Feeding your rabbit: why hay comes before everything else

Good quality hay should make up the large majority of what a rabbit eats in a day, and it must always be available, without any limit on quantity. It is not a cheap filler: it is the food that keeps teeth and gut healthy at the same time. A rabbit that chews hay for many hours wears its dental crowns down evenly and keeps the gut moving, avoiding the two most frequent and most costly problems of the species.

For adult rabbits choose a grass hay, such as timothy or oat hay, green and fragrant, not dusty or yellowed. Alfalfa, rich in calcium and protein, suits growing youngsters and pregnant or nursing does, but in a healthy adult it tends to promote urinary stones and should be used only as an occasional extra, never as the base.

Turning the principles into daily habits helps avoid mistakes. This table gives an order of magnitude for a healthy adult rabbit, to be adapted to weight, activity and your vet's advice.

The right pellet is made of pressed fibre alone, in little cylinders that all look the same. Mixes where the rabbit can pick out coloured pieces, seeds, puffed corn and flakes should be avoided, because the animal selects the sweeter, fattier parts and leaves the fibre, drifting into a nutritional imbalance even though the bowl looks full.

Leafy greens add variety, water and micronutrients. The rule is to offer several in rotation, introduce new ones one at a time and in small amounts, and watch the droppings over the following days.

• Suitable in rotation: dandelion leaves, coriander, basil, parsley in moderation, savoy cabbage leaves, endive, escarole, celery with its leaves, the dark outer leaves of leaf lettuce.
• In measured amounts for calcium or sugars: carrot and carrot tops, cabbage and broccoli which in excess can cause gas, spinach rich in oxalates.
• To avoid: watery, poor iceberg lettuce, potato and its leaves, garlic and onion, avocado, raw beans and pulses, rhubarb, seeds and oily dried fruit.
• Never lawn grass treated with weedkiller or picked at the roadside, and never ornamental plants whose safety you are not certain of.

One thing that surprises many owners is that a rabbit produces two types of droppings. The hard, dry pellets are the true waste. The caecotrophs, by contrast, are soft, shiny clusters, produced mostly during rest, which the rabbit takes directly from the anus and eats again.

This behaviour is not a vice but a physiological need: caecotrophs contain vitamins and protein made by gut bacteria, which the rabbit recovers this way. If you find uneaten caecotrophs scattered around, often squashed, it usually means the diet holds too much carbohydrate and sugar and too little fibre: the excess makes the rabbit produce more than it eats. It is an early sign of an unbalanced diet, to correct before bigger problems appear.

In a rabbit the gut must move without pause. When it slows or stops, a condition called ileus or gastrointestinal stasis, the situation quickly becomes serious. It is not a simple upset stomach: it is one of the most common and insidious emergencies of the species, and timing matters a great deal.

1. The rabbit stops or nearly stops eating and drinking, often suddenly.
2. The droppings become smaller, sparser or disappear entirely within a few hours.
3. The animal crouches, motionless, sometimes grinding its teeth in pain or pressing its belly to the ground.
4. The abdomen looks bloated or tense and the rabbit withdraws, refusing even the foods it usually loves.