Food for Dwarf buns??

got a friend with a dwarf bunny which we are looking after while she is away. She feeds it on Burgess Supa Excel Junior & Dwarf - and I find this a bit strange. Surely the dietary needs of an adult dwarf are very different to those of a baby which needs protein for growth, more calcium for healthy bones etc etc. Is she likely to run into problems feeding this food - fatness from too much protein, and problems with too high Calcium??

Would welcome anyone's comments please

Bugs Bunny and friends

I must admit I'd wondered the same thing myself in the past! I don't know what the makeup of the junior/dwarf one is, maybe it's just that the pellets are smaller for tinier mouths?

Tia's a nethie and she munches the huuuuge pellets of SS - look more like twigs in this bag

Yep Santa too, it looks like she's got a massive cigar hanging out of her mouth :lol: She was weighed at the vets yesterday - 940g :lol:

I think someone along the way has confused little rabbits with baby rabbits! I can't understand why the junior food is labelled as being for dwarf rabbits either.

How do the fibre/protein/ash levels compare for the two foods? I don't have either so I don't know.

Supa Rabbit Excel Junior& Dwarf Nutritional Analysis: Protein 16%, Oil 4.5%, Ash 7%, Fibre 16%, Calcium 0.90%, Phosphorous 0.5%, Vitamin A 11,000 iu/kg, Vitamin D3 1,500 iu/kg, Vitamin E (alpha tocopherol acetate) 60 iu/kg, Copper as cupric sulphate 15 mg/kg.
Seems to me to be too high for adult buns in Calcium part, and protein, and quite low in fibre compared to products like Bunny Basics T, which is 25% fibre, 14% protein, and 0.65% calcium

please keep the help comments coming in....
ta
Bugs Bunny and friends

If I can find an email address later I might write to them and enquire. I have 2 nethies of my own so I can ask a genuine question.

The protein and fibre levels are absolutely fine if hay is being fed.

You can get some rabbits feeds that are less than 10% fibre. This worries me because if people only feed a mix that low in fibre then it is damaging to the bun! :shock:

Raised calcium levels are a bit worrying. According to V.C.G. Richardson, your average rabbit requires 510mg of calcium a day.

Too much calcium in a rabbit's diet will lead to kidney and bladder stones as rabbits don't absorb calcium as needed, their uptake of calcium is unregulated and so is directly proportional to how much they are fed. For this reason adult rabbits who are not lactating shouldn't be fed alfalfa in anything more that miniscule quantities.

Hmm I'm not sure of my maths, but say a rabbit eats 66g of food (that's 2oz I think, which is how much food a Nethie can eat in a day) that's 594mg, so too much for an adult bun.

The other food you mention provides less than 500mg, which would be right for a small rabbit. I think 0.65% is a safe amount for an adult, but 0.9% really isn't.

I personally would advise a change of food, just to be on the safe side.

I've wondered this too. I feed it (mixed with SS, I'm swapping over), but for the junior bit. They are very small pellets, but I don't see why they need to be. It's not as if normal pellets are the size of a grapefruit, is it? :lol:

I didn't know that stuff about the calcium, but I always intended to change over to SS as they got older anyway. Higher in fibre, lower in price .

Yeah, getting the right balance of calcium in a rabbit is tricky.

Another reason why pellets are better than mix - I read a rather interesting journal article on rabbit nutrition a while back (which I should dig out) and pretty much all mixes have the calcium in the small pellet component of the mix - the bit that most rabbits leave! This then leads to tooth problems, etc...

Hiya,
My two nethie girls were a bit podgy on the SS dwarf/baby bun food, so they are now on the normal SS pellets and seem fine and dandy on that.
Nicola x

Lucy has supa excel for dwarf and junior rabbits and seems fine on it, my vet reccomended it, if it's eaten in small amounts with lots of hay then it should'nt cause problems.

Carob said:

if it's eaten in small amounts with lots of hay then it should'nt cause problems.

Click to expand...

Yeah absolutely, it just ticks me off that these things are sold as complete food when they are not. If you fed a Nethie entirely on junior food you are potentially causing problems. With hay it is fine, but they are not marketed saying "Only feed your bun a tiny bit of our food"

I've emailed them to ask whether they recommend dwarf rabbits eat the normal or the 'dwarf' excel given that the dwarf version contains more protein and is marketed as suitable for growing babies/pregnant/lactating females - I'll let you know if I get a response!

seen as dwarf rabbits have notorious teeth problems...maybe the calcium helps?? maybe i dunno..just a thought?

Dwarf teeth problems aren't usually related to weak bones, they are due to the genetics (the breeding of the flat face) which can mean that the teeth don't align themselves properly, and because the teeth constantly grow, they don't wear the opposite tooth down in the way that they should To a degree you can mitigate it by feeding lots of hay which encourages a grinding action of the jaw and can help, although a lot depends on how bad the problem is.