Hi everyone, my name's Claire. I'm a registered veterinary nurse. I'm also an A1 and clinical coach, and I also have my City and Guild certificate in veterinary nursing of exotic Species.
Today we're gonna be talking about rabbit nutrition, and the title of this lecture is gonna be Fuel for Life, or are we putting wrong fuel in the engine? So firstly, just a quick declaration for a con conflict of interest, so I would certainly like to declare that I do have a financial interest. And affiliation with the Rabbit Welfare Association and fund.
I am the editor of the Rabbiting on magazine, which is a quarterly magazine, and I also am the rabbiting on advertising sales manager as well. So there are bits and pieces that hit this lecture that do relate to the Rabbit Welfare Association and funds, so I just wanted to declare that first of all. So firstly, the learning outcomes of this lecture, we're gonna be looking quite a bit into the correct and incorrect feeding of rabbits.
We'll also be looking at how we can offer enrichment to them through nutrition as well. We'll touch on sort of the life stage feeding of pet rabbits as well. That's something that's really Really, really common with dogs and cats, but it's certainly something that is often overlooked when we're looking at rabbits.
We will look at the links that there are between rabbits that are fed an incorrect or inappropriate diet and some of the health conditions that we commonly see in practise with our rabbit patients, and how we can therefore be advising our clients on what rabbits certainly should and they shouldn't be eating and how we should and shouldn't be feeding them. So firstly, just a very quick overview of exactly really what rabbits should be eating. So by far and away the most common food.
Stuff that rabbits should be eating is grass, and that should be free access to fresh grass and hay, and that should be making up the bulk of what our rabbits are actually eating on a daily basis. We should also be offering them a selection of leafy green vegetables as well. And a very, very small amount of an extruded nuggets or pellets throughout this lecture.
Most of the time they're gonna be referred to as pellets, but sometimes they are also referred to as extruded or compressed nuggets as well. And also we should be Bring them fresh water, so it really isn't rocket science as to how we should be feeding rabbits. It really is going back to the basics of what wild rabbits should actually be eating.
Now we've touched on what we should be feeding rabbits, now we should be looking at really what we shouldn't be feeding rabbits. And it's really common in practise, if you're seeing a lot of rabbits, you're gonna get a lot of clients coming through your doors and sometimes it's quite shocking what they actually are commonly feeding their rabbits. Carrots, really, really big so a no no with carrots, you know, Bugs Bunny has an awful lot to answer for, we often The rabbits being fed, you know, large amounts of carrot, they often come into practise with their carriers and they've got a big carrot sort of stuck in the carrier.
But carrots actually don't have a huge amount of nutritional, benefits to rabbits. They're really, really high in sugar. So therefore they do sort of contribute to rabbits gaining weight, and they really, do sort of contribute sometimes to dental problems as well.
So a bit of a no no for carrots or rabbits. Lettuce again has no nutritional value for rabbits. And again the fruits, you know, sometimes they, they're OK in really, really small quantities.
It is, but it's really tempting to, you know, give the rabbit, you know, half an apple or, you know, a few grapes or something like that, and it's actually not good for them again, really, really high and sugar doesn't have any nutritional benefit to them. What we're feeding our rabbits should be of benefit. Musli, there's been lots and lots of research over the last few years on the, the problems that muesli can cause in a rabbit's diet.
So therefore, instead of pointing owners towards, feeding muesli, we should be sort of pointing them towards offering pellets to our rabbits instead of muesli, cutting muesli out of the diet. It Looks colourful, it looks really nice, but rabbits aren't appealing to it because it looks colourful, and appeal to it because it's high in sugar and it tastes really nice and really sweet for them. These are stickly treats that we can get from lots and lots of different places.
Again, they're often sort of laden with seeds, they're often coated in honey, and they have no nutritional value to rabbits. Anything sort of dairy based, so anything that's got sort of yoghurt in it, milk in it, anything like that, rabbits are really, really gonna struggle to digest. And again it has no nutritional benefit to them and we shouldn't therefore be offering it to them.
And it's not uncom When we have had rabbits coming into practise who have been offered, lots of human food, often house rabbits are the worst ones for these. They will beg, they will follow the owners around the house, and whatever the owners are eating, the rabbits will often get a small amount of as well, be that cake, bread, biscuits, pizza, anything like that is a really, really big no no to our rabbit. Getting it right now, owners really struggle sometimes with the concept of what and how much to feed their rabbits.
So on the left we have this nice big bowl of this, you know. Sweet tasting, colourful, bright, muely, as opposed to the bowl on the right that has, you know, a smashing of pellets in it really looks sort of quite boring. But actually it is the one on the right, therefore, that we should be giving to rabbits and not the one on the left.
The one on the right has approximately the right amount of pellets in it for about a sort of 2.5 kg rabbit per day, whereas the one on the left is massively overfeeding any rabbits. They always think back to the feeding pyramid, and this feeding pyramid, and there are sometimes.
There's lots of other sort of infographics around that offer very, very sort of similar information as well that we should be feeding approximately 85% of the diet should be made up of hay and should be made up of fresh grass. Approximately 10% of it should be made up of healthy, safe greens for rabbits. That's not including fruits or anything like that.
They are not healthy for rabbits, and approximately 5% of it should be made up of a pellet-based concentrated food, not muesli. So always remember that the portion sizes matter. How much we're feeding our rabbits actually matters.
The quality of the feed matters as well. We don't want hay that is dusty or mouldy or smells really horrible. We equally don't want greens or anything that are, you know, starting to go a little bit off.
We want to make sure that the quality is good. We want to make sure that we are consistent with what we feed as well. We can't be chopping and changing different pellet brands, that we're feeding our rabbits.
They don't adjust well to changes in, sudden changes in diets. We want to make sure again So our percentages matter, so it's this 5, 10% and 85% that we want to be feeding, and again, make sure that they have constant access to water in a means that is familiar to them. Looking at the dietary requirements of rabbits, so they need a diet that is really, really high in fibre.
So between sort of 20 to 25%. Now the pellets that we're offering should be as high as possible, but always remember that the vast majority of this fibre is going to be coming from the grass and from the hay. So even if you have rabbits that are on a relatively low fibre pellet, as long as they're eating lots of hay and lots of grass, and that actually doesn't matter as much as potentially a rabbit who might be on a slightly higher fibre pellet, but isn't eating the right amount of hay or grass.
They need volatile fatty acids, these are absorbed from the stray, so the byproduct, of the digestion process, and these are the major energy source for rabbits. Protein, so we need certain ones that are divulged from microbial syn synthesis from the diet. So there's certainly some of those that we do have to sort of.
Get from this microbial digestion, which is why rabbits eating their secret rose is so important for them. I mean looking at levels of protein. The higher the level, so we're looking at sort of lactation, and pregnancy around about 18 to 19%.
The young and the actively growing rabbits, we're looking at protein levels of around about 16%, and for our neutered adult rabbits, we certainly want lower protein levels between about 12 to 14%. And we cut sort of our protein levels down slightly as well for our senior rabbits who might Might have some degree of renal compromise and we're looking at around about sort of 12 to 13% of them for their protein levels. We also need other certain elements in the diet as well, and it's important to be rabbits of their calcium to phosphorus ratio.
We shouldn't certainly have a calcium to phosphorus ratio of above sort of 1.1 or sort of 2.1.
We need certainly other things in our diet as well, and the vast majority of these vitamins and minerals come from that small element of pellets in the diet. So although the pellets in the diet are On actually providing the vast majority of the fibre that these rabbits need, they are actually an essential part and they are actually giving out the vitamins and the minerals that otherwise it's very, very difficult to get. It is possible certainly to feed rabbits on a pelletless diet, but owners really need very, very switched on.
They need to do their research to make sure that rabbits are still getting all the vitamins and minerals that they need. So again, it is just easier to give them a small percentage of pellets to make sure therefore, that there is actually being provided. And all of these references are available.
The BSABA rapid medicine manual. So fibre is the key. So we have two types of fibre, we have our digestible fibre and we have our indigestible fibre.
Now our digestible fibre is the fibre that is below around about 3 millimetres in length, and it moves through the gastrointestinal tract. From there it moves back from the colon and back into this vast vat called the secum. I mean rabbits, they secum is absolutely huge compared to a dog or a cat because it's a.
It's a functional sacrum. Inside the sum we have this microbial digestion process, so all of the food is broken down by healthy, good bacteria within the within the gut. And as we said, it provides their major energy source.
So they're eating the secret chose as they're being passed out, and therefore they're also getting some of their vitamins and some of their minerals twice. It's really, really essential that rabbits perform this digestion and seeker trace and lots of the time with rabbits who are overfed. Pellets, overweight rabbits, and some rabbits certainly have health problems such as osteoarthritis.
They're not physically capable of eating strays, so they're not getting these vital vitamins and minerals within their diet. We also have our indigestible fibre, which is equally as important as our digestible fibre. So this is fibre lengths of around 3 millimetres or mooring length, and this provides the peristalsis, the movement of the GI tract, so it sets the pace of what is going through our rabbit's guts at a time.
It keeps it all. Or moving and we know that, you know, rabbits, whose guts slow down for whatever reason they're going to go into gut stasis and we're therefore going to get problems. So it's passed out as these hard faecal droppings, and rabbits will produce over 300 droppings per day, and they should all be similar size and similar appearance.
And as I said, both of these are essential for gut health and rabbits. They have to be, we have to have diets that actually give them the correct levels of digestible and indigestible fibre. We have to have rabbits who are eating their suer tropes.
So our pellets and our nuggets. So these are high in calories. This is why rabbits go absolutely bonkers for them when owners go out to see them.
They're running around and they're really, really excited because they're pellets, they're high in calories and they're a high value food source for them. But they have to be restricted. So for your average sort of rabbit, we're looking at around about 1 level tablespoon per kilogramme, and this is an ideal body weight per day, and this is for adult rabbits.
So your average sort of 2 kg, 2.5 kg adult rabbit needs no more than 2 or 2.5 level tablespoons of pallets for 24 hours.
If owners want to split that and they want to split it into two meals, then that's absolutely fine, but they shouldn't be going over how much they're feeding. Should form a maximum of 5% of our diet, and ideally what we want to be doing is scatter feeding it and not offering it to them in a bowl. It encourages a much more normal and natural feeding pattern.
So wild rabbits are constantly for. Dodging around on the ground in the hedgerows for food, and we want to therefore offer our pet rabbits that same opportunity. As I said, you should be viewing it as a supplement to the diet, so it is there to give them the vital vitamins and minerals that we would potentially otherwise struggle to give them if we took pellets out of the diet.
Never feed muesli, said it does sort of potentially contribute to dental problems in rabbits, so we want to be taking muesli out, we want to be taking away the opportunity to wrap for rabbits to potential. Selectively feed, and when we give them these pellets to scatter feed and we want them to be and within around about sort of 15 minutes or so, we do not want our rabbits to be having 24 hour 7 day a week access to pellets. That's what makes them overweight when they're gorging on these pellets and they constantly have access to them.
They're therefore choosing to eat pellets as opposed to eating hay and grass, which they should be eating to gain the correct amount of fibre in their diet. If we're looking at changing from muesli and pellets or potentially looking at At, owners changing from one brand of pellets to another brand, we need to make sure that it's a 2 to 4 week minimum changeover. We shouldn't ever be rushing changing over food for rabbits.
You need to allow the bacteria within their guts and their sekum to actually adjust, otherwise you can potentially cause them a really serious GI upset. So the 4 weeks sort of changeover example and this is courtesy, but just pet care. So you're reducing the muesli as we're increasing the pellet amount, and as you can see we're going from 3/4 muesli to 1/4 pellets 1 week, therefore.
Half and half of music palettes. So next week, week 3, we're looking at around about 3/4 of the pellet amount being the pellets and a quarter of the muesli and by week 4 we're on the hold of the pellets, so we switched them completely. Obviously you can do this slightly quicker, so you could sort of do a, you know, 4 sort of day sort of change.
Over, so over 4 days you're doing the 3 quarters muesli, 1 quarter pellets at day 8, you're sort of looking at around about sort of half and half, and day sort of 1112, you're looking at sort of 3/4 pellets, 1 quarter muely, and therefore by about sort of just over 2 weeks, you're looking at the whole of the rabbit, therefore being on the pellets. It And certainly consider using a probiotic during this period, if you are certainly concerned that the rabbit may sort of have a GI upset from changing over one food to the other, and owners should always be monitoring that faecal output for the size and for the shape to make sure that it's not certainly causing any form of gut slowdown in our rabbits. Badge or grass and hay, so grass, so grass is actually preferable to hay, it is a really normal item that rabbits, in the wild eat and it's massively overlooked in our pet rabbits.
We certainly advise that we give them pay, but we often forget that actually grass is potentially is better for them. It provides them with enrichment if they have got areas to graze on. It makes them physically move around more rather than sitting and standing and eating from a pile of grass that's been picked for them or a pile of hay.
This in turn obviously is encouraging, it's encouraging activity, it's burning calories off. Also, the water in the grass encourages more urine production than hay does.hay's a very dry product whereas grass actually contains a lot of moisture, the rabbits are physically empty.
Seeing their bladder more frequently than what they do do when they're actually sitting and eating hay. Oh sometimes it's not possible certainly to have access to fresh grass, and, you know, 365 days a year, you know, the climate that we live in, in the UK, grass doesn't grow throughout the whole of the year. So yes, we do sometimes need to offer them, you know, supplementation of hay, but always if possible, offer them access to grass and access to hay 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Never ever feed them grass clippings, clippings, you know, grass that have been mower lawns. On by electric mowers, anything like that, they will very, very quickly start to ferment. So after they have been clipped, they will start to ferment.
Therefore they start to produce gas and if the rabbits have eaten these, it will therefore sort of start to cause bloat within these rabbits. So fresh handpicked grass is fine, but anything that has been used with electric mowers or any form of mowing equipment is a big no no for rabbits. So hey, as I said, hay is will readily available 365 days of the year.
It can never be overfed. It should always be available. It should always be fresh and it should be changed regularly.
There are lots and lots of different types of hay that you can be feeding. So there is Timothy hay, which is a grass hay. There's your oat hay, meadow broom, and there's also alfalva hay, which is a legume hay.
It's very, very high in calories, very high in calcium, so it's not suitable for adult rabbits. It does certainly have potentially its place with young growing rabbits and certainly with pregnant and lactating rabbits as well. Stroll has minimal nutrition.
Traditional value can be used as a baking material, but if owners are using it, they do need to make sure that rabbits still have hay and preferably fresh grass as well. And sometimes you get really, really picky rabbits who no matter what type of hay you actually try, they're not going to eat any of it. So ready grass is.
Sometimes, better than not actually eating any, so if you've tried fresh grass, you've tried lots and lots of different types of hay, and the rabbit's still not going to eat it. Red grass is a possibility. It's higher in protein, so we make sure they're not over being overfed on it.
We do need to make sure that it's fed in. Moderation. And make up a minimum of 85% of the diet on grass and hay.
If you can get more than that into them, then that's even better. It is good for them, it's good for their GI tract, it is good for their dental health as well, also prevents boredom, so we get less, destructive behaviour from rabbits as well who are fed on a high fibre, high hay, high grass diet. As I said, not all hay though is the same.
So when we're looking at the type of the hay, so there's obviously our alfalfa, as I said, which is high in. Calories, a high in calcium, it's a legume hay. Then there's our Timothy, our orchard, oat, broome, and also our meadow, which is some different grass hays as well.
These are lower in calcium and they're lowering calories. So all of these ones are suitable to be fed to adult rabbits except for our alfalfa haze. Look at the quality as well, so it must smell fresh, it must be dust free, and there should be no black mould or anything like that within it.
Hay is obviously a natural product, so hay's gonna be coming from, you know, fields, so sometimes you do get, You know, the odd plant that shouldn't necessarily be in there, but certainly we should be looking to offer our rabbits really nice fresh quality hay. You need to be careful how it's stored as well. So it shouldn't be stored in plastic bags.
It will start to sweat and it will therefore start to go mouldy and it will start to go off and should be kept on the out of direct sunlight as well. So the best thing for is to do is to put it in some type of Hessian bag, something like that that's going to keep it fresh for longer. There's also sort of the bedding.
Hay versus the feeding hay as well. So certainly the owners can look to buy slightly cheaper hay for their bedding hay rabbits and certainly often look to offer them better quality hay for their feeding hay. So if owners choose in the large enclosures that they've got for their rabbits to put hay on the floor, they don't have.
To necessarily put really, really expensive hay all over the floor for the rabbits, they can mix that with straw and with cheaper quality hay that can be obtained in big bales from farmers and therefore look to be feeding their rabbits actually better quality hay that can be dotted around the enclosure. Remember the importance of hay for dental health too. So hay, and grass, it contains cellulose, and cellulose is really, really hard to chew.
So if you've ever tried to chew on a piece of hay or a piece of grass, it's actually really, really difficult. Now, rabbit's teeth need to be worn down by abrasive food matter. So the incisor teeth grow around about 2 to 3 millimetres per week, and their cheek teeth grow around about sort of 2 to 3 millimetres per month.
And chewing encourages this. Both this horizontal and lateral chewing action as well, so it's a figure of 8 motion that chewing hay and grass actually encourages. I said, it takes time.
So if you're sitting there and you're eating lots of hay and lots and lots of grass, it reduces your boredom. It reduces the rabbit's opportunity to be chewing on items that they necessarily shouldn't be chewing on. They chew up to around about 200 times per minute, and they consume up to about 30 times per day each time they're eating around about 2 to 8 grammes of food, and they will sit and they will eat for around about sort of 4 to 6 minutes at a time.
When rabbits are eating pellets, when they're eating other food items, they don't have this horizontal lateral figure of eight chewing motion. Instead, it's more of just a vertical motion. So they're naturally not wearing down all of the planes of their teeth correctly, they're crushing their food instead of grinding it properly.
So it's another reason why hay is so vitally important for them. Also when we get a sort of lack of get a lack of calcium within our diet as well, so we don't get we also they've got rapidly. Growing teeth, so if we get any slackening of that, and therefore that can sort of contribute to dental problems as well.
So any lack of calcium, we're gonna get sort of poor bone development. So this poor rabbit here has really, really poor thin bone development on parts of its jaw. And again, this is going to be a contributing factor for our dental problems.
So not only do rabbits get potential dental problems when they don't have enough fibre in their diet, they're not physically wearing their teeth down properly. If we don't have a diet that has the essential amounts of calcium within it, then it Again, we're gonna get issues as well, and we've already said that the pellets are there, the small amount of pellets are there to provide these vital vitamins and minerals. So our greens are vegetables, so we can group them in good and we can group them in our bads.
So the good ones that we're looking at feeding our rabbits are gonna be our greens, they're gonna be things like kale, spinach, celery, broccoli, and different herbs as well. So some rabbits are very distinctive about what herbs they like. Some rabbits don't like very strong smelling, but we can look to be feeding them things like mins and parsley, coriander.
And dill, and we can therefore be offering them a selection of these every single day. Things that we don't want to be feeding, we've already said about carrots, we don't want to be feeding them. They're really high in sugar, they have no nutritional value.
We don't want to be feeding them other root vegetables as well. We want to be avoiding fruits, lettuce, and items like cucumber. So again they need to make up about 10% of the diet, we should be offering them a selection approximately the size of the rabbit's head every single day and very slightly what he's off.
From day to day as well, and it's better to be feeding smaller amounts of more types of vegetables rather than larger amounts of one or two types, so look to sort of be offering, you know, 34 or 5 different types a day. Treats all owners, you know, everybody likes to give their animals treats. So whether or not we should or we shouldn't is a bit of a grey area.
They're not certainly essential for the health of rabbits. What we offer them should be healthy and it should ideally be beneficial to that rabbit. As well.
We want to, as we said, avoid anything that has dairy in it, anything that's high in sugar, or anything that is a potential choking hazard. And so things like raisins and things like peanuts are a potential choking hazard to rabbits. And peanuts also have the potential problem that they can get stuck within the GI tract of rabbits, and they can cause a blockage as well.
We can be using sort of our healthy based treats, so things like dry herbs, things like anything sort of hay or grass-based or potentially a very tiny. Tiny amounts of carrots or a very tiny amount of apple, but it should be used as a treat. It is not a part of their actual main part of their diet, but we can be using these for reward-based training and when we're encouraging bonding behaviours as well.
Again, we don't want to overfeeding them treats or treats. They're not part of a staple daily diet for rabbits. Our water access, so on the whole bowls are better than bottles.
It is a much, much more natural drinking pattern for rabbits. It is much more natural. For them to be lapping water than actually using the tongue and actually drinking it from a water bottle, it's a lot easier for them to drink from and therefore they actually tend to drink more, which is really important, especially in summer.
Sometimes we can get the issue with bottles that the ball bearing in them will sort of freeze in the winter and therefore rabbits don't have access to them in winter, or if anything happens to the bottle throughout the course of the day, especially sort of in the summer months, and again, rabbits can rapidly dehydrate because they don't have access to water. If we're using really heavy weights. Ceramic bowls, it's really difficult for the rabbits to actually knock them over and certainly from experience I do find that the vast vast majority of rabbits don't actually sort of soil in that water.
And if we're changing it twice a day, then we're sort of eliminating that problem as well. So water access is important, it's 24/7, and ideally bowls should be offered rather than bottles. So feeding in Richmond, so feeding should be, it should be natural, it should mimic what wild rabbits actually do.
So it should be fun for them as well, it should pass the time, it should provide them with, you know, an energetic way of actually burning calories off. It should take some time, so if it takes our rabbits more time to eat, they're not gonna be doing things that they're necessary, shouldn't be doing. And it should be rewarding, so at the end of it they should get actually what they, they think they're going to be getting.
So we can scatter feed them, we can be encouraging movement for them around their enclosure. We can be encouraging. Thinking as well, you know, food doesn't have to be placed necessarily on the floor, it can be placed on different levels for them, we can be hiding things for them, we can physically make them work, not physically but also mentally for their food reward.
So looking certainly at this picture here, this rabbit has access to grass, this rabbit has got a scattering of greens throughout its enclosure, it has got a piles of hay in there, it has got, Toys in there, but there are other things that this rabbit potentially could have. So these rabbits have got sunny hay, and they've also got a big apple log as well. Rabbits love, you know, apple logs that they can be stripping the bark off, and they will spend several hours doing that.
And not only is this encouraging them to move, it's encouraging them to use their teeth and it's actually passing the time for them as well. So really, really good. If any, you know, owners have access to untreated apple branches, apple logs or twigs, then they're really, really.
Official to rabbits. Another very simple solution is the cardboard tubes that come from kitchen rolls or toilet rolls. These can be stuffed with hay.
They can therefore owners can place parts of the rabbit's pellets allowance in there. They can place part of their green allowance in there, and the rabbits can rip them to shreds and they can therefore get out the food that's inside of them. We do need to be careful that they don't actually eat parts of the cardboard.
If they are doing that, then they actually need to be removed or they need to be only given under direct supervision. So again we've got sort of food that's sort of scattered around in the background on this next picture here we've got sort of cardboard, another big sort of cardboard tube that's stuffed with hay, so these rabbits actually have sort of access to lots of hay and lots of vegetables as well. We can be planting food for them as well, so we can be actually growing herbs in pots for them, and actually giving them the whole pot for the rabbits to actually eat the herbs and everything out of.
Treebos. A really really good idea commonly used with dogs, we don't think about using them with rabbits, but they can be rolling them around, we can put their pellet allowance in them, they can be rolling them around to actually get the pellets out of them, and they latch onto these ideas really, really rapidly. We can use sort of willow balls and we can stuff those with bits of vegetables and hay, and they can be throwing them around and they can have again parts of the pellets and everything within them.
We can use sort of cardboard boxes, we can make them into big cardboard mazes and we can hide, you know, pellets and. You know, parts of bits of hay and greens and everything within them, so the only, you know, factor for how imaginative you can be is, is your mind. So you can do lots and lots of different things to encourage rabbits to actually be, scattering, looking for food and foraging for food.
Our life stage feeding. So as I said, this is a really common thing that we, we always, always think about with dogs and cats, you know, with kittens, we give them a different diet to what we give adult cats and With our, you know, puppies, and we give our senior dogs different diets, but we don't generally often think about it, the rabbits, but it is a really good idea. So we have our baby and our young rabbits, and most people acquire their rabbits if they are going to a pet store.
They will acquire them from around about sort of 8 weeks of age. We have our young rabbits as well, so often these are neutered from quite an early age and we can be neutering our male rabbits from around about 12 weeks of age and our female rabbits from 16 weeks of age, so we can be neuterring them from a relatively young age. And then we need to look at our, our elderly and our senior rabbits, and we're seeing an awful lot more of those in practise these days because of the advances certainly in rabbit health, in preventative care, in feeding, and in how rabbits are actually kept.
We are seeing commonly rabbits now living, you know, to 89, 10, and potentially into their teenage years as well. So we need to look at what diets are best for them. And also we're still seeing an awful lot of overweight rabbits as well.
And and our baby rabbits. So these are rabbits that are generally up to about sort of 16 weeks of age. I said most rabbits get most owners get their rabbits from around about 8 weeks of age.
We want to make sure that they have ad lib amounts of hay, so always, always offer them lots and lots of hay, and this can include the alfalfa hay that is higher in calcium and higher in calories. They should still though be offered grass-based hays as well. We don't want them to only get used to the taste of alfalfa.
There are junior and there are dwarf pellets available on the market and there are several different brands of these. These contain the increased. Levels of protein that we need to support this growth and development for these young rapidly growing rabbits, and they're also sort of fortified with different amino acids and the vitamins that they require, and they're also a source of antioxidants as well for them.
They contain the prebiotics. It is unfortunately, . More common in young rabbits who come from pet stores who are required to go to there for different homes to suffer from digestive sort of system problems, and often that's due to stress.
So these prebiotics can just help to back up all that microbial bacteria that's therefore sitting within the digestive tract, and it will make them less prone to actually getting digestive problems whilst they're going through that slightly stressful time in their life. We don't want to be ad lib feeding them on these pellets though. What we don't want to do is get them into this mindset of actually constantly only eating pellets.
We want to make sure that from an early age, they understand that hay is a vital food source and they should therefore be spending lots and lots of. Time eating hay. So always stick to the manufacturer's guidelines that should be sort of specified on the packaging of how much to actually, actually feed these rabbits.
If so we don't think they're eating enough hay, so if owners are, you know, giving them a really big bowl of food every day and they're sort of saying that they're not really touching their hay, then those pellets need to be taken back down again. We don't want to get to a rabbit who is, you know, 6 months of age and this rabbit won't eat any hay or anything in its diet because it is so used to eating pellets. And we can also start to slowly sort of wean them off.
Onto different herbs and onto fresh grass as well. We want to make sure that we do it really, really slowly. We don't want to overload the system.
So we want to start with something that's quite gentle on the system, so maybe some parsley, some coriander, some freshly picked grass. Make sure that they're fine with that over the course of several weeks before we start increasing the amounts, and we start increasing the variety as well. And our young adults and our adults as well.
So these are going to be our rabbits that are sort of 3. 4 months plus, OK, so up to about sort of 16 weeks they're going to be roughly on their, sort of junior food at sort of 3 to 4 months they may be neuter as well. So as I said, you know, our male rabbits are neutered from around about 12 weeks of age and our female rabbits are going to be neutered from around about 16 weeks of age.
So we're already looking at these rabbits and neutered, they're not necessarily gonna need as many calories as, what they would do if they weren't. We want to certainly think about removing the alfalfa hay from the diet at this point, and I did it needs. Completely removing by the time they're around about 6 months of age.
We want to be continuing with the ad-lib grasshouse, they should have already been offered to the really young rabbits, so these are our Timothy broom, orchard grass, and our meadow hays as well. We want to be starting to limit the pellets now to around about this 1 level 1 tablespoon per kilogramme of their current body weight. Now, obviously these rabbits are still going to be growing, so their pellet allowance is going to have to go up as they're growing.
So owners are going to need to be weighing these rabbits at home, at least, you know, every week, every. 2 weeks or so and adjusting therefore the pellet allowance, but we want to stop increasing these pellets when the increased when they get to about 6 months of age, otherwise we're gonna keep increasing and increasing and increasing and we're gonna get rabbits who are actually overweight at this. Always feed according to that pyramid, so always feed that 85% grass and haze, 10% pellets, 10% greens and 5% pellets.
Elderly rabbits, so they do require some adjustments to their diet. They also require some adjustment. To their environments as well.
So seeing your feed for rabbits is marketed to be around about sort of from rabbits that are sort of 4 to 5 years of age. Now our giant rabbits, unfortunately do have a slightly shorter expectant lifespan, and these rabbits are sometimes deemed to be, you know, senior elderly rabbits, potentially even when they're sort of 3 years of age. So we potentially want to think about our giant rabbits switching to a senior feed when they're actually at a younger age than 4 or 5 years.
You know, the, the, the adverse effect of that also is that. Our, tiny brownies, so our Netherland dwarf rabbits, may not be, you know, senior or elderly until they're potentially 8 or 9 years of age. So you do have to go a little bit on how the rabbit is behaving, how the rabbit is looking, as to whether or not, you know, senior food is potentially appropriate for them.
Now it's lower in sugar. I said it's lower in sort of protein levels as well, so with our elderly rabbits, we're looking at sort of protein levels of around about sort of 30% for them, and that's gonna help with preventing obesity. And is less active, you know, more sedate the rabbits.
Many of them also contain glucosamine as well, so we know about some of the benefits in dogs, and in cats of glucosamine, these healthy joints, and rabbits are no different at all. They still suffer from joint related problems as they get older. So having glucosamine added into the diet is actually beneficial for them.
And again, these lowest sort of protein levels help to aid any sort of, you know, potentially sort of renal in function that there's going to be and we're not. Oh, that's not gonna be evident from, you know, an outward appearance necessarily in rabbits, so we're not gonna be able to see it. So therefore it's beneficial, therefore for them from that point of view.
When we're changing rabbits from junior to adult, when we're changing them from adult to elderly, we want to make sure that we're still doing that sort of, you know, 2 to 4 weeks sort of switchover as well. So we don't want to be changing the diet rapidly, even if it's the same brand of food that's being used. Overweight rabbits, we see a huge, huge.
Huge amounts of overweight rabbits. So there are light varieties of food that are available, and these have been available for many, many years. They obviously have the reduced calorie content, as well.
They have this sort of weight control formula as well, which helps to sort of stabilise their weight and keep it at that correct level. You know, rabbits can stay on these pallets, so even though, yes, we want them to lose weight once they reach their sort of optimum weight, they can stay on this light variety and we can just increase the amount that we're actually feeding slightly. They contain prebiotics as well for their digestive health, and also the antioxidants to help support their immune system.
Suitable for all rabbits. So it's all sort of overweight rabbits, unfortunately those that may be, you know, already sort of overweight from around about, you know, 4 or 5 months of age, up to sort of around about sort of 5 to 6 years of age. Now our droppings tell us a huge, huge amount of what is not necessarily going into our rabbits, but also what's coming out of our rabbits as well.
So all sort of the droppings that we're seeing in rabbits, they should be large, they should be fibrous, they should crumble sort of between the fingers when they're sort of picked up, and they should be the same, they should be uniform in shape and spherical as well. So on a picture here, on the left of the picture, we've got really Healthy rabbit droppings, you know, they're round, they're, this rabbit, obviously it's a lot of hay because they're quite pale. In rabbits that are eating more grass as opposed to hay, they'll be darker in colour, but they still should be, you know, spherical, they still should be the same size and shape.
They will just be slightly darker in colour, but the ones on the right of this picture, these are really dehydrated, shrivelled up, they're not the same size, they're not the same shape, they're certainly not going to sort of crumble between the fingers when you pick them up. So these are really unhealthy rabbits, and these are evidence that either this rabbit's GI tract is slowing down, or this rabbit has been in gut stasis, and this rabbit is now coming out of gut stasis. And as I said, they produce approximately 300 or more per day.
A for a healthy rabbit. When we're seeing droppings like this, so these are the ones that are strung together with this hair. They're often seen when rabbits are going through a moult and they're actually ingesting the hair, and it's normal for rabbits to ingest hair.
They groom for, you know, a large proportion of the day. They keep themselves clean, they keep their companions clean. So it's actually completely normal for rabbits to be ingesting hair.
Long hair Head rabbits are potentially more common just simply because of the length of the fur that these rabbits actually have, and they're indicative that the hair is actually passing through the gastrointestinal tract, so it's not actually getting, you know, sort of stuck within the stomach or anything that it is going in, and it is actually coming out the other end. It's not necessarily anything to be concerned about if the rabbit is bright, it is active, it is eating well, you know, not all of the droppings are like this, some of them are actually quite normal and they're not sort of strung together and those droppings are like the others. Slide where they're large and they're fibrous, then we want to be just making sure that these rabbits do actually have a high fibre content within the diet, so they are eating lots of hay.
We want to be trying to increase, increase that fluid throughput as well. So if they do have access to grass, we want to make sure that, you know, they have potentially more access to be grazing, making sure that they have a water bowl as opposed to a water bottle. And owners need to watch the droppings really closely just to make sure they're not starting to dehydrate, they're not starting to shrivel up, make sure that the rabbit is still, you know, eating normally, it is still active.
If it is still wanting to interact with its companion, if that's not the case, then yes, these rabbits do need to be seen. These are our stasis drop-ins, so these are the ones that are really, really misshapen. They're hard, they're, you know, they're dehydrated, they have, you know, minimal or no fibre contained within them.
There is no sort of uniform of shape to them. So this rabbit, you know, here, you know, at the top, these are the droppings that may start to be passed as these rabbits are starting to come out and get stasis, and they're therefore getting slightly bigger. Yeah, slightly more spherical, slightly more uniform in shape as you're sort of going on day by day.
And if you have rabbits who are hospitalised and when they're in good states, it's actually quite a good idea to be collecting their droppings, you know, once or twice a day just so that they can be they can be compared so that you can actually see that yes, this rabbit is actually coming out of stasis. And eat your secret trays, this is a really, really common problem in rabbits, and there are lots and lots of reasons why rabbits actually don't eat their secret traits drop. Things.
So sometimes it is diet related, sometimes it is a case that these rabbits are being overfed on their pellets, they're not eating enough fibre, they're eating inappropriate food items as well. Sometimes there are other causes for it, and we want to make sure that these are actually ruled out. We can't just assume that, yes, it is potentially a diet that is the problem for these rabbits.
So certainly, you know, a veterinary surgeon needs to rule out that there is a dental problem. We need to rule out that there is potentially some osteoarthritis in these rabbits. Obesity, that's, you know, one.
And that we can, you know, obviously sort of see for ourselves. If that is potentially the problem, then again, we want a weight loss plan, done for these rabbits. Sometimes they have skin folds around the perineum or they have a really, really large dewlap and they physically can't reach around to eat the secrettos as they're being passed.
Sometimes actually, there's more stress related issue for them. So it is stressful for them. Rabbits will only eat them when they're relaxed and when they're happy and when they feel safe.
So if they're in an environment whereby they've got, you know, cats or wildlife coming into the garden. Mm. They're not necessarily going to be eating them.
As I said, if it is diet related, we want to make sure that we reduce the amount of pellets. We want to make sure that we are only giving 1 level tablespoon of pellets per day, per kilo for these rabbits, making sure that these rabbits are eating lots and lots of fibre in their diet. So if the rabbit's not a big hay eater.
Speak to the owners about the different types of hay that they can actually be giving their rabbits, removing any treats that are being offered, so anything that, you know, is not essential for this rabbit's diet doesn't fall in. So this 85 10% 5% pyramid for them and checking all the different vegetables are being offered as well, so making sure they're not feeding lots and lots of carrots or fruits or or anything like that. So incorrect diet and health problems, now the an incorrect diet is a major, major cause of lots of different health problems for rabbits.
And the correct diet has a massive sort of impact on their health status as well. If we give rabbits the correct diet from a really, really early age, then we're setting them up. But, you know, a much better life and, you know, we're setting them up for potentially living much longer as well.
And we get both primary and secondary problems as well relating to an incorrect diet. So sometimes we have a primary problem, which therefore means that we therefore have a secondary problem due to that, and it's all down to the diet and these rabbits. So obesity, really common problem, you know, it is a major cause of why rabbits don't eat their secret trove droppings.
This therefore leads on to them clagging up around their. Back end, so these rabbits that are coming in, you know, they're not eating their secret trays but potentially the fact that they are sort of overweight, they get logged up around their back end, and therefore we get the rabbits that are coming in, especially during the warmer months which are we are now potentially into, and we get some of these flying strike rabbits unfortunately as well. Now obesity as well sort of leads on to conditions such as podo dermatitis, so these really, really painful sore hocks which once they get to an advanced stage, are actually really quite difficult to affect treatments for these rabbits.
So and it's painful for them, they're constantly on their feet, they're constantly hopping and moving around, and that is sort of inflicting pain on them. We also sort of get other issues as well. So when we have obese rabbits, we can get more dermatitis as a result of that.
So these rabbits might have really, really large, folds under the neck, with large dewlap again, which, you know, constantly is wet as well. And we might sort of get a really large sort of, you know, fat pad around their abdomen, which can sometimes lead to moist dermatitis. And a bee.
This again is a contributing factor to osteoarthritis in rabbits, especially as they're getting older. So we really need to make sure that these rabbits are not allowed to be overweight. Other issues that we get from an incorrect diet, we get horrendous dental problems from an incorrect diet.
So all of these, all of these pictures here, you know, rabbits that have got misaligned inside the teeth, which potentially leads to jawbone abscesses as well, you know, rabbits that have got in inside the teeth that are growing out of their, their mouths. And sometimes we can't see what's going on either, so we can't see, you know, towards the back of their mouths, these big sort of tongue lesions and spurs that are growing into their tongues or ones that are growing into the the cheeks of these rabbits. And again, most of the time this is down to an incorrect diet.
I mean, again, we get rabbits that, you know, they're coming in with their gut stasis and everything as well. And again, most of the time this is also down to a lack of fibre within the diet, rabbits being overfed on inappropriate food items. Now, we get some There are lots and lots of sort of sodgy bladders in rabbits, and it's not, you know, mostly down, it's not always down to sort of diet.
There are other contributing factors that often need to come together before we get to this point, but certainly diets that encourage rabbits to sit around, encourage them to become obese. Therefore encourages them to not, you know, urinate and empty their bladder as frequently as they could. And this is one reason why actually grass is preferable to feeding hay, because it actually means that they're physically taking on more fluid and they're therefore going to be emptying their bladder more frequently.
So when Any calcium that sits within that bladder isn't gonna be sitting there as long. So, you know, a diet, you know, that causes obesity has a direct and a knock-on effect on rabbit health and on welfare. So it also increases their anaesthetic risk.
Any animal that is obese on the ASA, guidelines is actually more of an anaesthetic risk than any animal that is an optimum weight. And again, you know, rabbits do pose a Slightly higher anaesthetic risk and we don't want to be increasing that further by operating on, you know, overweight rabbits. So we want to make sure that actually their weight is kept down to a correct level.
Increases their risk of hepatic lipiddosis, so while rabbits that come in that are in gut stasis, which is again often related back to diet, are much, much more likely to go into hepatic lipiddosis if they're already overweight. Increases the chance of cardiac disease as well, and we don't frequently see. Cardiac disease in rabbits, but it may just be that it is undiagnosed and it is actually more common actually we think.
And as we said, it increases their risk of osteoarthritis. So any animal that is physically carrying more weight than is healthy for them is putting more strain on their joints through daily life and therefore they're just simply not going to last as long. And it decreases their expected lifespan.
All of these, you know, animals have a reduced lifespan. It is no different for rabbits in any way, shape or form. And it has a direct, you know, negative impact on their welfare.
Rabbits that are obese, they struggle to get around. As I said, they're much, much more prone to so hockspodo dermatitis. They're much, much more prone to episodes of fly strike.
They physically can't keep themselves clean. Rabbits are really, really clean animals, and they don't like the sensation of actually being, unclean. So it does have a negative effect on their welfare.
What can we actually To do that to advise our clients on how to feed the rabbits correctly. We really want to get them through the door at, a very early point in their rabbit ownership. So we want to be getting them to be feeding their rabbits correctly as soon as they're coming in, whether that is.
It is for vaccinations, whether or not it is, just simply that ringing up to register their rabbit, anything like that we want to get them in and we want to make sure that we offer them the correct advice. Now, there is some really, really good advice and the rabbit Welfare Association of funds booklet which Which is called, on the hop, you can get copies of this if you are a practise, member of the Rabbit Welfare Association, or you can purchase copies from them, as well. There's lots and lots of really, really useful information and, and it's not just about diet, there's lots of other information about housing, about bonding of rabbits, and also about sort of healthcare for rabbits as well.
We want to make sure that we emphasise actually what is the correct diet and what isn't. And sometimes images are a lot more sort of shocking for owners, they actually just. Telling them, we want to make sure that we're actually sort of showing them potentially, you know, what we should and what we shouldn't be feeding our rabbits.
Obviously outline the potential health problems as well, that an incorrect diet can cause. So make sure that we say to them that, you know, it can certainly cause obesity, it can cause sorepos. It can therefore lead to fly strike.
It can lead to episodes of gut stasis and rabbits, and these are all really, really expensive actually for owners to treat as well. But the welfare implications of feeding. An incorrect diet as well, as well as the financial implications.
Implement rabbit clinics, or weight clinics for rabbits in your practise as well. So you might have sort of one nurse or a couple of nurses who are really, really interested in rabbits, and they can therefore be taking on these sort of weight clinics that might sort of be identified during consultations, or rabbits are coming in for episodes of gut stasis, anything like that, wherefore a weight loss programme is actually needed. Weight clinics work really.
Really, really well with rabbits. Once the initial sort of consultations have been done, we can look to do lots of things via telephone conversations. We can look to do things via email so that we don't physically have to be bringing the rabbit into the practise for every single time.
Owers can be weighing at home as well, and we can therefore do sort of everything else via sort of email or telephone just to reduce the stress of the rabbits coming into practise each time. Make sure that you have that feeding pyramid or some of the sort of, you know, infographics to hand. And that you can be showing owners, so that it is very, very obvious to them that the rough sort of percentages that they need to be feeding, that, you know, the vast majority of these rabbits diets need to be hay, they need to be grass, with a very, very small amount of pellets that is there to provide vital vitamins and vital minerals to them, and therefore what is good and what is bad to be feeding them from a fresh food point of view as well.
So the take home messages from this lecture are going to be that we have to make sure that the diet is correct for rabbits and it is. Imperative to their overall health and to their welfare as well, not just short term, long term as well. If we can get these rabbits on the correct diet when they are simply a couple months old, we can help to prevent so many health problems in rabbits.
It should mimic what is natural for wild rabbits to eat as much as is possible. It is clearly not possible to place domestic rabbits in vast acres of land. That is not obviously possible, but what we can do for them is mimic.
That diet as much as naturally possible. We can, you know, make sure that they're eating grass. Owners can certainly be looking at what wild plants they can be going to forage and pick for their rabbits.
They may need to make sure that, you know, they're identifying them correctly. They need to make sure that they've not been sprayed with any form of pesticides, and they need to make sure that they are washed properly and the rabbits are fully vaccinated before actually they are actually given. But certainly, you know, it is a way of getting a natural diet in rabbits.
We need to make sure that they are given lots and lots of hay. And fresh grass whenever that is available. If owners don't have a garden that the rabbits can raise, and they can look to be growing grass as well, it's not impossible to be offering rabbits grass.
Consider this life stage feeding for rabbits as well. So don't just think about it for cats and for dogs. Consider it for all of your rabbits that are coming through the drawer as well.
Make sure that feeding is really, really fun and it has a point to it as well. So make sure that rabbits have to forage, make sure that they have to dig around in piles of hay, potentially. So they get the pellets, you know, the pellets can be scattered in hay.
You can think about also, hanging sort of vegetables from bits of string from the top of their enclosures so that they physically have to be standing on their back legs. The only, as I said, the only sort of, you know, thing to stopping people is sort of their imagination. There's lots of things that you can think about.
Make sure those percentages are kept correct as well. So make sure you really do stick to that 85, 10% and 5%. And sort of as I said, if you do suddenly identify that you have got rabbits who Who would benefit from a weight loss programme, make sure that those are implemented in practise as well for rabbits, so that we can get them back to the weight that we they should be and so that we don't actually start to get these primary and secondary problems that are often related to an incorrect diet and potentially obesity in our rabbits.