Rabbit Food
In this day and age, with all of the good-quality hay and specially-crafted feeds available, it is relatively easy to ensure that your rabbits have all of the vitamins and minerals they need. The bulk of your rabbits’ diets should be hay, supplemented by dry pellets and fresh food. It’s very important to give your rabbits a balanced diet each day to help them maintain their activity levels and dental health. For help and advice on meeting all your rabbits’ catering needs, read on.
This section contains help and advice on meeting your rabbits’ basic dietary requirements, providing food for juvenile rabbits, introducing your rabbits to a new diet, and, perhaps most importantly, understanding what your pets can and can’t eat. If you’re in any doubt, it’s best to keep it away from your pets. Rabbits have a very different digestive system to ours, and so it’s preferable to be very cautious and not to risk anything you’re not too sure about.
Once you know how, it's not difficult to provide your rabbit with all the foodstuffs they need.
What Do Rabbits Eat?
Although rabbits have relatively simple needs, they require the following key food types in order to stay healthy. In no particular order, these are:
- Dry Food
- Fresh Food
- Hay/Grass
- Unlimited supply of clean, fresh water, and would benefit from a salt lick, and a chew.
Meadow hay should form the main staple of your pets’ diet. Wild rabbits get almost all of their nutrition from the grass that they eat, and so it’s good to mimic this when keeping pet rabbits in captivity. Not only this, but it helps keep their teeth at a manageable level. Most importantly, without hay, rabbits’ digestive systems struggle to function properly. It really is an essential part of their diet.
Dry foods are crucial in making sure that your rabbits have all the necessary vitamins and minerals. They’ve been specially formulated so that they contain lots of different essential nutrients, so they are a really important part of any pet rabbit’s diet. We sell an excellent dry pellet option at online and instore.
Fresh foods are important too. Fresh (not frozen or damp) leafy foods should be provided to your pets on a daily basis. Be a little careful about which you offer, however, as some fruits and vegetables can do more harm than good. Have a look at our Rabbit Food List below for more information.
It is worth mentioning that if you are bringing your rabbits home for the first time, then it’s really crucial that you ask who you’re buying them from for some of the food that they’re currently being kept on. Altering a rabbit’s diet needs to be done slowly and gradually so that they can get used to any changes that you make. Doing so too quickly can cause serious stomach upsets, so keep a close eye on your rabbits during this time.
Baby Rabbit Food
Your pet rabbits are mammals, which means that their mothers will provide them with milk containing all that they need to grow and thrive. That is, until they are about seven weeks old - at this point, she’ll stop suckling them and they will transition onto solid foods. This can be quite a tricky process, and during this time it’s best to be careful and not too adventurous with your young rabbits’ diets.
Once baby rabbits are about three weeks old, they may try to eat tiny amounts of the pellet feed their mother eats. By the time they have been weaned, this, alongside hay, should be all that they are eating. Introducing fresh food should be done very gradually, and with small amounts at first. Many people recommend that you don’t start introducing fresh foods to a baby rabbit's diet until they are at least three months old.
It's wise to be very careful when introducing new foods to rabbits - especially young ones.
Rabbit Dry Foods
There are a wide variety of rabbit food options, from pellets to mixes. Dry foods are important parts of a rabbit’s diet as they supplement both hay and fresh food, providing a lot of nutrition and helping to ensure your rabbits’ bodies have all they need.
One of the most important things to remember about purchasing dry foods is to get one that is specially tailored to rabbits’ needs. This will have the vitamins and minerals necessary for this species to thrive. Purchasing something meant for another animal can be dangerous, as what is right for one may not be right for another, and even could be harmful! There are plenty of good rabbit-focussed options to choose from, so it’s best to make your selection from one of these.
Another thing to remember about dry foods is that if you want to try your rabbit on something new, you’ll need to do so extremely gradually, as quick transitions can cause digestive upsets. This caution needs to be exercised throughout a pets’ life, but perhaps most stringently when they are first brought to your home. Whatever they have been fed beforehand, you’ll need a good supply of it so that you can gradually wean them off of the old, slowly enough so that they can adjust to the new.
Rabbit Food List
Rabbits have quite sensitive digestive systems, so it’s wise to stick to a few select foods when judging what to feed them. Although this list is not comprehensive, it should give you a good, general idea - it could also be a useful page to print out and keep somewhere in your kitchen.
Rabbits love their food and enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables as part of a balanced diet. The main part of a rabbit’s diet should be unlimited amounts of fresh hay (preferably Timothy or Meadow Hay), grass, and plenty of clean water available.
When introducing any new food, always do so slowly over a few weeks to avoid digestive upsets. Rabbits, like humans are all different and as such some may be unable to tolerate certain foods. Only give a small amount and wait for 24 hours, if your rabbit produces soft poo, withdraw the food and try with something else after everything has settled back to normal. Allow 5 - 7 days before making any other additions. Always wash food first and don't feed plants from roadsides or that contain pesticide.
Rabbits can eat a number of different foods, but be sure to introduce anything that is new very slowly.
Rabbit Dry Food Dispensers
Although rabbits need fresh food and unlimited hay each day, their pellet needs can be met by a timed food dispenser.
These may be a little big for most hutches, but house rabbits may be able to use them.
We strongly recommend putting your rabbit’s hay in a hay dispenser. Although this sounds complicated, in reality it often simply takes the form of a little rack that sits in your rabbits’ hutch, one which you keep topped up with plenty of tasty hay.
Dispensers make sure that the hay your rabbits are eating is nice and clean – it stops them eating their bedding, which not only what they use to keep warm, but could have been used as a rabbit toilet! Putting hay in the dispenser ensures that it’s kept clean. Dispensers are especially useful if you want to use specialty hay options, such as nutritionally-fortified hay. Putting this material in the dispenser ensures that it’s kept separate from the bedding hay, allowing you to bypass it easily when you come to clean, and ensuring that your rabbits won’t get it dirty.
It's often useful to store your rabbits' hay provisions in a special dispenser.
