Hay and straw for your bunnies
The diet pyramid for rabbits
Hay and straw are the most important diet you can give your rabbit. It must live mainly from hay and straw, and in fact 80% of its diet must consist of hay and straw. As this diet pyramid shows (shown below), it should actually only have 10% green a day and this also applies in the summer, although you could quickly be tempted by all the delicious grass that you think the rabbit should have.
No, it is definitely not a good idea to replace hay and straw with grass, even in summer. We made this mistake once and it had consequences, so now we will tell you how important it is to give as much hay and straw as possible. If the rabbit gets too much grass, it can risk getting too much gas in the stomach, which can result in GI Stasis, and it can be fatal for the rabbit. As a general rule, the rabbit should eat a pile of tightly packed hay / straw that is the size of it itself. This gives a better visual view of how much hay and straw we are actually talking about. We talked to our vet about this, and she strongly recommended that the diet should contain a lot of straw and hay and that grass should in no way replace hay.
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| Food pyramid for rabbits |
Cause they have to eat so much hay and straw
What happens when the rabbit gets air in the stomach is that the sugar in fruits and vegetables (herbs and grass from the garden) ferment in the stomach of the rabbit. Since the digestive system of the rabbit mainly functions by digesting the food as it digests, so too much air can be created in its intestinal system which it cannot get rid of. This applies to foods with very high sugar content or if the food contains a lot of starch like corn, beans and some cereals such as barley. If too much air gets in the stomach and it develops into Drum Disease, also called GI Stasis, then you should immediately call your veterinarian for this can be fatal.
Our experiences on the subject
As written in a previous post here on the blog, the rabbits were quite ill some time ago, and this is probably due to a lot of sugar in the grass. So they didn't get enough hay and straw, but that episode changed our perspective, and now the rabbits live on hay and straw, and they only get green once in a while. However, they also get their normal rabbit pellets, which contain some important vitamins and minerals, which are also very important, but these should only be given 15-17 grams per rabbit per day for a dwarf rabbit, so it is not much. Our rabbits also get a little "dessert" after their rabbit pellets, which consists of lettuce, pepper and carrots, but they don't get much of this.
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| Molly found yummy Timothy hay |
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| Suddenly Sandy loves straw |
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