{"id":509,"date":"2010-10-30T06:17:31","date_gmt":"2010-10-30T05:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/?p=509"},"modified":"2010-10-30T06:17:31","modified_gmt":"2010-10-30T05:17:31","slug":"betty-miller-rabbit-food-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/30\/betty-miller-rabbit-food-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabbit Food – Don’t Believe the Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"rabbit<\/a>

Grass - The most natural food a rabbit can eat!<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m just in the process of updating an old article I wrote that includes a list of rabbits foods\u00a0 that offer at least 18% fibre, and around 12-14% protein – the ideal combination for rabbit nutrition. It’s great to see how much the range of high fibre pelleted rabbit foods has increased in the last few years. There are even customised options available now for young and senior rabbits with nutrition tailored to their needs. A few of the leading manufacturers like Burgess<\/a>, Supreme<\/a> and Oxbow<\/a> are also making a big deal of promoting the importance of fibre and hay in a rabbit’s diet.<\/p>\n

That’s a really great step forward for rabbit health and welfare, however, there are still a lot of food manufacturers that aren’t so good. These are often the foods that come in lovely bright packaging and promise to be be \u201cgourmet\u201d, \u201cpremium\u201d, \u201cfortified with vitamins\u201d, or contain \u201call natural ingredients”, but read the small print on the back and they have ridiculously low fibre levels or they are full of biscuits and half dead looking chopped up bits of hay (yes technically it’s fibre but no self respecting rabbit would actually eat it). I wonder how many owners fall for the marketing without realising the consequences that these foods can have on their rabbits health.<\/p>\n

Take ‘Betty Miller Complete Food for Rabbits<\/a>‘ as an example, which claims to be “as close to natural feeding as you can get”. Sounds like a great promise until you realise it’s only 15% fibre and Betty Millers years of “observing rabbits in the wild” have lead her to the belief that wild rabbits eat “grasses, cereals vegetables and bark”. Now hold on a minute, cereals, vegetables? That sounds more like reading Peter Rabbit than observing real wild rabbits. A rabbit’s natural diet is grass, grass, ‘weeds’ (dandelion, plantain, clover etc.) and grass. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever seen a wild rabbit tucking into peas, carrots, whole grain flour or soya. Whilst these ingredients aren’t anything like “natural” they aren’t particularly unusual things to find in rabbit food. The reason why I’ve used this food as an example is because rather than just neglecting to mention the importance of also feeding hay, their literature actively advises not feeding grass or hay alongside their dry food:<\/p>\n

“The majority of manufactured rabbit food is complementary which means you must add hay or grass to make it complete. Betty Miller\u2019s Complete Food means you do not need to add anything. The food is all your rabbit needs to keep it in tip top condition.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem with dry food is that it is a very concentrated form of nutrition (it packs a lot of nutrients into a small volume of food), the exact opposite of a rabbit\u2019s natural diet (a high volume of low nutrient food) i.e. grass.\u00a0 Which is why the majority of manufactured rabbit food is complementary (not complete) and manufacturers recommend it should be fed along side grass and hay. It’s not a fault in the food design, it’s a sign that manufacturers recognise that grass and hay are the most natural foods for a rabbit to eat not carrots and peas. Dry food should be feed as a compliment to hay\/grass not a substitute. A balanced rabbit diet should look something like this (note the teeny portion of dry food):<\/p>\n

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On the left a wild rabbit\u2019s diet: a large amount of grass plus a range of other plants. On the right a pet rabbits: a large amount of hay or grass, a moderate amount of other fresh plants or veg and only a small amount of commercial dry food.<\/p><\/div>\n

I expect as most people read this their bunnies are tucking into giant piles of hay, but there are lots of new and less experienced owners that will believe the marketing of pet food manufacturers and not realise the serious consequences that it can have to their rabbits teeth, digestion and behaviour.<\/p>\n

So please, don’t listen to the marketing of companies like this. Check the nutritional analysis, get advice from people not trying to sell you their product and above all feed your rabbit lots of hay or grass (or both)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbit food manufacturers inundate us with colourful labels that promise to keep our rabbit happy and healthy by providing foods that are ‘complete’, ‘natural’ and ‘full of vitamins’ but some foods are much to low in fibre and some companies don’t even mention the need to feed grass or hay (the most natural and important component of a rabbits diet).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[76,30,22,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions\/525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}