Rabbit Diet and Nutrition #1

Feeding Your Pet Bunny for a Long Healthy Life

Most people think that rabbit pellets were especially formulated for their pet rabbit, but this is not the case. Pellets were originally formulated as a convenient and economical way to promote quick growth and weight gain in commercial rabbits raised for food and fur. Our rabbits are our friends and companions and we want them to live long, healthy lives. This is why it is crucial that we learn about and understand their dietary needs.
Rabbits have a unique and delicate digestive system and it is important to take this into consideration when planning their meals. It is a system that is designed to take both energy and nutrients from food that is low in both, so providing a rabbit with a high fat/high protein, low fiber diet (pellets alone, for example) is a sure ticket to bad health and even a shortened life span. A healthy rabbit who is spayed or neutered, gets a proper diet and lives inside the home as a part of the family has a life span of eight to thirteen years.
Rabbit Digestion
Digestion begins in the mouth. The food is mashed up by the teeth and mixed with saliva, which contains proteins that begin breaking down the food. When the food is swallowed it enters the stomach where it is mixed with stomach acid and digestive enzymes, which continue the digestion process. It then moves out of the stomach into the small intestine where nutrients are absorbed into the body, and then it continues on into the large intestine where the food particles are sorted by size. The larger particles of indigestible fiber drive the smaller fragments of digestible fiber backwards into the cecum, which is a large blind-ended sac located at the junction of the small and large intestines. The indigestible particles are then passed out in the fecal pellets (regular poop) and the cecum begins the fermentation process that will produce what is commonly referred to as night feces or cecotropes, which a rabbit will ingest directly from the anus. You can tell the difference between normal feces and cecotrophes by their soft, shiny clumped texture and often more pungent odor.

A rabbit's cecum maintains a delicate mix of protozoa, yeast and good bacteria, which is crucial to keeping your rabbit healthy. If something upsets the delicate bacterial balance (such as stress; some oral antibiotics such as penicillin & related drugs; a high fat, low fiber diet; too many carbohydrates, etc.), bad bacteria will begin to grow. These bad bacteria produce toxins that can be harmful or fatal to your rabbit. On the other hand, the products of good cecal fermentation are crucial to healthy gut flora, because through coprophagy, the oral re-ingestion of the cecal pellets produced by this fermentation process, the rabbit can absorb by normal digestion the special nutrients and vitamins contained in the cecal pellets. Some evidence suggests that bacteria from these [re-ingested] cecal pellets help the food digest while in the stomach (Laura Tessmer, B.Sc. and Susan Smith, Ph.D: Rabbit Nutrition 1998).
The Importance of Fiber and a Proper Diet
When your rabbit is fed an improper diet that is, one that does not contain an adequate amount of [indigestible] fiber or one that is too high in carbohydrates the Gastro-Intestinal (GI) tract cannot function properly and it begins to shut down, causing various degrees of what is called GI stasis. GI stasis, if not taken care of immediately, can cause your rabbit to die a very painful death.
So what is GI stasis really? When the speed with which material moves through the GIT is altered it can affect how quickly the stomach and cecum empty. When this happens we often see a dramatic decrease in the rabbit's appetite for both food and water, which only furthers the problem: The body still needs water to function so it takes it from the stomach and cecum, causing the contents of the entire GI tract (food, hair from grooming, etc.) to become further dehydrated and impacted. The bunny is then unable to pass the mass of food/hair in the stomach, feels full, uncomfortable and often gassy (due to the build-up of the bad bacteria in the cecum), which only adds to his "I don't want to eat" mentality! A rabbit in GI stasis will often stop eating, become anorexic and die. When a rabbit dies from GI stasis and its related problems it is most often due to hepatic lipidosis or Fatty Liver Disease, which is caused by the toxins produced by the bad bacteria in the cecum.

In most cases, especially those caught early-on by observant owners, GI stasis can be reversed with time, patience and good advice from your rabbit vet. But our goal is to prevent it from happening at all.