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Pellets for bun with kidney disease

Leesa

Warren Scout
I'm exploring what I should be feeding Fudge now and the issue of pellets came up. Currently he's on Science Selective 4 years+, but I have some standard Science Selective too which I've been giving him this week to feed him up as he's lost weight.

However it's main ingredient is alfalfa meal (or lucerne meal on the 4 years+ which it says is alfalfa), which someone told me he needs to avoid. I didn't even realise these pellets were bad, when I researched them, admittedly years ago they were one of the recommended brands.

What pellets do people recommend for kidney disease? (I want to get him some new ones ASAP). Thanks!
 
I'm exploring what I should be feeding Fudge now and the issue of pellets came up. Currently he's on Science Selective 4 years+, but I have some standard Science Selective too which I've been giving him this week to feed him up as he's lost weight.

However it's main ingredient is alfalfa meal (or lucerne meal on the 4 years+ which it says is alfalfa), which someone told me he needs to avoid. I didn't even realise these pellets were bad, when I researched them, admittedly years ago they were one of the recommended brands.

What pellets do people recommend for kidney disease? (I want to get him some new ones ASAP). Thanks!

These links may be useful

https://www.harcourt-brown.co.uk/ar...t-for-rabbits-with-urinary-tract-disease/view

https://www.vetuk.co.uk/rabbit-food...-plus-urinary-tract-health-formula-1kg-p-5641
 
I know theoretically pellets aren't ideal but I had to use them (& recovery food) a lot to get Rudeys weight anyway near half decent. I wonder if you can soak them to get more liquids in. Other than alfalfa being a no - no when I was looking at the different values of pellets there wasn't a huge difference between them. I've forgotten what we concluded but Rudey was mainly on Excel Dual Care (you can only get them online) - he switched to regular adult excel during lockdown when I couldn't get them. All Rudeys nugget feeds were wet though - at the time I'm sure I found this a bit of a pain but it was a blessing really as the main thing with renal rabbits is to get max fluids in to them

Lots of vibes for your little man. Please feel free to P>M me if you ever want to
 
I know theoretically pellets aren't ideal but I had to use them (& recovery food) a lot to get Rudeys weight anyway near half decent. I wonder if you can soak them to get more liquids in. Other than alfalfa being a no - no when I was looking at the different values of pellets there wasn't a huge difference between them. I've forgotten what we concluded but Rudey was mainly on Excel Dual Care (you can only get them online) - he switched to regular adult excel during lockdown when I couldn't get them. All Rudeys nugget feeds were wet though - at the time I'm sure I found this a bit of a pain but it was a blessing really as the main thing with renal rabbits is to get max fluids in to them

Lots of vibes for your little man. Please feel free to P>M me if you ever want to

Thank you, he just hadn't been improving, and had stopped eating hay and grass so I experimented with no pellets yesterday (I ordered the Vetcare ones to try so waiting on them now), he's still hungry for food but I think has got used to the nice stuff! Yesterday he did quite well without the pellets (still plenty of other stuff), so trying that again today.

Today I held off giving him food til 11:30am (just 2 types of stalky and soft timothy hay) and thankfully he ate some hay, then managed to hand feed him grass (wouldn't take it on his own). I have a sachet of critical care I think I will add as don't want him losing more weight whilst waiting for the new pellets and conscious he's still not pooping right. After eating better (not just vegetables/herbs/pellets) his poops seem to have improved a little today, but conscious we are still going to need to get another bottle of gut stimulant this week.

He will happily take soaked pellets (that's how I was initially getting extra water into him - he even loves pellet flavoured water!), but now I'm paranoid about the alfalfa.

I will check those ones out thank you. Thank you :)
 
You can also use low Calcium water sold by Tesco and avoid veg that is high in Calcium.

Thanks, I've bought some Volvic for now as the lowest alternative until I can get to Tesco or get a delivery from them. I thought I'd found some Asda water online that was low calcium but in the shop it was much higher on the bottle!

Yes trying to get a list together of what not to give him, thank you.
 
The Vetcare Plus Urinary Tract pellets arrived today, Fudge bunny is not impressed with them! He ate a third of his stick and then just left the rest.

On the plus side I found that Waitrose sell Deeside water which from what I've found is very low calcium water (lower than Tesco at 4mg/l), so going to get a delivery of that.

I was looking at this website http://www.therabbithouse.com/diet/rabbit-food-comparison.asp and considering whether this one might be worth attempting? https://www.miscota.co.uk/small-ani...nJWPKEmSE_n7LRhyyN8IX5UWrTb0EZ7QaAtc2EALw_wcB. I don't even know if it's worth it at 0.6% though.

Although the Science Selective has alfalfa as it's main ingredient it seems to be one of the lower ones with calcium anyway (0.6%) - the Vetcare Plus is 0.5%. I had to add them back in after taking him off them for a few days waiting for this new food to arrive as it seemed very skinnier.

Any thoughts?

I did find another much more expensive food but can't for the life of me remember the name I think it was white and navy bag, but I couldn't find the ingredients.
 
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Rudey wouldn't touch those either. You know my views on calcium so I won't repeat myself but my best advice would be feed him whatever you can get him to eat with the highest moisture content possible. Thats fab he likes nugget water. Keeping weight on renally compromised buns is really hard work so while waiting for stuff to arrive let him eat as much as possible of whatever he likes. Wet food is always better than dry which is so simple but took me ages to get my head round

I hope you can get something he likes & you're happy with feeding
 
Rudey wouldn't touch those either. You know my views on calcium so I won't repeat myself but my best advice would be feed him whatever you can get him to eat with the highest moisture content possible. Thats fab he likes nugget water. Keeping weight on renally compromised buns is really hard work so while waiting for stuff to arrive let him eat as much as possible of whatever he likes. Wet food is always better than dry which is so simple but took me ages to get my head round

I hope you can get something he likes & you're happy with feeding

Thanks, giving him lots of wet food, but it means he stops eating hay and grass, so I'm concerned about his gut and teeth - seems like a catch 22!
 
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