Hello,
I have a 3 year old dutch house rabbit called Pepper who gets gas/stasis a few times a year. I am currently trying to give her a wild rabbit diet which will prevent gas and also make her live as long as possible.
She has always been a poor hay eater, but since the spring she eats two small tubs of grass a day with some clover and dandelion leaves, and will barely touch hay: I have tried her with small pet select, Just4Rabbits, haybox, healthy herby, bunny bistro, happy hay co., hay hutch, little hay co., hay and straw, timothyhay.co.uk and pet shop hays. The only ones she will slightly nibble are soft cut timothy from haybox and Canadian timothy from Just4rabbits. I also sprinkle forage on her hay, I rotate them but at the moment she has dandelion leaves and sunflower leaves.
She also has 1 tbsp pellets/day from haybox club as these have more wild grass/plants ingredients. I am trying to increase her hay intake by soaking the pellets in water and mixing with chopped up hay and a scoop of Oropharma pro-digest probiotics to create a mushy mixture- she eats one small food bowl of this a day. She hasn't had stasis since upping the grass intake (except for when I went away for a few days and had someone else look after her), however her poops are quite small/medium sized and dark and sometimes smell bad- is this a sign of a bad diet low in fibre? I am considering trying a better probiotic such as protexin bio-lapis.
I am thinking of abandoning the idea that her diet must be strictly wild in favour of maximising her fibre intake. After a bout of stasis, I previously tried her on a diet similar to Jack's Jane 2015 post 'This is What my Rabbits Now Have Instead of Pellet/Museli Feed'- I soaked some dengie hi-fi molasses-free, crushed up fibafirst sticks and protexin probiotic pellets and fed her a small bowl every day, this gave her huge poops. I didn't stick with it very long and slowly transitioned back to a wild diet as the ingredients weren't very good, such as: alfalfa and straw pellets, cereal straw, rapeseed oil (dengie), wheat flour, soybean flower, ground peas, locust bean meal, oats, linseed soya oil, salt (fibafirst), wheat, soya bean hulls, oats, sugar beet pulp (protexin). I am now considering if it is perhaps best to go back to this diet despite the ingredients as the benefits may out-way the bad ingredients.
Does anyone have any advice/opinions on whether I should stick with a wild rabbit diet or change to a more artificial high-fibre diet? On the one hand I want her to live as long as possible so would like to avoid bad ingredients that could give her ill health in the future, but on the other hand I don't want her to get gas. I was thinking how my dad had a rabbit in the 80s and he would feed it bowls of porridge and bran in the winter and it lived to 12, and maybe specific ingredients like grains don't matter as much as a high-fibre diet?
Thanks for your help
I have a 3 year old dutch house rabbit called Pepper who gets gas/stasis a few times a year. I am currently trying to give her a wild rabbit diet which will prevent gas and also make her live as long as possible.
She has always been a poor hay eater, but since the spring she eats two small tubs of grass a day with some clover and dandelion leaves, and will barely touch hay: I have tried her with small pet select, Just4Rabbits, haybox, healthy herby, bunny bistro, happy hay co., hay hutch, little hay co., hay and straw, timothyhay.co.uk and pet shop hays. The only ones she will slightly nibble are soft cut timothy from haybox and Canadian timothy from Just4rabbits. I also sprinkle forage on her hay, I rotate them but at the moment she has dandelion leaves and sunflower leaves.
She also has 1 tbsp pellets/day from haybox club as these have more wild grass/plants ingredients. I am trying to increase her hay intake by soaking the pellets in water and mixing with chopped up hay and a scoop of Oropharma pro-digest probiotics to create a mushy mixture- she eats one small food bowl of this a day. She hasn't had stasis since upping the grass intake (except for when I went away for a few days and had someone else look after her), however her poops are quite small/medium sized and dark and sometimes smell bad- is this a sign of a bad diet low in fibre? I am considering trying a better probiotic such as protexin bio-lapis.
I am thinking of abandoning the idea that her diet must be strictly wild in favour of maximising her fibre intake. After a bout of stasis, I previously tried her on a diet similar to Jack's Jane 2015 post 'This is What my Rabbits Now Have Instead of Pellet/Museli Feed'- I soaked some dengie hi-fi molasses-free, crushed up fibafirst sticks and protexin probiotic pellets and fed her a small bowl every day, this gave her huge poops. I didn't stick with it very long and slowly transitioned back to a wild diet as the ingredients weren't very good, such as: alfalfa and straw pellets, cereal straw, rapeseed oil (dengie), wheat flour, soybean flower, ground peas, locust bean meal, oats, linseed soya oil, salt (fibafirst), wheat, soya bean hulls, oats, sugar beet pulp (protexin). I am now considering if it is perhaps best to go back to this diet despite the ingredients as the benefits may out-way the bad ingredients.
Does anyone have any advice/opinions on whether I should stick with a wild rabbit diet or change to a more artificial high-fibre diet? On the one hand I want her to live as long as possible so would like to avoid bad ingredients that could give her ill health in the future, but on the other hand I don't want her to get gas. I was thinking how my dad had a rabbit in the 80s and he would feed it bowls of porridge and bran in the winter and it lived to 12, and maybe specific ingredients like grains don't matter as much as a high-fibre diet?
Thanks for your help
