Gothymama
Warren Scout
hello again.
just a quick question my rabbit will not eat hay!
i brought him this expensive hay with dried apples and carrots in .. will he eat it no!
i brought normal hay he wont eat it
i buy him hay balls he wont eat it!
he will eat maybe a mouth full of the dried apple and carrots one but thats it.
ive tried putting hay in toilet roll.s
mix it up with his pellets.
put it in wooden logs!
nothing.
is there anything i can do ?
I agree with others that bunny should not be having a whole carrot everyday, they contain lots of sugar and are very fattening, your bun could become overweight in the long term and could struggle to clean his bottom which could make him a candidate for flystrike at some point, i don't know why manufacturers put carrot and apple into hay when they know full well that too much is bad for bunnies. Dried food should be cut right back as well as bun is getting too much, if you are feeding muesli mix gradually wean him off it as it can make buns selective feeders and they will only eat the bits they enjoy and will have an unbalanced diet as bun wouldn't get the right nutrients, try gradually swapping to pellets and only an egg cup full a day.
Bun is getting too much fruit and shouldn't be having an apple or whole pear a day, are you remembering to remove the core and pips? as apple pips are poisonous to bunnies and shouldn't be given.
reducing his dry food and removing fruit will eventually encourage bun to eat his/her hay. A good mix of hay would be meadow hay/timothy hay and ready grass. i have also recently been buying ready dried forage (wild weeds/herbs) and mixing it into the hay as a treat to try and encourage my buns to eat wild plants so you could try this to encourage hay eating.
steer clear of gassy veg like broccoli,cabbage,spring greens etc as they can cause gut stasis which is exactly what happened to one of my buns. Like you i have had to learn to correct my buns diets and very quickly as one of mine became very ill after neuturing, his veg diet and being neuteured contributed to stasis it was not very nice at all.
good things to feed bunnies are as follows:
romaine lettce
chinese leaves
aprox 1 inch of carrot every now and then cut into strips
fresh coriander
fresh parsley
fresh basil
fresh rosemary
fresh mint (small amount)
fresh greek basil
The herbs can be bought growing from the supermarket so keep fresh longer
small strips of cucumber (not too often, i also get round this by giving them occasionally just the cucumber skin and i have the rest in a sandwich lol)
Celery (destringed)
beetroot leaves
radish leaves
carrot tops
dandelions (not too many)
grass
Do not give iceberg lettuce as it has no nutrition content for buns at all, darker green lettuce or some red coloured lettuce as a mixture is fine.
please remember do not feed bun any plants that have grown from a bulb as a majority of them are poisonous to rabbits, to be on the safe side i dont feed any bulb plant at all
these are just a few ideas to help you get going.
Bunnies are more complicated than pet shops tell us, once you have a good balance in their diet you will be well away, i made many mistakes when i first started and reading on the forum many of us have made the same mistakes when starting out, there are so many misconceptions that we all have when we first start out like carrots for instance, everyone thinks bunnies should eat carrots and lots of them when too many are bad for them, if you can get them carrot tops are much much better and the buns can eat more of that. lol
Good luck