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.
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.
sas
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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!