Overweight rabbit?

Question

Any ideas how to help my 9 month old rabbit loose a little weight?

the vet said she needs to lose at least 1.5lbs. he said give her less pellets a day but it doesnt seem to be helping at all!

My rabbit is a mini rex!

Answer 1

I mean no offense, but I would have to disagree with a lot of whant devlishblue eyes says. I do not know what he typically feeds his rabbits, however in my experience, many breeders feed their rabbits at the lowest cost possible. Therefore many of them feed a diet consisting mainly of pellets, little to no fresh veggies and some hay.

Your rabbit should have an unlimited amount of hay. I don't want to say it doesn't do anything to effect the weight of your bun, but it makes less of an impact than pellets do. For a bun your age, it is time for Timothy Hay. If you bun is on alfalfa, mix the timothy and alfalfa, decreasing the alfalfa and increasing the timothy daily. It should take a about 10 days to make this transition.

If you feed a set amount of pellets everyday, slowly decrease that amount until you reach a acceptable amount. For example, if you normally feed 1 cup of pellets throughout the day, say in the morning, and leave them for the day. Divide that amount in half and feed it twice a day. This will encourage your bun to graze on the hay and veggies (I'll get to that) through out the day. Gradually decrease that amount every other day. By gradually- it should take probably 2 weeks to get down to your goal feeding amount. The average weight for a mini-rex is 4-5 lbs. For a bun that size, your goal feeding amount should be 1/2 cup. But this 1/2 cup should be divided into two 1/4 cup servings, morning and evening.

Is your bun eating fresh veggies on a daily basis? If not, he should be. The goal amount for his weight would be about 2 cups of fresh veggies daily. Again, you will have to introduce this to him slowly. I would start out with just a few peices of leafy greens (say the size of a spinach leaf) a day for a few days, then a few more and so on. Indroducing the veggies too quickly will surely give him the a poopy behind.

As a note, your pelleted food should be a high quality food without all that "junk" in it. This is what I feed my bun, which my vet OK'd. Though when he was a little "chubby" the vet advised me it would be best to pick out the orange things and use them as a treat. (1-2 daily). http://www.petsmart.com/global/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441777395&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302047887&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=2534374302023695&bmUID=1180727289408&itemNo=1&In=Small+Pet&N=2047887&Ne=2 You can get it only at Petsmart.


Remember corn encourages 'bulking' up as it is given to animals (rabbits, cows, horses) in order to build fat- with horses, mainly to help them stay warm in the winter.

You should also increase the excersise time that your bun has. Laying around just stores calories. If your bun is in a cage, he probably needs more room to move around freely. I suggest buying a puppy play enclosure ( http://www.petsmart.com/global/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441781990&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302035803&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=2534374302023689&bmUID=1180727599219&itemNo=4&In=Dog&N=2035803&Ne=2 ) and use that as a cage instead (that is what my bun is in). This is assuming your bun lives indoors. It would not be a safe enclosure outside.

Answer 2

I have a rabbit and i feed it rabbit pellets because it's a food diet. You should buy a book at the pet store about rabbits and what foods it should consume to remain at a healthy state.

Answer 3

Your vet may need to learn a little more about rabbits.

Don't judge your rabbit as being fat based upon its weight. You can have a heavy rabbit and it can be perfectly healthy. On the other hand you could also have a light weight rabbit and it be totally fat. My point is that you shouldn't direclty correlate weight with being fat when it comes to rabbits.

For a good starting point as far as feeding your rabbit goes. Feed your rabbit just what it will eat in 24 hours. Feed it rabbit pellets once a day. By the end of 24 hours that feed should just barely be all gone. A Mini Rex should eat about 4 ounces of food a day. That means if you weighed the pellets on a dietary scale they would weigh about 4 ounces. This equates to about a two-thirds baking cup of pellets.

Rabbits unlike a lot of other animals will stop eating once they are full. The main reason why you control how much they eat is not to prevent them from getting fat but to avoid the feed from going stale inside their bowl or feeder. Rabbits do not like to eat stale food.

Since weight does not correlate to a rabbit being fat, you may be wondering how you can tell your rabbit is fat. Here's how:

Grab your rabbit around the back or sides of the neck and see how much loose hide you can grab. The looser the hide is the fatter your rabbit is. This works because the majority of fat that a rabbit accumulates is accumulated directly under the hide. The rest normally accumulates around the internal organs. Normally the easiest place to tell is right around the neck/shoulder area. Sometimes this is also exhibited by a large dewlap (flap of skin) under the chin of female rabbits. Normally the bigger the dewlap the fatter the doe.

So how do you control your rabbit from getting fat? You control it not by how much it eats or by how much it excercises, but by WHAT it eats.

To avoid your rabbit getting fat, you have to avoid giving it foods that are high in energy. That means avoiding giving it things like fruits, vegetables, and snacks. Not only is it good to avoid these things to keep your rabbit from getting fat, but by avoiding them you can also help prevent your rabbit from getting diahrrea and from loosing fur quiet so easily. When a rabbit's diet is too high in energy it has a greater chance of getting fat, getting diahrrea, and blowing its coat.

Also compare the amount of fat in the rabbit pellets you buy with other rabbit pellets. The amount of fat should not be over 3%. Also compare the amount of crude protein with other rabbit pellets. Crude protein is protein that your rabbit's digestive system cannot use. So you don't want a feed with a lot of crude protein. Also look at the ingredients of your rabbit pellets. You don't want corn near the top of the ingredients list. Corn is a high energy ingredient. The closer it is to the top of the list, the larger the portion is that it takes up in the feed.

I raise New Zealand rabbits and show them nationally. New Zealands can very easily get fat. And in good competition, if your New Zealand rabbit is fat or blowing it's coat, it can really hurt how your rabbit places. Feed in that regard is very important. In competition, fat rabbits are often referred to as being "soft in flesh".

If you treat your rabbit regulary (once every 1-2 months) for parasites such as fur mites and fleas with Ivomec and your rabbit molts fairly regularly, then your feed may be too high in energy. I've used one or two feeds that were that way and had to switch. Too much energy in the feed increases the metabolism of the hair follicles on the rabbit, which causes the rabbit to molt or produce new fur to replace the old fur.

Your rabbit feed should contain about 16-17% protein.

To decrease the energy you feed your rabbit. You can slightly reduce the amount of feed you feed your rabbit below what it will eat in one day. But if you do that replace it with a little timothy hay. Timothy hay is high in fiber and will help in that regard. Replacing part of the feed with timothy hay will decrease the energy your rabbit consumes and also increase the amount of fiber it consumes.

If you just work at reducing the amount of feed it eats and reducing its weight, all you may be doing is reducing the amount of muscle the rabbit has. If that is the case, when you run your hand over the rabbit's back, the back will feel boney. Once you get a rabbit to the point where it feels boney over the back, it is hard if not almost impossible to get the rabbit so where it no long feels like that. The reason it feels like that is because it was not fed enough or quit eating and lost muscle.

Answer 4

I would ask the vet what a rabbit if that age should be eating. But are you sure it is over weight?

Answer 5

Take it for a walk and quit feeding it so much....Wait, a rabbit can become over weight eating frickin carrots and lettuce?

Answer 6

well baby rabbits eat a differnt kind of hay if your baby rabbit eats alfalfa hay that is the fattining hay for babys! adult rabbits eat timithy hay which is less fattining.

also have your rabbit eat more timithy hay and less pellots

Answer 7

what kind of breed of rabbit is it? this answer would help alot

Answer 8

well, buy diet bunny food and start feeding it a little less everyday.