey for 1.5 years. He has had no health problems. My vet thought this diet would be ok. What is your opinion?
Thanks!
It sounds like Hershey gets a nicely varied diet. Have you thought about trying some fresh grass along with the other greens you pick? Hay is just dried grass so maybe Hershey prefers his fresher.
“I also free feed pellets, but he only eats those when the greens run out. ”
I think that’s the reason he doesn’t eat much hay. Obviously Hershey rates greens above pellets and pellets above hay. He only bothers with pellets when the greens run out and he never bothers with hay because the pellets never run out. If you limited the pellets so he has a period between top ups without any and you’d probably find his hay consumption went up.
Hi,
Our bunnies also are not very keen on their hay – but they are free range during the day and seem to spend a lot of it eating grass (we have a big lawn so there’s no shortage). Is there anything they need that is in hay that they’re not getting from existing mainly on grass? We also feed them a very small bowl of pellets that they share each morning, but often they don’t eat all of these – they prefer grass! They chew the odd leaf and gnaw at the odd tree trunk too. Thanks.
Hi Elizabeth, Grass is just as good as, if not better than, hay. If your rabbits are eating a lot of grass then they’ll probably eat a proportionally smaller amount of hay to balance it out. Rabbits would naturally eat a range of plants (weeds) as well as grass and that helps provide a good mix of vitamins. Pellets are a convenient way to provide a balanced selection of vitamins but you can equally feed a range of ‘greens’ instead. If your lawn is well kept and weed free you could supplement the grass with human herbs and veg but if your lawn is a bit like mine with clover, dandelion etc. mixed in they probably get a good balance already.
My rabbit just went in for some slowing of the digestion problems and was prescribed a few different things by an exotics specialist including some antibiotics. After the vet visit, she seems to feel better, but she isnt as interested in hay as she used to be and I’m wondering why. I know when i bought her new bags of oxbow timothy and orchard grass after her vet visit they looked different from normal. The orchard grass which I find to be a lot softer was much harder like the timothy and she wasnt excited by it. I’m not sure if maybe the antibiotics and lessening her excitement for hay(she is still excited for oxbow pellets and treats). She pretty much got a full work up and the blood work seemed fine and the meds she was given at the vet over night to help her system move along seemed to work also.
My bunny will occasionally eat a piece of hay but she looks through a few more pieces and then she doesnt seem to find any other good pieces to eat. Her poop has been ranging from a little small to normal to normal cecotropes although I’d like to see much more normal sized droppings which I imagine usually come from all of the hay. Anyways, I guess I’m wondering if I should be worried or if it just seems like the antibiotics are messing with her poop and hunger for hay a bit. She seems fine otherwise and enjoys food so I’m hoping when I can get some better orchard and timothy hay she will be more into it. She typically spends a lot of time eating hay so it kind of bothers me that she doesnt care for it much anymore. She is going back to the vet in a couple of weeks for a follow up, but any thoughts? I’ve heard lightly spraying apple juice on the hay can help, any validity in that?
Hi, my adopted rabbit doesn’t eat hay at all. Loved veggies especially those with crunchy stems and carrots. He is crazy about his pellets, which we give about 2 tablespoons in the morning and in the evening. How can I retrain him to eat hay? We have tried reducing the pellets but he has retaliated with a lot of pee outside his litter pan. Is there another way or something else that rabbits might find more tasty than the APD Gold, second cut, we give him in unlimited portions everyday?
My bunny loves his hay! What he doesn’t like is the hay you get in pet stores that’s been wrapped in plastic. Good thing – a bale is much cheaper than prepackaged hay. I buy it from a feed store (~2 bales/year) and keep it in a couple of plastic bins (to keep out critters). He gets fresh hay every day and when I first put it in his potty box, he comes running. He likes to dig through it for the seeds. That’s the other thing, his potty box is filled with hay and there’s other boxes around the house filled with hay (he doesn’t use them as litter boxes though they started out that way).
When he was young, I tried to feed him the timothy and alfalfa that comes from the pet stores, but he would have none of it. Fortunately, it was spring/summer, so he had lots of fresh veg to eat. Then I found a pet store that said what you really want to do is give them fresh hay and they had a farmer who was supplying. They had a choice between oat/forage and timothy. Cosmo (my bun) prefers oat.
On the pellets, he never gets more than a shot glass full – it’s his food scoop
I’ve always been told that pellets are more like vitamins than food source – they are there to make up for what your rabbit is missing in fresh veg and hay. And there is a routine. I unlatch the baby gate in the morning and off he goes. I put pellets in his bowl, fresh water, clean up, fresh hay. And then it’s not until 8pm that he gets fresh veg (which encourages him to go back into his room on his own.) In between, all that’s avail is hay.
Hope this helps anyone with reluctant hay eaters.
Hi, my rabbit won’t barely touch his hay even though I have tried a variety of products. In response I have tried much reducing his pellets but he simply doesn’t eat the hay (and only ends up losing weight). With this he is also terrible at drinking water and only seems to sip the odd bit, I have tried a range of bowls and drinking vessles. With this he is keen on biting and eating carpet as most rabbits do, and although I stop him constantly he still does so and has ended up with slight hairblock (he is very long fluffy haired to boot) which I worry about. Lots of issues, just wondered if you have any advice.
Thanks
Hello there, sorry to say but as a SVN, I have to totally disagree with the above comments especially the ‘Not eating hay for the most part won’t cause dental problems’ because it really does! Pellets as correctly stated do have fibre in them (not as much as grass and hay) so is ok for their tmmies but they simply wont grind the continously growing teeth down as much as hay. Excess pellets lead to soft poos and although a small amount should be given as a vitamin/mineral supplement, it is thought that only a tablespoon amount is needed and that the rest of the diet should consist of hay, grass and a small amount of veggies. We get so many bunnies in our practice that need dentals, and although yes, a large part of this can be caused by breeding (espeically lops), the majority are needed because of insufficient diet. Hard pellets are not sufficient to grind bunnies teeth down!
Hello, after an awful week at the vets and animal hospital after Lola decided to stop eating with gi stasis we are slowly getting back on track, before her diet was mainly pellets although hay is always around for her pellets caused the most excitement, i am now trying to wean her on a hay / veggie/herb diet but the only hay i can get is in plastic bags dried old grey colour and its only fit for bedding, where can i get oxbow hays in london? also any ideas on how to get Lola drinking water again?
Hiya, I’m sorry to hear your bunny has been poorly, they can be such a worry! You could try emailing Oxbow and see if they can give you a list of stockists. Do you have any stables nearby – they are a good source of high quality hay as they buy for horses. A rabbit rescue would be another place to ask as they may buy hay by the bale and then sell it on. You could also order hay online and have it delivered eg http://www.thehayexperts.co.uk/ Rabbits tend to prefer drinking from a bowl when they are a bit off colour, a splash of apple juice in the water can encourage drinking too. Rabbit drink less when they have fresh vegetables so if you’ve been feeding those to tempt her into eating that may be why she’s drinking less.
Good post , i have find it very helpfull, y rabbit does not want to eat hay i will try some of your advices, regards.
Hi, I have an 8 1/2 week old Holland Lop. The breeder that I got her from doesn’t feed hay, so she’s not used to eating it and doesn’t really seem interested in it. She nibbles, but that’s about it. Being that young, should I limit her pellet intake to get her to eat the hay (timothy)? I’m also wondering how much pellets to give her. I’ve read that you should limit them, but have also read that babies should be fed unlimited pellets, so I’m really not sure how much I should give her. Thanks for any advice.
Hi Sherrie, yes I would limit her pellets. Scamp has never had more than an egg cup full a day and as you can see he’s grown up just fine. Pellets are very concentrated so you need much less of them than you do hay to provide all the energy and protein a growing bunny needs. Even if you just restrict them for part of the day that will help. Bunnies are most active mid afternoon through the evening so this would be a good time to make just hay available.
Hay is very important for gut function and teeth though so getting her into good habits now has big benefits. Try the ideas above too see if they help. As she’s a youngster you could also try alfalfa hay, it’s too rich for adults but fine for babies and very tasty so might tempt her. You could also try dried grass (sometimes kiln dried grass) again it’s extra tasty so might get her started.
I was wondering if you can help me. We recently got a baby Lionhead for my daughter. The owner gave is a small bag of pellets to get us started. After reading that rabbits need timothy hay as part of their diet I went out and bought some. After giving them to her for the first time her demeanor immediately changed and she became very hyper (she was very calm before this). I thought it was a little odd but wondered if it was a coincidence. Shortly after that we ended to get 2 more bunnies. They were the most calm laid back bunnies….until I have them timothy hay for the first time. Now they are hyper. Not sure that its coincidence anymore but can’t find any info online. Any ideas? Thanks.
Hi Kristine,
I’ve never heard of hay making bunnies hyper. They do enjoy playing with hay and digging about it in and eating it is good for them so that may make them feel happier and be more active. It’s really important rabbits have access to hay 24/7 for their teeth and digestive system, if you’re worried about the reaction to timothy hay you could try meadow or oat hay instead. If they are babies you could also try alfalfa but you’ll need to swap later as it’s too rich for adults and can make them overweight.
Do get someone experienced to check if you have boys or girls if you have three, it’s easy to make a mistake and you can end up with hundreds if you aren’t careful!
Our rabbit Max is a 7 year old lop and flatly refuses to eat any hay at all. He happily eats his pellets and loves a variety of fresh greens, particularly carrot tops but also brocolli (which frankly he is welcome to
), but he would rather starve than eat hay. We have tried lots of different kinds of hay from pet shops and farms and we have tried reducing his food to a level where he is so hungry he chases us around desperately for something to eat, we have tried mixing hay with his pellets and mixing greens with his hay, but he still flatly ignores the hay however its presented and however hungry he is.
He does have dental problems, maybe as a result who knows, and we would love to find a way of getting him to change his habits. I have just sent of for a sampler pack of different hays in case there is something he will eat but i dont hold out much hope.
So my question is a bit different – if Max point blank wont eat hay then is there something else that has similar characteristics in terms of making him grind his teeth down and which he can eat in decent quantities? He would for example be very happy to munch on carrot tops all day but i suspect thats not going to do his insides much good so we limit the amount we allow him.
It can be tricky to change the habits of a rabbit that is firmly against hay. Sometimes they just don’t see it as food.
Have you tried fresh grass? It’s just as good as hay, and some bunnies that like fresh foods (like carrot tops) prefer it.
The more he chews the more wear his teeth will get, so although grass/hay is the best, anything he eats will create some wear. Pellets are very concentrated and break up easily so he doesn’t need to chew many times to eat all the nutrients he needs. Green foods are less concentrated so he needs so eat a bigger volume (and chew more times) to get the same number of nutrients. So, even if you can’t persuade him to eat hay, you may find that decreasing pellets and increasing the portion of fresh foods in his diet will help overall as he’ll have to chew more.
The best types of food for this are often natural leaves, so things like blackberry, raspberry, hazel, apple, pear, hawthorn, thistle. You can also dry these to give you spare for the winter. There is a forum topic here where several rabbit owners are discussing collecting plants to feed you may find helpful: http://forums.rabbitrehome.org.uk/showthread.php?t=274136
Thanks for the reply. We have tried fresh grass in the past though may be worth another shot in case. He does hunt down dried leaves in the garden so we can try some of your suggestions in that area too.
If we decrease his pellets and increase his green foods to make him chew more do you think its likely his digestion will suffer? thats the reason we have limited him on carrot tops in the past, the assumption it will cause him to start producing much looser droppings (to put it nicely).
As far as he is concerned I suspect he would be happy in a world where he only ever had to eat carrot top and if that were a valid subsititue for hay we would be able to make that change pretty easily.
Rabbit’s natural diet is grass and leaves (particularly weeds) so it’s actually better for his digestion to eat these rather than pellets. A good variety and increasing the quantity gradually is the key factor. Just eating carrots tops isn’t really any better than us humans just eating carrots. Several different types of vegetables/leaves per day and not necessarily the same ones every day, will make sure he gets lots of fibre, does lots of chewing and gets a range of different vitamins and minerals. Providing you do this it’s actually okay to cut out pellets completely! Try google the ‘hay and veggies’ diet for more information. Sudden diet changes (even for the better) can cause poop issues so introduce new things slowly and hopefully you should avoid a repeat.