Fat Rabbit Diet?

Question

Hello. I have a fat rabbit. I admit it, he is fat. I need DRASTIC change it his diet, right now i have pellets avaible 24/7 and give him vegetables daily. I know to give him hay 24/7 and not pellets. What I need from you, is HOW MUCH PELLETS, HOW MUCH VEGETABLES, AND HOW MUCH FRUIT DO I GIVE MY RABBIT, AND HOW MANY TIMES A DAY. DO I ONLY GIVE HIM FOOD ONCE A DAY OR WHAT. PLEASE REMEMBER A RABBITS HEALTH IS COUNTING ON A GOOD ANSWER. THANKS!!!!!!!!!

Answer 1

He needs to have pellets available to him all the time, but cut down on the veggies that are high in carbs-like carrots and such. Give him plenty of dark green, leafy veggies instead. Also take him out to play and run around. Your bunny needs exercise too in order to stay healthy. Good luck to you and your rabbit.

Answer 2

Rabbits can and do get fat. It's just as unhealthy for rabbits to get fat as it is for humans. A baby rabbit should only get about a Tablespoon of pellets a day. An adult rabbit needs about 3 tablespoons. Very small amounts. The rest of the rabbit's diet should be hay. You can treat the bunny with leafy green vegetables, but keep high sugar treats to a minimum. Apples, carrots, grapes, raisins, etc. should all be treated as candy and only given in very small amounts. Baby bunnies, just like baby humans need time to "potty train". Usually, they do it themselves, but they needs some time to settle into their new homes and decide where to "go". Give her a week or 2, and she'll pick a corner. Rabbits are poop machines. No way around it. Some of them don't seem to notice they're going. It's all part of the wonderful world of bunnies.

Answer 3

Hi, has a vet told you that your rabbit is too fat? It might be good to get a vet's opinion before you change anything.
Here is a good link with tips on dieting for your bunny:
http://homepage.mac.com/mattocks/morfz/rabcare.html#dieting
It is important to make any dietary changes slowly and it is OK to give your rabbits pellets, just limit the amount and unlimited hay is great. It is good to give your bunny a variety of grass hays everyday and limit the treats, of course. For now, I would eliminate fruit or really limit the amount (ours get less than 1/4 tsp a day, but they love even that little bit)
oes your rabbit have the opportunity to run around every day? Exercise will help too.

Answer 4

Make it easier on yourself. Rabbits don't really need fresh vegetables. They do fine on plain pellets. They definitely don't need fruit; since they can't climb, they'd rarely, if ever, get fruit in the wild, and they don't need the sugar. A few leafy greens once in a while as a treat would be great. They love anything with a fresh texture, i.e. anything that's not hay or pellets. They really have simple tastes. Cilantro, Romaine lettuce, or parsley would be great for rewards and good-will gifts.
A twelve-pound rabbit can thrive on one cup of plain alfalfa pellets per day, even when he doesn't get any hay at all. Most pet rabbits are considerably smaller, so they'll need even less. Look on the package for feeding recommendations. For an average, they need 1 to 1.5 ounces of food per pound of body weight.
If you're feeding a fancy pellet mix, with anything but alfalfa pellets in it, switch to a plain one. Unless your rabbit is pregnant or nursing, all it needs is basic grass food. You can also get timothy-based pellets, which are lower-calorie.
As for hay, if you're feeding alfalfa, switch so something lower-calorie, with more fiber, like timothy, grass hay, or oat hay. Alfalfa hay is almost the same as pellets.
It would also be helpful to get him a bigger cage (expensive) and/or put a hurdle in the middle of his cage between his food and water, so he has to be more active as he moves around. If you can, rabbit-proof a room and let him out for supervised play.
Weigh him every few days, and keep a record. You don't want him to lose weight too fast, and you want to make sure he's losing weight at all. It might help to convert his weight loss to percentages. A loss of 1% over a few days is fine. A loss of 5% is fairly drastic; a loss of 10% is unhealthy, and he'll need more calories.

Answer 5

the amount doesn't matter really. allow him to eat rabbit pellets (not special rabbit diet mixes) and grass hay(NOT ALFALFA!) 24/7. his diet will not change how fat he is unless you starve him-which i wouldn't reccommend if you love/like him-it will change how active he is. give him a mixture of fruit and veggies a different amount each day-ex. one day give him 2 apple slices and a handful of lettuce, the next day give him 3 carrots and a few small slices of banana. trust me, my rabbit is happy, healthy, and VERY fat! he loves his peas and apples though! don't give him orange(s), it's too acidy for them! a grape 1-3 times a week is okay, just think about how much sugar they have and don't over do it! a few everyonce in awhile is okay, though! it took my rabbit a few hours to figure out how to eat grapes because every time he would try to bite into it it would roll away and he would chase it. so it's good entertainment for him as well as a treat! blue berries are good too and they're not as sugary as grapes.

Answer 6

hi there... this will not help you a lot because this is not a direct-answer... but there are good web sites with the measures for a healthy rabbit diet, and the measures depends on the rabbit weight or age... so try searching for this type of web sites...
I have a rabbit too and she is getting very fat!!! so i have to search for the rabbit diet too...

Answer 7

try to find reduced fat pellets, give him lots of exercise so let him out a couple times DO NOT give ur rabbit banannas, and give him leafy greens

Answer 8

I've been raising and showing rabbits for going on 25 years and I studied animal nutrition in college so I can answer the question more knowledgably than most.

A rabbit doesn't really get fat from how much they eat, but more so from what they eat.

First, don't give your rabbit vegetables or fruit. They can give your rabbit diahrrea, especially if given in excess. And they could also be part of the reason your rabbit is getting fat.

Secondly, watch what kind of hay that you give it. Hays are normally divided into two main types: wide-leafed and stemmy. Wide leafed hays consist of hays that have wide leaves such as clover hay and alfalfa hay. These hays have more protein in them and if given too much could cause your rabbit to get fat or get diahrrea. Stemmy hays are hays that mainly consist of just the stem and normally have small narrow leaves such as timothy hay or orchard grass hay. Stemmy hays are high in fiber and are good to give to a rabbit that is fat.

How much you give your rabbit doesn't really affect your rabbit being fat. A rabbit will normally stop eating once it is full. It won't gorge itself like a lot of other animals will. A good rule of thumb though for the amount you feed it is to monitor how much feed it eats in 24 hours. Feed it pellets once a day. At the end of 24 hours your rabbit should just barely clean up all of the pellets in its feeder. This isn't done so much to monitor the amount of feed it eats but to make sure the feed in the feeder is fresh. A rabbit won't eat stale pellets very well at all.

The amount of feed a rabbit will eat depends mainly on the adult size of its breed. A small breed rabbit (3-7 pounds) will eat about 4 ounces or a 2/3 food measuring cup of rabbit pellets a day. A large breed rabbit (8-11 pounds) will eat about 6 ounces or a 1 cup measuring cup a day. Some of your really large breeds (12 pounds and over) will eat about 6 ounces of feed a day or about 1 1/3 cups of rabbit pellets. You can use a dietetic scale if you want to measure the weight of the feed.

You don't have to feed hay or add other supplements to the feed. Animal nutritionists develop the rabbit feed so that it will properly meet their nutritional needs. And if you look at the ingredients they get plenty of hay in their rabbit pellets. Most all of the green you see in their rabbit pellets is alfalfa hay. That's why its near the top of the list of ingredients. The closer an ingredient is to the top of the list the larger percentage in weight it makes up of the feed.

Now I want to talk about selecting the proper feed. There are a few things you want to look at as far as the feed quality. First compare the amounts of fat and crude protein of the rabbit feeds that are available. If you ware wanting to keep your bunny from getting fat then look for a feed that doesn't have a lot of fat or crude protein in it. In rabbit feed, fat is used as a binder to help form the rabbit pellet. If too little fat is in the feed the feed will tend to want to crumble apart because the fat helps hold it together. If too much fat is in the feed, then it will make your rabbit fat because fat goes to fat. Crude protein is protein that your rabbit's digestive system can't process. So you don't want a lot of crude protein in the rabbit feed. Next, look at where corn is on the list of ingredients. It is often a cheap source of protein and can cause your rabbit to get fat. It doesn't hurt if corn is listed in the ingredients of your feed but you don't want it listed near the top, because remember...the closer to the top it is listed, the larger percentage it makes up in the feed.

Protein and Fiber:
One thing you will always hear rabbit breeders talk about is the percentage of protein and fiber that the rabbit gets. On the front of the bag or on the back or on a tag at the bottom of the bag it should list two numbers. The first is the percentage of protein and the second is the percentage of fiber. Rabbit feeds are normally broken down into four groups: baby/starter formula, family formula, show formula, and wool formula. The two you want to look at are family formula and show formula. Show formula will normally have less protein (about 15%) and more fiber (about 20%). A common show formula number you should see on the bag is 15-20. The 15 states that it has 15% protein and the 20 states that it has 20% fiber. If you are wanting to keep your rabbit from getting fat, giving it show formula is a good way to do that, however be careful giving it to growing rabbits. If you run your hand over the rabbit's back and it feels bony over the back then the show formula may not be giving your rabbit enough protein to grow properly. In that instance, it may be better to feed your rabbit a family formula which is normally around a 17-17 or 16-18 mix. I prefer the 17-17 mix. A 16-18 mix will tend to be higher in fat and crude protein sometimes and it doesn't provide as much protein.

Checking how fat your rabbit is:
To check how fat your rabbit is, grab it's hide just behind the neck on the left and right sides. The more hide you can grab and the looser the hide is, the fatter your rabbit is. You don't check how fat the rabbit is by the weight of your rabbit, but by how loose the hide is. The majority of fat in a rabbit resides right underneath the hide. That is why the more fat it has, the more loose the hide will be.

Lastly, don't try starving your rabbit. Especially don't if you are trying to get it less fat so you can get your female bred. Starving a rabbit does nothing but harm to the rabbit. If your female/doe is having trouble getting bred because she is too fat, starving her won't help at all. A doe that is overly fat will develop fat around the ovaries. That fat around the ovaries can't be gotten rid of no matter how much you starve your rabbit or what diet you feed it to try getting rid of it. That fat around the ovaries is what also can keep the doe from being able to conceive. If she does happen to get bred, then the fat can cause another problem: ketosis. Ketosis is a disease that kills the pregnant rabbit just before it is due to have babies. The fat in the rabbit's body is broken down during the pregnancy. This fat breaks down into a toxin in the rabbit's body. The toxin reaches lethal levels near the end of the gestation period/pregnancy and normally kills her a day or so before she is due to have the babies.

Answer 9

if he is a rabbit who is under 5 pounds give him half a cup of food once a day and give him alot of hay. you can also give him a handfull of greens.

Answer 10

Not too much greens ad 100g of pellets everyday.