Our Vet With More Interesting Findings.

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