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Fudge drastic diet action needed

touie

Wise Old Thumper
I have been given 2 months by the vet to get Fudge to loose weight, exercise and eat hay :shock: or he might become a dental bun :cry: Apparently he's teeth aren't bad enough to be bothering him yet but he said they're not looking great! :(

Thing is Fudge is an aggressive bossy freerange house rabbit who will be causing me physical pain if he doesn't get his way so i'm not sure how best to go about it? :?

I guess the drastic action would be to put him outside in a hutch with the same food as the others so he can't demand anything else :? However I don't have room for another hutch so it would mean bringing another rabbit in and all the others seem happier outside!

He was the only one I couldn't get to eat the natural hifi food so he's still on SS. He went on complete hunger strike and I was worried he would go into statis. He wont eat any hay, he never has done and I have tried lots of different ones. He doesn't eat much veg either :? He will eat broccoli, herbs and kale but thats it! And he doesnt like to go in the garden so doesnt get any grass there :?

Not sure what to do with him
 
Audrey is a house rabbit, so I sympathise on the aggressiveness when they don't get what they want!

Have you tried Fudge on Excel forage? Audrey absolutely loves it, and she is quite enthusiastic about normal hay now too.

You could mix his pellets into hay, so he ends up eating some hay accidently? Or serve pellets in a treat ball so he has to excercise to get it.

I would also pick him grass from the garden.
 
may be get him a room that he can not get to you then do the diet thing less pelllets more hay try putting the ss in the hay works a ttreat with mine as the have to work at picking it out
 
Fudge sounds like a difficult customer! :roll: :lol: Have you tried green oat hay? It's a bit different to other sorts of hay, and mine are crazy about it. I assume you've also tried gradually cutting down the SS in the hope that hay gets eaten.
 
I tried the forage, I used to mix it into the pellets so he might accidently eat some, though by the amount that was left i think he managed not to :roll: I've just picked a pile of nice fresh grass today and stuck it in front of his nose where he was lying. Instead of nibbling it he got up and moved away from it :( He has the dust free hay in his litter tray untouched and meadow hay in a tub in the kitchen untouched :( I have previously tried oxbow timothy too which most love, but not fudge! :evil:

I did give him a treatball for a while but he wouldn't eat unless I pushed it about for him :shock: maybe i should have stuck with it a bit longer, i could try again i guess.

He doesn't really eat much compared to the others, he's so fussy. I think his main problem is lack of hay and lack of exercise! :?
 
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I haven't tried green oat hay, might be worth a go :D This rabbit went on hunger strike for days when i tried switching pellets before, he would rather die than give in :shock:
 
have you got a pampered pets near you the dandlion and calamile hay is good its all snowey will eat fussey little madam if you want some to try ill give you some save on spending out for a fussey bun


anougther thing may be get him out in the garden when you can and see if hell help his self
 
I've tried the dandelion and chamomile too :lol: He'll only go in the garden if I'm out there too these days :roll: guess i'll have to get my mac and wellies on. Though when he's out there he doesn't really nibble he pops out to sniff the other rabbits then goes back indoors again :?

This is a pic of his food so you can see he's not that greedy. is overweight though!!! The pellets were put there this morning. he had a small handfull which just covered the bottom of the bowl. The veg was last nights :? and the hays been there for a couple of days. I left it as he did start to open the bag and pull bits out but hes stopped now :(
july07.jpg
 
A few questions....

Does he live with other rabbits?

How much SS is he eating per day?

How active is he?

Tam :)
 
Shall I send you a small handful of the green oat hay, so you can try it?? Wouldn't be much, but can pack some in a jiffy bag.

Also, what about hay or grass pellets? They do some at Bunny Basics.

Running out of ideas here! ;)
 
No he lives by himself at the moment.

Just weighed my SS handfull which was 12g and he gets 2 of those a day.

He's not very active, he has free range of the house so he hops about there all day and night including the stairs, though spends most of the time lying down!
 
Shall I send you a small handful of the green oat hay, so you can try it?? Wouldn't be much, but can pack some in a jiffy bag.

Also, what about hay or grass pellets? They do some at Bunny Basics.

Running out of ideas here! ;)


that would be brilliant if you wouldn't mind :D
 
No probs - won't be much (so you won't be able to tell if it is a novelty effect!) but worth a try. Just PM me your address. :)
 
Some ideas

how about a piece of carrot on a string which you pull around the room with him chasing after :p

put some tunnels in him room and things that he can jump on and off.

Put all his pellets in a treatball and don't give in so quickly this time.

Switch to hay and diet veg only - no carrots (and wear boots when going around the house for a bit :D to protect your ankles)

Bunny paul mcenna? You are a strong a confident bunny. You do not need to eat to feel fulfilled.
 
:lol: good ideas! He won't eat carrots though. As for things to jump on and off he goes on and off of the dining chairs and the sofa, and goes up and down stairs he has a tunnel though he doesn't use it. But he is quite a big bunny at 3.95kg so would be quite a tight squeeze !

I think another reason i gave up with the treatball is that SS doesn't fir in it that well. I have A&P on order though so if thats a better size and i can get him to eat it I'll put it in the treatball then :D

I'm going to have to get the boots out if i change anything though he's also a very clever bunny he jumps up and reaches places that aren't protected, got my thigh at christmas, still got a big scar :cry: and he's had my head before, that was the worst one :shock:
 
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Is he very over weight? I wouldn't expect a rabbit to be over weight on 25g of SS a day, especially if he's not eating much hay/veggies and he's free range. Have you discussed how much he's eating with the vet. Could he have a metabolism issue that's causing weight gain.

A treat ball is a good way to get him moving if you can convince him. The ones sold for dogs have a larger hole e.g. http://www.petsupplies.ie/shop/cart.php?target=product&product_id=456&category_id=77

You can snap the SS in half to make it fall out easier too. Once he gets the hang of it then you can gradually increase the difficulty level.

If he's really stubborn you could still improve the movement just buy leaving the food more spread out e.g. have four bowls in different rooms. If you're home during the day just put one pellet in at a time so he has to go around checking all the bowls regularly.

Leave the hay and greens where he can get them with less work than the pellets and that may increase his non pellet consumption.


Will he eat fresh grass if you pick it for him? That's as good as hay and some rabbits prefer it. You could also think about places that might suit him better for hay eating e.g. his litter tray. I also find that if it gets in their way they'll bite at it and may chew a bit. Try burying his pellets under a pile of hay.

Tam
 
thanks tamsin

I don't think he's as overweight as the vet makes out. he does have a roll though, you can definately pinch an inch :shock: he was 3.95kg today,last time he was 3.8kg and the vet still thought he was overweight :? I'd have thought 3.7-3.8kg is the right weight for him. He went down to 3.4kg once and looked ill!

I just took a picture so you can see his size, you can see a roll under his chin and at the side, you can also see what he thought of the fresh grass i went to all the trouble to pick :roll:
july07020.jpg
 
I forgot to add that he seems to suffer with tummy problems and often has bouts of diorrhea, prob down to the lack of hay but thought I better mention it!
 
I think you should try different hays - Maa is very fussy and starved to death nearly when I changed hay - she would not even touch the stuff in your photo as it HAS to be timmy hay, green, long and expensive :rolleyes: Even so she just sits on most of it, but the key to getting her to eat ANY is to give her a fresh bundle (about as much as you have in that box in the photo) TWICE a day - even though she's not keen, she will sift through it and nibble a bit.

Other than that she has a small amount of veg - medium leaf of greens, chunk of carrot, tiny chunk of brocolli - and I think that leaving veg from the day before is asking for tummy problems too - If they don't eat it, remove it.

She has double the science selective any of the others have, since she won't eat much hay - I give her a big handful morning and evening, and what's not eaten in an hour is removed, so she is then forced to nibble on the nice fresh hay I've given her.
 
thanks, I have tried lots of hay including the nice green timmy hay which was no go :( sarah is sending me a bit of Oat hay to try too :D

Just incase people get the wrong idea, he gets fresh veg every day. That's what was left from the night before, I had to rush off to the vets this morning so didn't remove it. I thought it would be good to demonstrate how fussy he was that he'd left most of it!!! He had eaten the basil, nibbled the brocolli flower and had a bit of kale! The bits that are left get fed to the turtles they're not fussy at all! :D
 
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