Muesli based diets - new research

[Hesperus]

Having been a research technician for 18 years, regardless of what isn't written, 32 rabbits is far too small a number to have valid statistical analysis!
And if other controls were used why aren't they mentioned in the article.

Yep, I'm a university researcher in a field which sometimes uses empirical studies, and I share these concerns and have many others. Of course, as someone so kindly (and 'tongue in cheek-ly') pointed out we can hope this has been dumbed down for the general public, in which case, we'll sit back and wait for a more scientific report to be shown.

 

[jwr]

i think muesli is designed to appeal to the human ,lots of colors where as pellets look boring , personally i am glad its being banned in pets at home as this it the pet supermarket where idiots on a lovely sunny day go and buy a rabbit on a whim for little tommy who's five to look after ....end result they choose the cheapest hutch the food with the most appealing packaging which is usually muesli!....



6 months down the line weathers changed everyone's lost interest and they think chucking a bowl of muesli in the hutch because its so easy and looks so full of good things thats all a rabbit needs...

you don'need a pointless study to prove that a complete food has got to better than a bag of all sorts for the rabbit to choose which bits it eats...

and as for the poor rabbits in the study who were given the poor diet and ended up with problems just to prove a point is quite frankly ridiculous and cruel these kind of 'research tecnicians' quite frankly have nothing better to do! they should get a real job!

 

[Coineanach]

I agree with everything Halfpenny and Hesperus have said, I'm no expert but have spotted several 'mistakes' for want of a better word. There may be reasons for them, but they aren't there! I also look forward to the original study.

you don'need a pointless study to prove that a complete food has got to better than a bag of all sorts for the rabbit to choose which bits it eats...

and as for the poor rabbits in the study who were given the poor diet and ended up with problems just to prove a point is quite frankly ridiculous and cruel these kind of 'research tecnicians' quite frankly have nothing better to do! they should get a real job!

But that is not always the case. Some rabbits do not selective feed and some owners have better results on a muesli food than a pelleted one.

The poor rabbits in the study were vaccinated, neutered and well cared for. The diet was temporary and I'm sure any problems coming from it would have been rectified at the end of the study. Research technicians do have a 'real job', how do you think your bunnies' vaccines were approved?

 

[halfpenny]

i think muesli is designed to appeal to the human ,lots of colors where as pellets look boring , personally i am glad its being banned in pets at home as this it the pet supermarket where idiots on a lovely sunny day go and buy a rabbit on a whim for little tommy who's five to look after ....end result they choose the cheapest hutch the food with the most appealing packaging which is usually muesli!....



6 months down the line weathers changed everyone's lost interest and they think chucking a bowl of muesli in the hutch because its so easy and looks so full of good things thats all a rabbit needs...

you don'need a pointless study to prove that a complete food has got to better than a bag of all sorts for the rabbit to choose which bits it eats...

and as for the poor rabbits in the study who were given the poor diet and ended up with problems just to prove a point is quite frankly ridiculous and cruel these kind of 'research tecnicians' quite frankly have nothing better to do! they should get a real job!

Perhaps as honeybunny ( I think) said, p@h could have done a lot more for animal welfare if they just stopped selling animals and then people could not buy on a whim. It would also be interesting to see how rabbits on a pellet only diet fared.

 

[Hesperus]

]i think muesli is designed to appeal to the human ,lots of colors where as pellets look boring[/B] , personally i am glad its being banned in pets at home as this it the pet supermarket where idiots on a lovely sunny day go and buy a rabbit on a whim for little tommy who's five to look after ....end result they choose the cheapest hutch the food with the most appealing packaging which is usually muesli!....



6 months down the line weathers changed everyone's lost interest and they think chucking a bowl of muesli in the hutch because its so easy and looks so full of good things thats all a rabbit needs...

you don'need a pointless study to prove that a complete food has got to better than a bag of all sorts for the rabbit to choose which bits it eats...

and as for the poor rabbits in the study who were given the poor diet and ended up with problems just to prove a point is quite frankly ridiculous and cruel these kind of 'research tecnicians' quite frankly have nothing better to do! they should get a real job!

Some pellet food is coloured to look like muesli! (Tried to bold it but it didn't work!)

 

[jwr]

I agree with everything Halfpenny and Hesperus have said, I'm no expert but have spotted several 'mistakes' for want of a better word. There may be reasons for them, but they aren't there! I also look forward to the original study.



But that is not always the case. Some rabbits do not selective feed and some owners have better results on a muesli food than a pelleted one.

The poor rabbits in the study were vaccinated, neutered and well cared for. The diet was temporary and I'm sure any problems coming from it would have been rectified at the end of the study. Research technicians do have a 'real job', how do you think your bunnies' vaccines were approved?

just to clarify i said 'These kind of 'research tecnicians' quite frankly have nothing better to do! they should get a real job'


meaning taking part in 'these kind of studies' which have probaly been funded by a company who manufactures pellets and wanted to increase their sales, the pet industry is all about money.

educated rabbit owners who feed muesli will also feed a very high volume of hay certain uneducated customers of pets at home will not have a clue and they sure as hell would not read a study about it

 

[Hesperus]

just to clarify i said 'These kind of 'research tecnicians' quite frankly have nothing better to do! they should get a real job'


meaning taking part in 'these kind of studies' which have probaly been funded by a company who manufactures pellets and wanted to increase their sales, the pet industry is all about money.

educated rabbit owners who feed muesli will also feed a very high volume of hay certain uneducated customers of pets at home will not have a clue and they sure as hell would not read a study about it

I agree with your sentiments, it was just a thought that hit me when I read it, about pellet food also sometimes being coloured.

I also thought of the poor rabbits who were used in the study, really, it seemed a bit pointless, as to me, unless I can see some good data to show otherwise, the study was a waste of time because the results mean nothing as the methodology was skewed.

 

[Tamsin]

As Ros says we really need all the details, rather than the 'dumbed down version'.

I thought this was interesting:

During the feeding trial the rate of growth and wear / attrition of the incisors were measured. It was found that the rate of growth matched the rate of attrition across all of the groups i.e. the more the teeth were worn down the faster they grew to balance this.

It would be good to know the nutritional analysis of the two foods, as I'm sure everyone here knows, 'nuggets' and 'muesli' are not all created equal. There is a lot of variation between brands.

The NH and MH groups gained weight at a steady rate, did not become obese, and their weights were similar in both groups over the course of the feeding trial, leading to the conclusion that feeding a concentrate diet with a high quality hay results in steady weight gain in a growing rabbit, and aids in the prevention of developing obesity.

That last sentence sort of missed the point where the MH diet resulted in the same weight gain (or lack of) :lol:

The teeth xray results are the interesting one, as that's something that's hidden to observation of your own rabbit. It's possible that rabbit's that appear to be quite healthy on muesli have hidden changes to the teeth. Which makes the big question - do the changes to the roots angles actually go on to cause problems down the line? Or perhaps they would only cause issues in rabbits with predisposition to dental issues.

Could they have blood tested to check for deficiencies? You'd have thought they might as well whilst they were at it. It would be good to know if the HO had any, if they didn't that could suggest that selective feeding wasn't such an issue anyway if rabbits were eating hay and getting the trace nutrients they load the untasty pellets in muesli with that way.

 

[katie88]

I'll be very interested to read the full paper. Interesting that the dental problems were found with muesli only and muesli/hay diets. I wonder why muesli per se would cause dental disease, preaumably just because the muesli group were found to eat less hay?

I hope they make the full paper publically available.

 

[halfpenny]

I also thought it would have been interesting to see the nutritional effects of hay only diet.
I can only go on my own experience and the 2 duchies I have are nearly 8 and not needed a dental yet, they have been on rabbit royale, since I've had them from 8 weeks old- not conclusive but them the studies here are only based on 8 rabbits!

 

[thumps_]

I think that very valid points have been made by all.
I'm a bit naughty & always look at who funded the research,(Burgess is mentioned here) as well as the design of the study & results.

There's an interesting hypothesis amongst vets that dental disease is more associated with abnormal caecal bacteria, secreting substances which increase the pulp of tooth roots & this is what actually leads to excessive tooth growth. I wish that most feeds didn't contain mollases.
My feeling is that dental disease is a complex problem. Nobody seems to have considered the role of jaw movement & tm joint mobility.

Both Thumper & Benjie were always offered small amounts of high fibre SS extruded pellets, but would only eat forage, grass, & lots of twigs (mainly hawthorn).

Benjie doesn't bother with pellets in summer when there's lots of fresh forage & grass, but has minor dental issues, although there have been no abnormal caecals since he 1st arrived. I suspect he has minor gut slowdown from pain when his sinuses blocked with snuffles.

Both buns are highly selective in their forage. I'm astounded that on research, they were chosing forage with medicinal properties which helped their illnesses.

Also much to my surprise, I know of 1 stasis prone bun on here who did better on muesli than any of the extruded pellets.

 

[thumps_]

I also thought it would have been interesting to see the nutritional effects of hay only diet.
I can only go on my own experience and the 2 duchies I have are nearly 8 and not needed a dental yet, they have been on rabbit royale, since I've had them from 8 weeks old- not conclusive but them the studies here are only based on 8 rabbits!

I'm sure that you know that the nutritional value of hay depends on when it is harvested. The traditional time is to cut in May when the nutritional content is at it's highest. It falls off rapidly after June.
The nutritional content also depends on a good variety of different grasses & some wild plants. I understand that some people in the USA have issues because of monoculture hay.
When I was a child there was no such thing as rabbit pellets, & no vet care - even neutering. The buns were all outdoor, so they could get sufficient vitD from sunlight. They lived to a ripe old age on hay, grass & forage. (Peter lived to be 13!)

 

[jwr]

im sorry to go off track but i love rabbits and all animals and to take over 30 rabbits and feed some of them a bad diet and put them through routinely measuring their teeth
weighing and whatever else they felt like checking must of been hideous for the bunnies!
!
where were they kept in a lab? in a cage with a wire bottom? ..or 6ft hutches with 8ft runs ? i very much dealt it

in fact if i do indeed find out it was funded by Burgess then i will stop buying their products! its no better then testing cosmetics on rabbits, when you intentionally inflict something that you know is probably going to do harm then its barbaric

coinache, just because they are neutered and vaccinated doesn't change anything, they do that for their own benefits, thinking of animals being used like this makes me so ANGRY!

 

[Hesperus]

I agree with jwr about the concerns about using the bunnies, especially as, unless I see any evidence to the contrary (which I'd be happy to see, so please do let us know when you expect the scientific papers to be released RWAF this study does seem to flawed, therefore meaning the poor bunnies involved went through it for nothing!

 

[halfpenny]

I'm sure that you know that the nutritional value of hay depends on when it is harvested. The traditional time is to cut in May when the nutritional content is at it's highest. It falls off rapidly after June.
The nutritional content also depends on a good variety of different grasses & some wild plants. I understand that some people in the USA have issues because of monoculture hay.
When I was a child there was no such thing as rabbit pellets, & no vet care - even neutering. The buns were all outdoor, so they could get sufficient vitD from sunlight. They lived to a ripe old age on hay, grass & forage. (Peter lived to be 13!)

I think, not being a great hay expert, the time of harvest is more dependant on the stage of growth rather than time, up here hay is usually cut at the end of June when the flowers are present, from what I've been told by farmers, the harvest time sort of lies between flowering and setting seed. As you rightly say, the nutritional content will drop if not harvested at the correct time, weather usually is the main culprit for delayed hay making.
Still, in this study any nutritional deficiency compared to the pellet/ hay and muesli/hay treatments would have been apparent assuming they were all fed the same hay, which they should have been the case.

 

[jwr]

and....who supplied these bunnies? where did they come from?

and where are they now ????

 

[tonibun]

and....who supplied these bunnies? where did they come from?

and where are they now ????

PAH? PAH pellets come from Burgess so I was told.

 

[Tamsin]

I know timothy hay is touted a lot as good for bunnies, but the fact plain old meadow hay has a mix of grass types in always seemed on paper to be a positive thing.

I wonder about the chewing action too. Really they need a further group where the contents of the muesli food was ground up and turned into the same size/shape as the nuggets so you could tell if it was the ingredients or the difference in chewing action/amount.

Having a company with a vested interest sponsor a study is a little worrying, but then who else would pay for these things.

 

[nessar]

just to clarify i said 'These kind of 'research tecnicians' quite frankly have nothing better to do! they should get a real job'


meaning taking part in 'these kind of studies' which have probaly been funded by a company who manufactures pellets and wanted to increase their sales, the pet industry is all about money.

educated rabbit owners who feed muesli will also feed a very high volume of hay certain uneducated customers of pets at home will not have a clue and they sure as hell would not read a study about it

But this isn't about P@H or normal owners reading the study - it is about discovering the exact consequence of feeding certain foods in a controlled environment. P@H just read it and have obviously taken note. Perhaps more manufacturers will, and now that there is evidence, that can be used to persuade companies that make muesli-type rabbit food to improve their product, remove their product, or even simply having the right feeding guidelines and recommending hay would make a big difference. The average owner DOES read the instructions on pet food, so if every bag stated how important hay was that would be a huge leap forward in rabbit welfare.

Surely, if it furthers our understanding of the animal, the study is worth doing. There may or may not have been some problems with the methodology, we'll have to wait for the actual study to come out before we know, but at the very least the results give evidence that a muesli only diet is bad for the health and I believe that this is really important as it should help influence manufacturers. It also indicates that a muesli and hay diet contains a higher risk of health problems than a pellet and hay diet, which seems to be something that has not been considered much before.

 

[katie88]

Nail on the head nessar, couldn't agree more :thumb: