Our Vet With More Interesting Findings.

My vet has been on another bunny course and informed Dawn the other day that they were examining the teeth of Wild bunnies. The findings were inredible, their back teeth are almost non existent. They are there but they are so worn down from conistent grazing on the correct, natural foods that they literally don't have any dental issues. She said that even in healthy domestic buns, their molars are very prominent.

It starkly drives the point home that diet is the key to teeth. We are seeing more and more dental bunnies come through our doors at the RSPCA. I am going to try and devise some way of putting this into an information piece for the boards at work to try and educate the public quickly and easily on the imoortance of hay hay hay.

I find this very interesting. I'm not out to contradict here (I'm just curious )but I've had my little lady for 10.5 years, she has never ever been a hay eater and yet has only had 3 dentals in her whole life.

The first one was only done for good measure as she was out for spaying anyway and the vet said the third time that they weren't actually all that bad.

Any ideas why she seems to be an exception the the rule? Just lucky maybe?

I would guess lucky hun. My old man chance was a non hay eater and was having dentals every 8 weeks sometimes. there are bound to be exceptions to the rule but it just shows that nature has it right and when we domesticate we can mess things up.

Every 8 weeks! Holy moly!

I must be one of the lucky ones then And I'm glad of that because I'm not sure she'd survive another GA

I don't know how he ever did. He was called the bionic bunny. He passed away is summer in his sleep aged around 12 we think.

I remember when he died. Bless him

Daisy is a dental bun despite eating lots of hay, we can only go 12 months max.

Following on from the article in Hopping Mad - what have us humans done to buns.

Mine eat tons of hay and their yeeth are fine. The other day the vet was impressed with Paris teeth nearly 6 abd never had any tooth problems in her lifetime.

I know Katie it is awful and we do it to all secies. We play god and cause problems. Ironically though, we have created some marvellous breeds.

[b]My little hooligans have got through 3 bails in a 3 months and loads of grass etc but I will start checking that they cleen there teeth before they go to bed.

That's really interesting about the wildies with their teeth. I can see how it is very true - Josephine's case is a perfect example of how crucial diet is to dental issues

Josephine had an interesting experience with dentals. I bought her from the pet shop and she needed a dental (for her molars) at the age of 1.5.

Josephine is a mini lop with a very small head. At the time, her diet was only veggies and hay. As the hay was unlimited, the vet and I put it down to genetics - there wasn't much I could do.

Since then (she is now approaching 4 ) she has had regular dental check ups with the vet, but her teeth have been fine and haven't grown back.

The difference? Bruce came to join us, and was (and still is) a very portly bunny. To make Bruce lose weight, I now feed them less veggies overall, and I regularly go into periods where I only feed them hay.

Josephine's never had weight issues. My vet thinks the key to this is that pre-Bruce she was eating veggies before hay - and once she was full on veggies, she would stop eating, instead of going onto the hay. Because she would stop eating when she was full, she wouldn't get fat (so I didn't know to stop feeding her as many veggies) but she wouldn't eat enouigh hay to ground down her teeth naturally.

Post-Bruce (and his strict diet), Josephine can't get completely full on veggies anymore, so she is forced to eat more hay, and ground down her teeth naturally.

Nobody had spoken to me about denying the rabbit veggies in order to force them to eat hay before. It seems to have been critical in Josephine's case. And luckily for her, drastic diet changes are managing the genetic inclination towards dental problems. The only bad effect is that she has lost weight which she really doesn't have to lose, so I have to sneak her treats to get her to stay at a normal weight.

That is the trouble, wildies are naturally very slender but it goes with their frame. Hay is definately key but looks so boring that we want to give them something better!

And their ability to beg as if they are starving to death is too much to resist!

NSD wrote:And their ability to beg as if they are starving to death is too much to resist!

I have one of those! She also trashes her house if I don't feed her something other than hay I'd love to give her hay only, but she's a stroppy so and so if I don't give her morning pellets

My Bruce is a dental bun and at our old house he at one stage had his molars done quarterly and they seemed to be getting worse as he got older. However when we loved there he had to be put out on the grass and brought back in again. In out new house he has access to the garden via the cat flap whenever I am home. The garden is secure so he does not have to be penned. The upshot being he sends more time in the garden and since he has not had to be in a run he actually spends more time grazing. His teeth are back to being done about once a year. I can only assume it is to do with eating in a more natural way. It has fascinated me as well the way they graze. I had to remove all the gravel in the garden here to create a lawn and the ground is not great so the grass grows quite healthy in places and more like coastal grass in others. The buns eat a little of the lush grass but favour the poorer grass. It made me wonder whether this has an effect on teeth.

Wow, that's fascinating Charlotte At the RWAF conf. Frances HB did a talk on stasis and abdominal obstruction. She'd been to the Iberian Peninsular to photograph buns in their place of origin. What was really interesting is the absolutely 'terrible' (as we'd see it) quality of what they live on - it's basically scrub, hardly any grass, dried scrub and bushes, dried grasses, and that was IT! They have one rainy season, and then the buns will eat fresh shoots, and fruit that falls off trees, but that's all.

When I then thought about all the stuff we give them, it really made me think. Even people who are considering a pellet free diet are always cautioned against making sure the rabbit has a balanced nutritional diet, and providing supplementary pellets to ensure that, but I have to say, this is 'Plums' and I think another expression of anthropomorphism - let's face it, dried and concentrated foods didn't exist until mass breeding for fur and meat came about, so if that hadn't happened, what would we feed them? Grass, leaves, occassional fruit and veg.

Frances went into great depth on the process of caecotrophy, and basically, the rabbit can convert the most rubbish foods into what it needs - It is not the quality of what goes IN that matters at all, it's keeping the gut healthy with plenty of coarse fibre - without that, then the caecum gets in trouble, and the quality of what comes OUT is affected , and then we start altering the diet, quickly, to try and remedy that - not good either.

The problem with pet buns is that they are fed these high calorie foods as soon as they are able to eat them, and so they 'learn' that this is food, and like a child, will turn their nose up at what they are supposed to eat, in favour of what is effectively, a learned behaviour - pellets, muesli etc. So pet buns are stuffed (no pun intended) from the outset, so what can you do? ... Train , clicker train, whatever you can do to bring high fibrous foods back into the frame as the norm.

That said, Rabbits adapt to their environment, and here (UK), they will eat a large range of foods in the wild, because there are a large range of foods available. So they choose to eat these, and Anne says, enjoy the variety, but all the foods they do eat are still highly fibrous.

Very interesting Jay. Thanks