diet for an 8lb+ bun?

[toki]

So about 9 days ago I went to the RSPCA and adopted a lovely 2-year-old silverfox bunny who needs to live on his own. His name is Toki and he weighs about 8.3lbs. At the time, they told me what they were feeding him, but now that he’s with me, it seems to be too much. They said they fed him 55g of nuggets per day (as well as hay and greens), but now that I give him that amount, he seems to neglect his hay altogether. I don’t have a scale to measure 55g, but I divided my 2kg bag of nuggets into what I think are 55g portions.

I have read on other sites that I should be only feeding him 1 to 2 tablespoons of nuggets per day. I’m not a weighing expert but I think 55g is more than 2 tablespoons?

So my first question is, what amount of nuggets should I be feeding him, and how can I measure this amount? What I would really appreciate is an exact amount of nuggets I should be feeding him (eg. 10, 20, 30 etc). I’m worried because he isn’t eating nearly as much hay as he should be, although he still does eat some. His poops have gotten smaller in the last few days, which I guess is probably a bad thing.

My second question is: Currently I give him about 10g parsley, 10g mint, 10g basil, and 10g coriander daily. If not, a little bit less. Is this a good amount to be feeding him? I read somewhere that the guideline for rabbits is a “handful” of greens. However, I’m inclined to increase that amount because Toki is such a big boy. And I’m not sure exactly what a handful is – because you can cram a lot of leaves into your hand if you try. 

Please help me so I can give him the diet he needs thank you 

[Limit]

55g sounds fine for his weight, the maximum is 25g per kg of body weight (sourced from the RSPCA website) and he’d be about 3 kg something. You could weigh a cup on some cooking scales and then add the pellets, subtracting the weight of the cup?

Pellets can be fed sparingly, if you feel he’s not eating enough hay then limit his pellets slowly.

My guidelines for greens constantly change but I always give roughly two cups (average size) per (average sized) bunny. (my big boy weighs around 13.2 lbs so he does get more). I always have a range of veggies which change daily too, anything new is added in slowly x

Herbs are also great, I used to sprinkle it in hay to encourage hay eating.
Hope this helped a tad, my Monte is also a fellow bun from the RSPCA

[vanessa]

I’m not too particular about the amount of greens I give. I grab a large “crammed” handful of greens per bun, I give them a 6-inch piece of rosemary, a spray of thyme, a stem of basil, a large handful of fresh plucked mint, 1/4 bell pepper, 1/4 celery stick, 1 radish, the list goes on. In all – I suppose each bunny gets a pile of veggies about their size, every day. My number one concern – is that they eat their body size in hay every day, and I feed them no more than 1/4 cup pellets each, per day. They weigh 4, 6, 8, and 9.4 lbs. I think 6lbs is an ideal weight for all of them. Maybe 5lbs for the lop. After that – I just try to give them as many veggies as is affordable to me (considering I also have 2 dogs a cat and 50 birds). Veggies are lower in calories than pellets, so they are good for big buns.
Official recommendations vary – I’ve ready anywhere from 2-4 cups. I watch my bunny’s health to determine if I’m feeding them correctly.

[toki]

Thanks for the advice! I will keep feeding him 55g nuggets for now and cut it down a little bit by bit to encourage more hay eating, and see how he gets on.

I’ll stick with the greens I’m feeding him now. Today I tried wrapping some hay between the leaves and hand-feeding him. It kinda worked until he got smart and began deliberately eating around the hay and just eating the leaves!  I’ve hung a hay rack above his litter box and put some hay in his little hut/house as well.

I’ll call the RSPCA centre tomorrow to ask what sort of hay they were feeding him. I buy timothy hay for him now, but if they were using some other hay then that might explain his lack of enthusiasm for timothy. I will also try the sprinkling herbs idea! I will have to buy him some thyme and rosemary and see if he likes them. He’s a fussy eater, he even turns his nose up at carrot treats 

I just want him to start eating the hay as he is shedding right now, and even though I am grooming him regularly he is still ingesting some of his fur and I don’t want this to cause a problem for him.

[toki]

I just called the RSPCA and she told me the hay they fed him was “foraging hay”? Does anyone know what foraging hay is? I’ve tried googling it but can’t seem to find what she’s talking about. 

Also, she advised me to take away the hay completely for a few days or a week, in hopes that Toki might be more interested in it when he gets it back. Is it safe to take away his hay temporarily? I will try it but not until I know it will be totally safe for Toki – which I don’t think it will be, but I’m clearly still a newbie to rabbit diet.

[vanessa]

Never heard of “foraging hay”. DON’T TAKE IT AWAY! I would call them back and ask for the label information so you have have more specific details. You could try other types, like meadow, orchard, oat, but I’d definitely call back and ask them to take a look at the label. The term “foraging hay” is generic for “food”. But don’t take it away. That is bad bad advice. You could also try compressed Timothy cubes. O=I have a bunny who won’t eat hay, but he will eat compressed cubes. Not ideal, but better than no hay.

[toki]

Ah thank you, I will call them back again tomorrow and ask for the brand etc. She actually said it was “either foraging hay or timothy hay.” I assumed that since he’s refusing the timothy hay now, they must have been feeding the “foraging” stuff. She doesn’t seem to know much about rabbits I guess! I won’t take his hay away. I stuffed a huge ball of hay into his little house today and he instantly started nibbling at it. Maybe he just likes to have room service instead of getting food himself 

[Limit]

By any chance were they talking about burgess excel’s forage hay?

Also, that was some really bad advice from them about taking it away… strange that they’d even give that advice! Hopefully it was just the receptionist saying what she thought was best instead of the staff that work with animals…

[Limit]

Edit: double post! Sorry

[vanessa]

Rabbits can be finicky about the presentation of their hay. Sometimes it’s not about the type of hay – but how it is offered… So sure – try hay balls, hay racks, any and everything!

[toki]

I had a look at the Burgess forage hay and it certainly seems like something they could have been feeding him. Today I ordered some meadow hay and oat hay for Toki to see if he likes either of them, but if he’s still unsatisfied, I’ll try and get the Burgess Excel. I only wish I could find it on Amazon where I buy most of my bunny supplies. Still, I’ll keep catering to him ’til he finds a hay that he likes, assuming I don’t go broke in the process

I too thought it was strange that she gave us such terrible advice – however she was just the receptionist and doesn’t work in the rabbitry. When I adopted Toki, all of the other bunnies had lots of hay to eat and were very well taken care of.

[Azerane]

I think foraging hay is generally something that is a mix. So it will be mostly hay but will also have bits of dried herbs etc in it so that they forage through it for the best bits.

55g of nuggets is hard to judge, I always measured in tablespoons etc. Plus, different pellets and nuggets are slightly different in weight. For a 3kg bun, you could feed up to 1/4 cup of pellets per day, but usually 2 tablespoons is sufficient. I don’t know how 55g would compare to those measurements.

In terms of greens, I have read you can feed 1 packed cup of greens per 2 pounds of body weight. Which is quite a lot but anywhere in the range of 2-4 packed cups of greens for your boy daily would be quite a good amount Again, I’m not sure how much a packed cup of greens would weigh.

[toki]

Bah, measurements are so confusing. According to google, 1/4 cup is 85g. 1/4 cup is also 4 tablespoons. Based on that I’ll give Toki a little bit more than 2 tablespoons a day and see how he gets on. Maybe that’s where I was going wrong before – I was probably giving him about 4 tablespoons despite trying to measure out 55g  Even if he could eat more than 55g, the rspca were feeding him 55g and even then he was slowly gaining weight, so I would like to stick with the diet he was used to all that time. He was at the rspca centre for seven months.

I heard him munching on something in his house this morning, but I’m not sure if it was the hay or the newspaper. Yesterday I saw him eating the rug that he sleeps on too, so that’s gotta go 

[Author]

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