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Diet tips for buns please!

anna

Mama Doe
Hi everyone!

My little Ted is getting a bit podgy! He has quite a large tum and I think he should go on a diet? Does anyone have any tips/ideas as to how to go about it?

I'm not sure how much he weighs, or how much he should. I think he is a French lop rather than a dwarf lop, as he is not small anyway. He shares his hutch with Dougal the runner bean, I think Ted eats all their food, but he's always happy to share, which makes this hard!

I give them two handfuls of excel twice a day, with two sliced carrots and brocoli in the morning. They have constant supply of fresh hay and water, but don't normally have any treats, only couple of times a fortnight. They also have a small handful of russell rabbit a couple of times a weeks, they like the biscuits.

Am I doing anything wrong with their feeding? They've not been out in the garden for quite some time due to the weather and that its usually dark when I'm home?

Thanks, Anna xxx
 
Hiya,

The first step is to get little Ted on the scales. You can use human/kitchen ones, the easiest way to do it is pop him in a carrier and weigh that then way the carrier seperately and take that off the combined weight to get Teds weight. The best to monitor his weight is to record it.

The next thing to weigh is the excel. Hand sizes vary so its difficult to say whether thats exactly right. Fill up a bowl as normal then weigh it out. An average size bun will eat about 50g of dry food per day, with two buns thats 100g per day. If Ted is a French Lop then he'll eat more. There is quite a size difference between a french and a dwarf lop so again the best thing is to weigh him so you know exactly what size he is.

Which excel are you feeding, there are three sorts, the standard, dwarf and lite. Each has different nutritional make ups. I'd recommend switching to the lite, it has higher fibre and lower protein so should help slim him down.

Do they eat much of their hay?

You could try using treat balls, handing food toys etc. it helps stop them sticking their nose in the bowl and guzzeling all the food at once.

Tam
 
maybe the two handfuls twice a day maybe the problem, they should only be having approx 50g per day, which is two small handfuls once a day!! maybe morning one handful and one at night!!!! and two carrots each a day maybe doing it as well they are full of sugar natural as it maybe, i would suggest trying them on some other veg and giving less dried food!

how old are they if they are less than 5/6 months its ok to ad lib there food but after that i would stick to the 50g per day of dried food!!
 
Hi, they eat quite a bit of hay, its Dougals favourite! I will cut down on the excel and try the lite one (they just have the standard one), and get a treat ball in the pet shop tomorrow. They are a year old. I would feed them separately, but they don't normally eat it all in one go, they do spread it out a bit.

I have heard that feeding them dry food is bad, and can cause sticky bums, but they really love it and not had any problems on it.

Thanks, Anna.
 
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