Hay consumption

How much hay do your rabbits actually eat per week? Our 2 seem to go through alot, but we don't use hay racks at the moment and a fair bit is wasted when we change the straw bedding. I think a 2kg XL bag of meadow hay lasts about 3 weeks. Is this normal?

mine go throw a small bag x2 weekley pluss the beeding hay

Well, I bought approx. 3kg of oxbow hay and it lasted just under 3 months. I've just got the one bunny (a small dwarf lop) so I suppose that means she gets through about a 1kg every 4 weeks. That doesn't sound too dissimilar to you........... She has it in a hayrack and stuffed in toilet rolls etc.... so not much gets wasted.

My 4 rabbits eat about 50 lbs. (sorry, don't know that in kilos) of timothy hay in a month.

Aspen'n'company said:

My 4 rabbits eat about 50 lbs. (sorry, don't know that in kilos) of timothy hay in a month.

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Blimey that sound loads to eat and to carry home! I wish my bun ate more but he's never been that keen. Better now though. You do have such good hay in the States, loads of us pay a fortune to get it here, Jacob bunny has a huge carbon footprint as he has carefresh too!

they are supposed to eat a bundle roughly the size of their body every day - I don't believe that trampled hay is 'wasted' either as they spend hours looking through it for juicy bits - it's a great boredom buster and better to have a bit of trampled hay than chewed up hutch or whatever, in my opinion - Rabbits are foraging animals and it's natural behaviour for them to enjoy

OK so...
- Rex Rabbity's buns eat (and waste?) about 50 grammes per bunny per day
- Racheyrabbit's rabbit gets through about 33 grammes per day
- Aspen's gets through about 190 grammes per bunny per day (WOW!)


That's quite a big variation, although Racheyrabbit's rabbit is a dwarf so that kind of makes sense.

I've no idea how much mine eat as I'm feeding them from a full size farm bale of meadow hay at the moment. :?

Mine eat 2 bags of supa forage excel every week, so roughly about a bag each a week.

i have 5 buns and 4 babies and i just finished the last of a 25kg ish bale in just over 3 weeks.
i will let someone else do the maths!
when i just had the 4 buns and a sack of petshop hay it lasted forever, in fact i never finished it as it was obvious they didnt rate it too highly. i now get mine from a farm up the road for £2 a bale, no pesticide no fertiliser cut from sheep grazed pasture so ragwort free too! the last bale had a few nettles in it too, the bunnies went wild (perhaps thats why it went in 3 weeks).
have any of you ever made nettle hay? its sooooo easy and they love it. and you will never have a shortage of people willing to let you clear stinging nettles for them!

Nettle hay sounds good, we get alot here and I hate them as my joints swell up when I'm stung so a way to make better use of them other than getting my OAP neighbour to cut them all down would be super. Didn't realise they were Ok. How can buns eat them without being stung?

Will a bun not eat hay if he has too many greens and pellets? Bob eats more hay now I got him meadow hay not the p@h s***e he had originally, but still doesn't seem to happily munhc away on it. He has it in a rack, next to his litter tray and in a dig box but he doesn't go that crazy over it. I wouldn't say he's a fussy eater either cos he eats everything else I put in front of him.

Would reducing the size of his meals make him eat more? I take his food bowl away from him overnight so he only has hay to munch on but he doesn't seem to eat all THAT much. I'm not sure if I'm feeding him right in that he normally chomps down most of his greens then has a break for a little while then goes back to his bowl later on. Should I be giving him only the amount of food he can eat in one "sitting" before removing his bowl so he can eat more hay?

PS Shame about the nettles I had hundreds of them in my garden I cut down last summer way before I got a bun!

easy peasy!
get a good pair of gardening gloves and a sharp pair of shears (i use a sickle but am used to using one). wait till the nettles are just staring to produce flowers (the catkin looking bits) usually when the weather gets really hot. cut the nettles as close to the ground as possible. then spread out over a flat surface outside, very handily i used to use the top of the buns run, then the bunnies have plenty of shade too!
try not to get them too deep if you can get them so they are only 1 plant deep is perfect. turn them once a day in the evening untill they are dry (a leaf will crumble if you squish it in your hand). then bundle them up and start stacking them up for later! the whole process needs to be done with no rain unless you have somewhere inside to dry them. i use an old dustbin and lay a couple of strands of baler twine in an X in the bottom with the ends hanging over the sides. squish as many dried nettles as you can into the bin (keep the ends of the twine outside the bin) i stood in my bin to really squish them! when you can fit no more in, tie the opposite pieces of twine as tightly as you can so they form a X and tip the bin upside down to get them out. you should have a perfect mini bale of nettle hay! i have fed it as soon as its dried and after storing it for a couple of months and the buns love them (the nettles shoudnt sting when they are properly dried). however i dont know if the more than 6 months old rule would apply to nettle hay. i didnt know about not feeding fresh hay to buns till i came on here

We get through a bale a week with 13 buns.

Thats roughly four bundles of bunny sized hay per bun each day :lol:

I order oxbow hay and my buns adore it! They are very keen on it! They don't always get pellet and when they do it is just a small bit. 3 of my rabbits are dwarfs, but Holly is a dwarf lop. she eats most of the hay i would say. The nethies do eat there fare share, but holly eats more than the rest do individually.

And I love the hay here in the us! It is very easy to find inexpensive quality hay here. I am sure it has something to do with the farmland here, must be great for growing hay!

33 grams a day doesn't sound like much...... I'm trying to get her to eat more because I think she is a bit lazy and only notices what is in front of her nose :roll: As well as her hay rack she has hay stuffed in toilet rolls, and I've even got a basket of hay in the lounge under the TV (her favourite lounging spot). She quite often sits in it and munches away, scattering the hay all over the carpet (much to my OH's disguist). She will quickly polish off a bowl of supa forage excel whenever its given too!

Maybe I should cut down on the veg and get her some hay cakes to try and boost her intake.......

Dan_K said:

Will a bun not eat hay if he has too many greens and pellets? Bob eats more hay now I got him meadow hay not the p@h s***e he had originally, but still doesn't seem to happily munhc away on it. He has it in a rack, next to his litter tray and in a dig box but he doesn't go that crazy over it. I wouldn't say he's a fussy eater either cos he eats everything else I put in front of him.

Would reducing the size of his meals make him eat more? I take his food bowl away from him overnight so he only has hay to munch on but he doesn't seem to eat all THAT much. I'm not sure if I'm feeding him right in that he normally chomps down most of his greens then has a break for a little while then goes back to his bowl later on. Should I be giving him only the amount of food he can eat in one "sitting" before removing his bowl so he can eat more hay?

PS Shame about the nettles I had hundreds of them in my garden I cut down last summer way before I got a bun!

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They don't need a lot of veg or a lot of pellets - mine get a handful of pellets in the morning - all gone in about 20mins usually - and a teaspoonful for supper - that's it! They get a few inches of carrot, a leaf of spring greens (or 2 if they are small leaves) and a small sprig of brocolli every tea time - that's all the veg - gone in minutes! The rest of the time they eat hay - I give them a bundle of fresh hay in their litter trays after breakfast, and at supper time.

I'm confused about the suggestion that rabbits don't need alot of veg. The ultimate diet is hay and veg, no pellets, just hay though is surely boring for bunny and certainly lacking in nutrients. Hay is dried grass, grass is mainly water, the use of use is to grind teeth and fill tummies, not to provide all nutrients. It is high in fibre but not alot else, rabbits need alot of veg especially if no pellets I would have thought as need vitamins and other nutrients from somewhere, normally in the pellets.

I am no expert but have read up a fair bit and understood something entirely different to what you are saying. I am confused now, especially as also there was a recent thread in which several people blamed brocolli for bad tummies and so didn't feed it.

Sorry to question but I really don't understand! Sorry Miss!

I did a lot of research before I got rabbits a year ago, and the diet I feed them is a result of that research - Hay is better for their teeth and tummies than veg is, but they enjoy some veg daily too, and broad green leafy veg is good for their teeth as well - They can live on hay alone if they have dodgy tums, and too much veg is often a cause of gas and upset tummies.

Now write that out 100 times for homework - on my desk tomorrow morning! - class dismissed :lol:

:lol: There is so much conflicting advice isn't there! I think rabbits guts are very well adapted for getting maximum nutrients out of minimal food - wild rabbits mostly eat just grass after all.

The thing with broccoli is that it does sometimes have a tendency to make some bunnies gassy, so although it's fine for them nutrition wise (well apart from those who have calcium issues, as it is high in calcium), in large quantities it can give bunnies bloat which can lead to stasis. Mine get unlimited hay, they also graze on grass most of the day, a small handful of pellets morning and evening, and various veg before bed.

elve said:

I did a lot of research before I got rabbits a year ago, and the diet I feed them is a result of that research - Hay is better for their teeth and tummies than veg is, but they enjoy some veg daily too, and broad green leafy veg is good for their teeth as well - They can live on hay alone if they have dodgy tums, and too much veg is often a cause of gas and upset tummies.

Now write that out 100 times for homework - on my desk tomorrow morning! - class dismissed :lol:

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But miss! It's netball practice tonight and then I was sposed to go round Kylies for tea cos it's Thursday and I always go to Kylies on a Thursday cos her Mum lets us go out and see the lads and Anastacia's up the duff and we all know it's Jasons but he says it isn't cos she sleeps wiv everyone and we all know she does cos she's a, well you know what, and anyway Jasons already got 3 other babies and he's only 14 so he doesn't have to pay no child support of nuffink and his Mum says its not his fault he don't know nuffink about dads cos his life when he was a baby... and I won't have time. It's so unfair! :wink: