Wood

Rabbit's teeth are constantly growing, and if they are not worn down, they can get too large and cause painful problems for your bunnies. These problems can be expensive to cure, or even result in your rabbit being put down to prevent suffering. This can be easily resolved by giving them something to chew on. You can buy chew toys, which are flavored pieces of wood for your rabbits to gnaw. These are often expensive, especially for something that is only going to be eaten by a rabbit. For this reason, I prefer to use natural wood to give to my rabbits. Instead of eating the wood, the rabbits spend hours stripping the bark with their teeth. This prevents boredom and is good for their teeth. My rabbits mostly eat apple wood, because we have an apple tree, but they also like hazel and willow. I give three sticks of about 30cm every day which takes about half an hour for the rabbits to eat. Once your rabbits try these sticks, you can also hide them around the hutch, in the hay rack, under the straw etc... they will enjoy searching them out which will provide exercise as well as food, fun and tooth benefits.

Apple sticks

Willow sticks

Hazel sticks

Treats For Your Rabbits

As well as their main diet, it is possible to give your bunnies a few extra treats and rewards. If you are training your bunnies to do trick or obey commands, then a reward system might help. When I was teaching Popcorn and Ossie to go "home" when told, I used food treats to encourage this. At first, I gave them a small amount of their daily pellets if the went into their hutch. Eventually, they got used to these pellets for a reward and needed something extra. I found that a small piece of oatcake would encourage them to return to the hutch. Remember large quantities of manufactured foods are bad for bunnies. I fed these as a reward and the rabbits now obey the command. For general training, this is a good reward. If you want to try something different, get a commercially available rabbit muesli and separate the components. Find out which are your rabbit's favourite pieces and give them one every time they are good or perform the desired action. This is also a good system for litter training.

Oatcake

Rabbit Muesli