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How much to feed

foxy2279

Alpha Buck
My two boys Buster and Brownie are 4 months old.

In the morning they have 25g of pellets. If i give anymore Brownie will munch the lot and not eat any hay. Plus refill their hay rack. This has to be done at 7am otherwise thumping and banging on the bowl starts.

Midday i give them a handful of herbs/forage.

Four o'clock i let them out for 4-5 hours of supervised free range time in the garden. During which i again refill their hay rack (normally about three thirds gone). Buster loves hay.

When they come in to the secure run which they have 24 hours access to and they have another 25g pellets.

Brownie has a very sensitive tummy tried him with some vegetables carrot, spring greens and califlower leaves but he ended up with a bad tummy on them. So tend to stick to the herbs and forage mix at the moment as i know he's ok with them.

Was wondering if they are getting enough or i need to change anything in the timings. The 50g of pellets was what i was told they would need daily when i got them.
 
The general guideline is about an tablespoon or eggcup per day, not sure how much that would work out to weight wise! Saying that, my bunnies would not survive on just an eggcup per day, they have the bottom of their shallow bowl covered with a little bit more, morning and evening! The most important thing is unlimited hay. If you don't feel they are having enough pellets - slowly increase them. If you don't feel they're eating enough hay - reduce the pellets! Hay is supposed to be about 85% of their diet, and pellets about 10%. I know if mine were only fed once a day however, they would go mental and start scrapping out of hunger! So it does depend on the bun, but the guideline is a commercial tablespoon per day :D
 
I'm not sure how old they should be before you stop feeding unlimited pellets, and gradually reduce to an eggcupful each a day.
They do, however, need to have lots and lots of hay - 80-90% of their diet should be hay - so an umlimited supply should always be available.

ETA I shouldn't worry about veg at present - herbs and forage are fine!
 
Our big boy gets 50 grams of pellets a day - he weighs just over 3 kg and then a small handful of rabbit muesli mix at night and occasionally a small bit of carrot. Our baby - just coming up for 5 months only gets 25 grams pellets a day as she wasn't eating enough hay when I gave her more.

Both are fed the pellets in the morning - and I find they don't gobble them all up straight away, but tend to eat bit and then come back through out the day.

We don't worry about vegies - our boy can't stomach them and our girl turns her nose up at them but we provide variety in giving them a small bit a museli at night - it's more of a bed time snack and there are also Millet and dandelion sticks which we give them for a treat which they absolutly love. And we put dried herbs and vegie in their hay rack as well to provide a bit of a change.

But they should eat the own body in size in hay at least per day - and if they are not eating their soft poops then you know you feeding them too many pellets. Neutered rabbits do tend to pile the weight on - not sure if yours are neutered yet but something to keep an eye on.
 
It's best to let babies (4 months old) eat as much as they want so I would give them plenty of pellets and hay etc, When they are about 6 months then you can reduce the quanntity a bit but they are still growing up until they are a year.
 
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