Automatic Feeder?

[ams1786]

Hey all — thanks in advance for any help!

So we’ve never left our rabbits alone before because we’ve always had family who could watch them. But we just moved to a new state and don’t have that network anymore — which means our plans are very much influenced by bunnies

We’re going home for Thanksgiving but with the buns that means we have to feed them breakfast, drive two hours, spend a few hours with family, then drive two hours home in time for bunnies’ dinner. Ideally though we’d be able to spend the night there and come back that Friday, but that would mean missing Thursday dinner/Friday breakfast with the buns (meals = pellets; they always have hay and water but my girl needs to eat pellets since she has a sensitive stomach, long story, so we can’t go hay-only).

We can’t get a pet sitter right away for several reasons (everyone we know lives far away, none of our friends have rabbit experience, plus it will be Thanksgiving night and everyone will be with their fams/doing stuff!). I was wondering if anyone had luck with a timed automatic feeder? Something like this: 

https://www.amazon.com/isYoung-Automatic-Feeder-Electronic-Control/dp/B073PWV9HD/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1510630166&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=automatic+pet+feeder+rabbit&psc=1

To be clear they’d only be alone for two meals. We’d leave a ton of water and hay out. And, most importantly, we have them hooked up a live-streaming security camera so we could be watching them/making sure they’re eating normally at meals. If anything looked off we could be back in two hours.

Anyone tried it? Or any recs for brands if so? Part of me feels like it’s abandonment, but it would make things so much easier (and we’re usually gone for work anyway so wouldn’t be that different)!

[Rain]

Hmm I don’t know much about automatic feeders. Have you tried it out yet? If so has it given the food at the right times and works properly like you need it to? You’re right it won’t be too long if your gone for hours. As long as it’s not days. But it’s still not so safe if your bunny has a sensitive stomach like you said yours does. Try out the feeder and see if it works right. If not the best thing to do is ask someone to just give them pellets and come to the house. Do you have a phone? If you do then you can take a video of you performing the specific actions such as measuring the amount of pellets and things like that and send it to a friend so they can see exactly what they have to do.

[Ella Bean]

Hi – 

I have been using an automatic feeder for about a month or so now.  It works really well and Ella got used to it pretty fast.  She’s used to eating her pellets off the floor and she kept ripping off and flinging the attached “bowl” so I removed the bowl and raised the feeder on some blocks so the pellets fall on the ground and she can get at them.  My only issue is that the dispensing amounts are a little loosey goosey and I don’t know if the amount she’s getting is exactly right.  As I mentioned she took to it pretty quickly but I think it would probably be important to be using one for a week or two before depending upon it.  Also don’t know how it would work for two.  Pics of my set up:

[Author]

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