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"Curvy" (Too curvy) rabbit

lucycat

Warren Scout
Took Silky to the vet last Friday for her annual vax and discussed her weight with the vet. We both feel she is too fat and the vet thinks she needs to lose nearly a kilo.

I have been feeding 3 green leaves in the morning plus a celery stick (she lives with two others) hay access and a handful (literally ie one fistful) of pellets in the evening.

I thought this would help her lose weight as it doesnt seem that much for three bunnies but no. She is an otter rex and weighs 3.3kg.

I dont really want to split them up and am mindful of her losing weight too quickly but she really needs to.

Any ideas. They live in a big shed with a run and I let her out for a couple of hours into the garden on Sat and Sunday. I even wondered about taking her out for a walk with the dog but I am scared about another dog attacking her or her escaping a harness and running off.
 
She sounds as though she needs more time in her run moving around and playing.

Ive been told that rabbits dont need need pellets, they can get everything they need from hay and grass etc so you could cut her pellets down and give her less and she will supliment her diet with hay
 
I'd suggest cutting the pellets down even further and feeding them in a treatball to encourage more exercise. If necessary you might need to feed the others separately for 5-10 minutes so she gets little or no pellets. There is no need to split them though, just pop her in a carrier while they eat. Pellets usually disappear quickly anyway. Another option is to just use pellets as hand fed treats that way you can control how many each rabbit gets.

Tamsin
 
I would drop the pellets to one egg cup between them all and up the hay intake. Veg is fine but reduce high sugar content veggies to once or twice a week such as carrots and apples etc. You can also give plenty of herbs too if you are worried about giving them nice treats to replace the lack of pellets as these are great!
With the pellets scatter them everywhere so they have to forage and move around their enclosure to find them.

If you are worried the other two may drop weight you can always just seperate her into the run alone with her very few scattered pellets and feed them theirs and then open up the enclosure again when they have finished. In my rabbits case that would be less than 5 minutes :lol:
 
If the other two aren't overweight then it's more likely a case of her needing to excercise more. Is she a mini-rex? Because 3.3kg sounds normal for an adult standard rex.

As the others have said make her work for her pellets, either having to jump up high places and burrow under things to find them, get them out of a treat ball etc.
 
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