One of my two bunnies is overweight

[theBearBear]

Hi there, 

I have two bunny rabbits, they share everything! But one of them is starting to gain a lot more weight than the other one. I know when I put other food than their feed (like spinach, brocolli, occasionally a piece of apple or carrot) my bunny Venus it’s it all, the other one Sappho is only interested in the feed. But Venus is probably eating more of that too as they share the same bowl. On top of that, when I let them out Sappho eagerly starts running around for ages and Venus tends to lounge in her home and come out for a small stroll. How do I get Venus to lose weight, but make sure that Sappho doesn’t lose any in the process?

Thanks, 

Claire

[BlueMoods]

You’ll have to feed them separately to get both at the ideal weight for them. That is generally the case with rabbits unless you are doing a rabbit colony with several rabbits and, that is often an outdoor wit access to grazing situation. House rabbits generally need to be fed separately. Every rabbit has a different activity level, and they metabolize food at different rates depending on a lot of factors. Just feed them separately.

[Beka27]

You can try feeding them separately, but ideally that wouldn’t be necessary in a bonded pair. The issue you might come across is if one is more of a grazer and the other is a speed-eater. You can also try breaking the pellets into smaller, more frequent feedings and/or scattering the pellets around rather than feeding on a bowl.

The pellets should only be a tiny part of what they get daily (about 5% of their diet). The majority should be hay, followed by about 2 cups of fresh greens per rabbit, per day.

[theBearBear]

Thanks for the advice! I’ve been feeding them more hay and greens, that’s helped a lot already!

[Author]

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