Rabbit Food – Don’t Believe the Marketing
Grass - The most natural food a rabbit can eat!
I’m just in the process of updating an old article I wrote that includes a list of rabbits foods that offer at least 18% fibre, and around 12-14% protein – the ideal combination for rabbit nutrition. It’s great to see how much the range of high fibre pelleted rabbit foods has increased in the last few years. There are even customised options available now for young and senior rabbits with nutrition tailored to their needs. A few of the leading manufacturers like Burgess, Supreme and Oxbow are also making a big deal of promoting the importance of fibre and hay in a rabbit’s diet.
That’s a really great step forward for rabbit health and welfare, however, there are still a lot of food manufacturers that aren’t so good. These are often the foods that come in lovely bright packaging and promise to be be “gourmet”, “premium”, “fortified with vitamins”, or contain “all natural ingredients”, but read the small print on the back and they have ridiculously low fibre levels or they are full of biscuits and half dead looking chopped up bits of hay (yes technically it’s fibre but no self respecting rabbit would actually eat it). I wonder how many owners fall for the marketing without realising the consequences that these foods can have on their rabbits health.
Take ‘Betty Miller Complete Food for Rabbits‘ as an example, which claims to be “as close to natural feeding as you can get”. Sounds like a great promise until you realise it’s only 15% fibre and Betty Millers years of “observing rabbits in the wild” have lead her to the belief that wild rabbits eat “grasses, cereals vegetables and bark”. Now hold on a minute, cereals, vegetables? That sounds more like reading Peter Rabbit than observing real wild rabbits. A rabbit’s natural diet is grass, grass, ‘weeds’ (dandelion, plantain, clover etc.) and grass. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever seen a wild rabbit tucking into peas, carrots, whole grain flour or soya. Whilst these ingredients aren’t anything like “natural” they aren’t particularly unusual things to find in rabbit food. The reason why I’ve used this food as an example is because rather than just neglecting to mention the importance of also feeding hay, their literature actively advises not feeding grass or hay alongside their dry food:
“The majority of manufactured rabbit food is complementary which means you must add hay or grass to make it complete. Betty Miller’s Complete Food means you do not need to add anything. The food is all your rabbit needs to keep it in tip top condition.”
The problem with dry food is that it is a very concentrated form of nutrition (it packs a lot of nutrients into a small volume of food), the exact opposite of a rabbit’s natural diet (a high volume of low nutrient food) i.e. grass. Which is why the majority of manufactured rabbit food is complementary (not complete) and manufacturers recommend it should be fed along side grass and hay. It’s not a fault in the food design, it’s a sign that manufacturers recognise that grass and hay are the most natural foods for a rabbit to eat not carrots and peas. Dry food should be feed as a compliment to hay/grass not a substitute. A balanced rabbit diet should look something like this (note the teeny portion of dry food):
On the left a wild rabbit’s diet: a large amount of grass plus a range of other plants. On the right a pet rabbits: a large amount of hay or grass, a moderate amount of other fresh plants or veg and only a small amount of commercial dry food.
I expect as most people read this their bunnies are tucking into giant piles of hay, but there are lots of new and less experienced owners that will believe the marketing of pet food manufacturers and not realise the serious consequences that it can have to their rabbits teeth, digestion and behaviour.
So please, don’t listen to the marketing of companies like this. Check the nutritional analysis, get advice from people not trying to sell you their product and above all feed your rabbit lots of hay or grass (or both)!
Tags: Diet, diet-grass, hay, rabbit-products
Good article! My rabbits get only a very, very small serving of pellets, the Oxbow Timothy for adult but excessively cute rabbits, greens/vegs twice a day and always hay, lots of hay. I buy half a bale of hay at a time and also put it in their litter boxes.
Our bunnies are the same D. Moll. Their rabbit hutch is not is not a home for my rabbits without lots of lots of hays. They find so much satisfaction from hays making my expenses with rabbit’s food lesser. Anyway, I enjoyed reading your article. It is always fun to learn new things in the net.
Wow, great article. I’ve Never heard of Betty Miller, but that’s terrible. not only marketing schemes people need to look out for, but also the so-called “experts” and pet store employees who don’t know what they’re talking about, who recommend toxic products! i’m not sure if it’s common in the UK, but you see a lot of what’s basically birdseed mixed into pellets in the US. People naively think, ooo that looks fun my bunny will like it, and it provides a variety of nutrition, right? Sadly, people just don’t do proper research and learn what’s healthy and what’s just sold for some odd reason.
Tamsin
I Very much enjoyed reading your Blog “Rabbit Food – “Don’t believe the marketing” but I believe you are misguided on the points that you raise.
First, Betty Miller is not a marketing company – we are in fact very concerned about animal welfare and as such carefully formulate and manufacture all of our own products.
Secondly let’s talk fibre – yes the Betty Miller food contains 15% Fibre but then there is fibre & fibre. You must be only too aware that rabbits require both digestible and indigestible fibre. The indigestible fibre tends to be long chop lignified fibre. The Betty Miller Rabbit food’s long chop fibre is made up of Timothy Hay, Rye grass and Alfalfa. Lignified fibre is important to a rabbit as it aids gut mobility which is why you suggest rabbits need lots of hay. Of course hay is dried grass and the grass we use has been dust extracted to remove spores and has been low temperature air dried such that both the colour and original nutrition in the grass has been retained. You will also know that a lot of the hay sold in the UK is so shrivelled up and brown that there is little left of goodness in the product.
Digestible fibre can come from many sources – Burgess use soya bean hulls and lingo cellulose (wood) in their Excel Adult product and Supreme use soya bean hulls. However you will note that all of their fibre is ground/powdered fibre by very virtue of the way the product is made. They therefore have to have additional hay fed with them.
Wild rabbits do roam widely and are able to source a wide variety of plant types. In this way they can achieve the balance required and provide the vitamins and micro nutrients they require.
Throwing hands full of fresh grass in to a rabbit hutch would not achieve the same thing and would lead to serious nutrient deficiency a real animal welfare problem. Suggesting that rabbits do not eat vegetables is patently ludicrous, who has not fed a carrot to their rabbit and watched it eaten with relish. Ask the farmers who’s crops can be decimated by rabbits, if all that they eat is grass. There was a field trial set up with our nutritionalist to grow a new variety of soya beans in East Anglia but the trial had to be abandoned because the local rabbit population found the soya irresistible. OK so we are now back to why Burgess and Supreme use soya been hulls – actually they use the hulls because they are very fibrous and this is the only way they can get large amounts of fibre into their foods …. But it is digestible fibre!
And of course rabbits in the wild are foragers and browsers when it comes to food. You yourself Tamsin say in Rabbits United “Rabbit’s would usually spend about eight hours a day eating including grazing on grass and foraging for other tasty things like bark and leaves” .
So we are in agreement that rabbits are foragers and don’t just eat grass!
OK so is 15% fibre enough – well we believe it is because it is the right type of fibre that rabbits need – you may disagree and indeed you may have your own ways and methods of feeding your rabbits but you aren’t a typical pet owner – at least I don’t think you are!
Turning to the point about complete foods for rabbits ………….. What is a complete food? We would define a complete food as a food being able to sustain life on its own. The Betty Miller Rabbit Food is a complete food. Its fibre content of both long and short fibre provides the right balance of fibre, as well the correct protein and oil levels. It is important to remember that when designing complete foods the nutritionist will bear in mind very strongly the typical nutrient intake of the animal in question. The Betty Miller Rabbit Food is based on this premise.
The specific nutrient figures quoted for protein and fibre levels are most often derived from trials using commercial meat rabbits where measures of economic performance are very important. Indeed the main source of what a rabbit food should consist comes from the National Research Council (NRC)) which lays down the correct percentages of protein fibre etc that should be in a rabbit food – however as already stated these analysis are for rabbits bred for meat and not pet rabbits kept in hutches or house rabbits. What is fibre after all, quality is probably more important than quantity. The figure quoted on product declarations is crude fibre. What about protein source, my leather shoes have a high protein level but it is totally indigestible.
Complete foods are dare I say convenient and someone has done the work for you in designing the product However the input of the owner remains vital in controlling quantity to avoid animal’s becoming over weight. We are also positively not suggesting that the rabbit should not receive tit bits and treats such as dandelions even the odd carrot. We already know that many rabbits are overweight – is this down to the food or just the mount the owner feeds.
How an animal is fed is a serious welfare issue, people enjoy their pets and lavish care and attention on them and they want to know that they can rely on serious companies like Betty Miller to produce foods that will keep their animal healthy.
In conclusion, the Betty Miller rabbit food has been formulated to keep a pet rabbit in good health and well being, which is not to say that owners may have different opinions of what they should feed based on their own knowledge. Our product has been formulated to overcome the issues of selective eating in muesli type foods by accepting that the pellets in muesli type foods may not be the most palatable to rabbits and therefore they can be left. In most cases the pellets contain the added vitamins and minerals and these tend to not be very palatable. The Betty Miller food gets over this problem by providing an extra palatable component with the food which has to be fed in conjunction with the food which also hopefully gets owners interacting more with their animals.
I am only too aware that many children have rabbits as their first pet and after 6 months (hopefully longer) they are bored with them and Mummy is looking after them. Mothers tend to buy the easiest food (nuggets) and as the rabbit has little interaction from the owner other than a handful of nuggets chucked in each day, they can become aggressive. I am not an advocate of mono component foods – these type of foods were invented originally to feed laboratory or meat bred rabbits so that the technician/farmer knew how much to feed each day … and yet the rabbit is a natural forager/browser of food and therefore variety is important. After all they spend most of their lives foraging in the wild so why take this away from them in captivity. How would you like to be locked in a room with a bowl of Weetabix each day?
And finally why do I know so much about small animals…. In 1989 I started a company called Supreme Petfoods where I was Managing Director and largest shareholder until there was a shareholder bust up in 2004 and I left the business. Supreme was the first company to recognise that different small animals had different nutritional needs and was the first company to provide long fibre diets for rabbits. Prior to that there were only pellets (now call extrusions ie Excel) and large pea type mixes which I really do not think are very suitable for rabbits (possible cause of malaclusion). I still have a very strong understanding of the nutrition needed to feed small animals as well as the desire to ensure they do have a better life. After all since I brought out Russel Rabbit nothing has really changed until the Betty Miller food. Sure there is Excel but as I have already said all this is is a different way of manufacturing a pellet…. And incidentally an extruder totally destroys most of the goodness in the raw materials due to the heat generated in the extruder barrel
If you are serious about rabbits and provide all round better welfare for these animals, then please work with us and if you believe you have some better ways of producing a rabbit food for the average rabbit owner then please come forward and talk to us rather than throwing stones in a blog whereby you remain almost anonymous and we have a difficult way of replying.
Thanks for taking the time to address some of the issues I raised. However I think you may have missed read several of my points.
Whilst that is an accurate description of some of the hay sold in the UK it is relatively easy to source good quality hay. There are three pet shops in my local area that I know have good quality hay. Both oxbow and burgess now sell good quality hay/forage to be fed alongside their pelleted foods, these products are available from most of the big chain pet shops as well as many independent ones and even vets. Finding good hay is one of the responsibilities of owning a rabbit.
This is certainly true, which is why, if you read my post carefully you will see I recommend that rabbits are fed a diet that contains a balance of grass (or the substitute hay), a wide variety of other plants (weeds or vegetables) and a small amount of dry food (to ensure that all vitamin requirements are met). Feeding handfuls of grass (or hay) alongside dry food has no drawbacks and many benefits.
I said that vegetables are not the natural diet of wild rabbits (as stated in your literature), not that pet rabbits do not/should not eat them. Whilst vegetables provide a convenient substitute to the variety of other plants wild rabbits would naturally eat alongside grass, there are very few wild vegetables. Rabbits can be opportunistic and will feed from crops and veg patches when available (which in many areas and for many months of the year they are not). That does not make it their natural diet though. Likewise, if you leave a slice of bread out for the birds they will eat it, but that does not make bread their natural diet.
This is an important point, diet is important to encouraging natural behaviour as well as nutrition. You recommendation is that I should feed my rabbit 25g of your food in a day, nothing else. There is no way that eating dry food such as yours would take eight hours of my rabbit’s day. It would be gone in a flash. By feeding handfuls of grass, weeds, fresh vegetables and a small portion of dry food my rabbit spends hours eating – essential to his mental welfare and enjoys a diet that is varied in taste and texture and contains all the fibre and nutrients he needs. I really don’t see how you can argue that your diet is more natural than one based on fresh grass and plants.
I’m not sure in what ways you think I am atypical. Perhaps I am more interested in rabbit welfare and well read than the average owner but my views on diet are not unusual and are inline with those of the major animal welfare orgs e.g. RSPCA, RWA, etc. If you feel the problem is the average owner can’t be bothered to pick grass or buy hay and vegetables then I think that needs to be addressed by education rather than creating a food that is convenient for owners but sacrifices providing the best possible diet in the process. You could work towards this by encouraging owners to provide hay or grass alongside your food rather than discouraging it.
I think education is the key to improving rabbit welfare, which I the reason I blog. I want the average owner to read this and think: yes dry food might be convenient but I can do better for my rabbit. Your product was just an example of the point I was trying to highlight: dry food, despite the promises on the packaging, should only be fed as a small part of a balanced diet. My personal opinion is that there are better options for a rabbit’s diet than the one you put forward and they are easily within the average rabbit owners grasp. My past posts include plenty of tips of achieving this.
It’s not the fibre levels or ingredients in your food that made me pick you as the example; it is the marketing and literature it is sold with. If you want my opinion on what you can do to improve rabbit welfare, then it is to recommend that as well as your food rabbits should have access to hay. I can’t think of any draw backs, other than you wouldn’t be able to market your food as complete, and many benefits for rabbits. If you wanted to go further then add a leaflet to every tub detailing how owners can really work towards a natural diet, for example this one from the Rabbit Welfare Association: Going green – healthy eating for your rabbit.
I am not anonymous and you have successfully replied.
Well done Tamsin & thanks to Nigel for replying…lets hope that some changes can be made, educate some more people regarding rabbit welfare & their needs.
Here is the email I sent to “Betty Miller”
Hi!
Im pleased to read the general advice given for rabbits on your website…especially the “Bigger is Better” in terms of accomdation, the fact that rabbits are grazers & need to be able to have access to roughage & grasses to eat, fresh water & clean hutches.
There is just a couple of things mentioned that I feel is misleading & inaccurate regarding rabbits well being and their diet.
No Manufactured food can be “complete” if HAY is suggested as not being essential in a rabbits diet. Hay/grass is essential for a rabbits digestive system & the fact that rabbits chewing hay helps grind their teeth down is a fact and I feel that your website should not suggest twice that Hay is not needed. Firstly as part of their food intake & secondly as their bedding.
Hay is essential as a part of their diet along with your suggested food…..please do amend this as it wrongly advises people about their rabbits diet.
Hay can also be used in conjuntioin with straw as bedding. Yes – its true that straw is a great insulator – however hay is just as good if used and also encourages rabbits to chew on it – which in turn helps their digestive systems.
I feel that its fine to mention straw as bedding – but instead of then putting in brackets “no hay” – you could just do this: straw/hay as bedding.
The other advice that I feel is wrongly given is that of useing “sawdust” as bedding. It is sadly under estimated how much sawdust – even dust free sawdust – has effected small animals – rabbits, guinea-pigs, rats, hamsters, mice etc – sawdust has high phenols contents & can cause respiraoty problems in small animals. Generally bigger animals which dont have their face’s constanlty at their bedding level get less effected. There is other options which you could suggest such as : Aubiose, Mega-zorb & carefresh. All these are healthier options for rabbits…and obviously lots of hay!
It would be greatly appreciated if I could see these changes made on your website & be able to recommend your product….
I look forward to your response,
Regards,
Michelle Turner
and here is Nigels response:
Michelle
Thank you for your email
I really need to talk with you about the points you raised so I can explain our position on some of the things you mention
For example The Betty Miller Complete food contains a lot of low temperature dried grass – the process removes the water but leaves the grass with a fresh aroma, colour and the high nutritional value of fresh grass. Our grass contains timothy, rye and alfalfa. The grass is also dust extracted to remove fungal spores.
The length of fibre is important, as finely ground plant material cannot be used as indigestible fibre. Manufacturers of rabbit foods are only required to list total fibre in the declared analysis. Burgess talk about “beneficial fibre” They say and I quote: “Having the correct ratio of digestible and indigestible fibre is essential for healthy, happy rabbits, guinea pigs and chinchillas. Burgess Excel call the correct ratio ‘Beneficial Fibre” and yet on their packaging they quote beneficial fibre as 39% (Excel Adult Rabbit) which is not a ratio!!
Supreme on the other hand say about Selective “With 19% Alfalfa-based fibre, this diet contains the ideal fibre levels and types in the correct proportions to aid gut mobility and help with healthy teeth” and yet we already know that it is lignified fibre that aids gut mobility and not ground/powdered fibre.
They do not talk about the fibre content of their food Russel Rabbit on their web site which is strange and yet in a recent pet trade magazine they are now saying Russel Rabbit is a complete food but you need to add hay – its either complete or it isn’t! The original Russel Rabbit food had a lot more long fibre in than the current product has now which is now full of coloured extrusions which is probably why hay now needs to be added!
With regard to rabbit food analysis declarations, there is no way of knowing how much of the fibre is digestible and how much indigestible. Digestible fibre is used for energy in much the same way as carbohydrate. There is also no minimum length of fibre required, so if the fibre used is too short then the total fibre quoted can again be misleading.
One other point about hay. Hay is dried grass! It tends to be field dried and much of what is for sale in the UK is so dried out that it has little value at all, and Betty Miller’s Complete Rabbit food contains grass (hay!)
Turning to the point about complete foods for rabbits ………….. What is a complete food? We would define a complete food as a food being able to sustain life on its own. The Betty Miller Rabbit Food is a complete food. Its fibre content of both long and short fibre provides the right balance of fibre, as well the correct protein and oil levels. It is important to remember that when designing complete foods the nutritionist will bear in mind very strongly the typical nutrient intake of the animal in question. The Betty Miller Rabbit Food is based on this premise.
The specific nutrient figures quoted for protein and fibre levels are most often derived from trials using commercial meat rabbits where measures of economic performance are very important. Indeed the main source of what a rabbit food should consist comes from the National Research Council (NRC)) which lays down the correct percentages of protein fibre etc that should be in a rabbit food – however as already stated these analysis are for rabbits bred for meat and not pet rabbits kept in hutches or house rabbits. What is fibre after all, quality is probably more important than quantity. The figure quoted on product declarations is crude fibre. What about protein source, my leather shoes have a high protein level but it is totally indigestible.
Complete foods are dare I say convenient and someone has done the work for you in designing the product However the input of the owner remains vital in controlling quantity to avoid animal’s becoming over weight. We are also positively not suggesting that the rabbit should not receive tit bits and treats such as dandelions even the odd carrot.
How an animal is fed is a serious welfare issue, people enjoy their pets and lavish care and attention on them and they want to know that they can rely on serious companies like Betty Miller to produce foods that will keep their animal healthy.
In conclusion, the Betty Miller rabbit food has been formulated to keep a pet rabbit in good health and well being, which is not to say that owners may have different opinions of what they should feed based on their own knowledge. Our product has been formulated to overcome the issues of selective eating in muesli type foods by accepting that the pellets in muesli type foods may not be the most palatable to rabbits and therefore they can be left. In most cases the pellets contain the added vitamins and minerals and these tend to not be very palatable. The Betty Miller food gets over this problem by providing an extra palatable component with the food which has to be fed in conjunction with the food which also hopefully gets owners interacting more with their animals.
I am only too aware that many children have rabbits as their first pet and after 6 months (hopefully longer) they are bored with them and Mummy is looking after them. Mothers tend to buy the easiest food (Excel??) and as the rabbit has little interaction from the owner other than a handful of nuggets chucked in each day, they can become aggressive. I am not an advocate of mono component foods – these type of foods were invented originally to feed laboratory or meat bred rabbits so that the technician/farmer knew how much to feed each day … and yet the rabbit is a natural forager/browser of food and therefore variety is important. After all they spend most of their lives foraging in the wild so why take this away from them in captivity. How would you like to be locked in a room with a bowl of Weetabix each day?
And finally why do I know so much about small animals…. In 1989 I started a company called Supreme Petfoods where I was Managing Director and largest shareholder until there was a shareholder bust up in 2004 and I left the business. Supreme was the first company to recognise that different small animals had different nutritional needs and was the first company to provide long fibre diets for rabbits. Prior to that there was only pellets (now call extrusions ie Excel) and large pea type mixes which I really do not think are very suitable for rabbits ( possible cause of malaclusion). I still have a very strong understanding of the nutrition needed to feed small animals as well as the desire to ensure they do have a better life. After all since I brought out Russel Rabbit nothing has really changed until the Betty Miller food. Sure there is Excel but as I have already said all this is is a different way of manufacturing a pellet…. And incidentally an extruder totally destroys most of the goodness in the raw materials due to the heat generated in the extruder barrel
Dealing with your other points:
1. Hutches – this is a pet subject of mine and we have some ideas of what to do about this – unfortunately I can’t do it all at once!
1. Straw tends to be a much better insulator than Hay – I would agree with your comments about sawdust with other animals such us guinea pigs rats etc where respitaory problem can be caused by sawdust – incidentally whilst I was at Supreme I set up the distribution of Carefresh into the UK and the US producers of Carefresh became our distributors in the USA!
Let me know if you want to discuss this further – my telephone number is below – if you let me have yours I would be more than happy to continue the conversation.
Regards
Nigel Baker
Betty Miller Ltd
I hope you don’t mind I have copied your response Nigel – seem as you mentioned it on the forum. I will follow this & see what happens!
What I would like to say is generally we are not mocking or having ago at “Betty Miller” – but more so on the way the food is advertised as being complete & that more advice could be given. I have no doubt that Nigel has experience etc – however rabbits dietry needs still need to include fresh Hay. Commercial foods are an extra – they certainly do not keep rabbits foraging throughout the day & by advising on commercial food packets as their foods being complete is very misleading & will certainly lead to dietry & behaviour issues. Perhaps some positive changes can be made – I think its wonderful that Nigel has taken the time to respond – this is not an issue to fight about but more so to make some changes. A leaflet & to actively educate customers on what rabbits needs really are is what we need to do if we really & truly are concerned with animal welfare.
I am aware that Grass is hay, that fibre length is important and that alot of other companies do not advertise well or truly what they put in their foods. But still stand by the fact that hay being given fresh is the best length. We are all looking for a pure high fibre diet for our rabbits…any rabbit foods mentioned that are termed as complete is questionable – as your website seems to care about rabbits welfare – it is only fair & progressive to suggest some changes…of course if the food contents are high in fibre & other natural plants are recommended….we will certainly support you & recommend you as a healthy food to use.
Nigel – great you are aware about sawdust issue – however I do think that it does effect rabbits too – so I think that this advice should be changed or perhaps more researched? I am interested to know why you think this. Great & interesting that you were so involved on the carefresh front – sounds like you would be able to make some more great changes too! I did use carefresh but my bunnies found it rather tasty to eat too – so have changed to Aubiose which works well & they don’t try to eat it. As for your mission on Hutches etc – sounds great – any changes you are making in the industry regarding the sizes sold as definately being unsuitable is wonderful. It is certainly a shame that people are under the impression that small animals – like rabbits – do not need to be able to run. Imagine buying a dog & keeping it in a cage all day forever! So – if you need any support in regards to Bigger is Better hutches etc – I will certainly support you & I am sure many more people will too if you inform us.
There are certain things you have mentioned in your response – to which I would have to do some research on – I am sure others will be able to comment who are slightly more educated & experienced on some issues. I feel that if positive changes can be made, we can all work together – this could become a GREAT thing…lets hope, for the animals sakes, that we do not have to compromise on dietry needs & once again only consider profits & the money market. Thank you for having the time to give your number to have a chat…I will follow this thread with interest & see how it all goes.
Thanks, Michelle
Hi Tamsin and Michelle,
And thank you very much to you both for your comments. You both sound very knowledgeable on animal welfare.
In an ideal world every rabbit owner would perhaps feed their rabbit with freshly cut grass however, we know that realistically the majority of people will not do this as they do not have the time. The Betty Miller rabbit food is a complete diet that can be fed to your rabbits and will provide all the key nutrients they need to live a healthy life, so for the many owners who are unable to take the time to feed fresh grass/hay, it will be a product that they can feed to their pet and be confident that they are getting the key nutrients they need. When we began working on this product, we were keen that it would be an improvement on what was already on the market and we are confident that we have done this and are providing a food that is both nutritious and interesting for rabbits.
That said, we are a small family-run business, who love animals and have many pets of our own. We are always keen to promote animal welfare and advise rabbit owners on how best to care for their pets. Tamsin and Michelle, would you be willing to meet with us to discuss your concerns further? We are really interested to hear what you have to say and your experiences as rabbit owners. After all, I think we are all trying to achieve the same thing.
Thanks, Nigel
Your food diagram says it all. I sell dried herbs for rabbits, guinea pigs and chinchillas but would be the first to acknowledge that the natural diet of these animals has around 90% moisture and any dried food is a compromise on that point alone.
Yes rabbits will eat roots and bark but the bulk of their diet is not only fresh grass but short, new growth grass. Hay has traditionally been used to balance out the grains that were fed to rabbits kept for food, fur or fancy.
I have lab diet books which give me a rough idea on formulating diets for captive animals for lab or food use, but I look to the nutritional analysis of the natural diet when I want to understand the optimum diet (and lifestyle) for rabbits in captivity and all that entails.
Michelle/Tamsin’s diagram is the most realistic and practical suggestion I have ever seen for balancing a captive rabbit’s diet. Commercial foods are never going to replace that until they focus on top quality hay, forage and fresh growing grass and herbage.
I’ve been in this market for 25 years now and I know what is possible on a commercial scale. Big companies have the money to do it but the margins aren’t there and they need those marghins for marketing.
My sympathies are with Nigel with regards to the shareholder bust up but he has to understand that the Betty Miller site does not inspire the confidence that it might because the product is properly illustrated and the leaflet talks about forage and treats when they are not properly described and therefore the concept cannot be understood.
There is nothing on that site regarding rabbit diet to differentiate his offering from that of Burgess or Supreme. The shop does not have the rabbit food for sale and the ‘bake your own’ dog cookie mixes don’t have a weight on them which makes it hard to work out what your £3.85 buys you.
At £2.60 per kg for Chicken Complete Large breed dog biscuits with minimum 23% chicken (of course that could be feather meal but let’s reserve judgement and allow Nigel to address this point)… if we take into account the Betty Miller team’s baking time, equipment etc that is not a profiteering price and I doubt there’s a margin in that for wholesalers to stock the product, make a margin selling it to retailers and then the retailers making a margin on it for themselves.
Based on that I don’t think Betty Miller are in any way out to make mega bucks at the expense of consumers. I do, however, have concerns that Nigel seems proud of Russell Rabbit which is a muesli – albeit the first to include veg and forage by way of alfalfa. It may have been an outstanding marketing and commercial success but in terms of diet and selective feeding it shared the same issues of the other muesli diets it was designed to outrank so effectively.
Much has changed since Russell Rabbit – the veterinary selective feeding debate championed by vet Frances Harcourt Brown; Oxbow Hay’s promotion of a hay based diet in the US spearheaded by nutritionist Dawn Hromanik and followed by other US hay companies; more recently the German Bunny range which has been distributed in the UK for a couple of years now; the German JR Farm products which have been distributed in the UK for a bit longer than that; The Hay Experts importing Alalfa King products from the US; Vitacraft and others upping their game on the herbivore front, and of course my own company Galen’s Garden expanding their product range to well over 100 natural products..
All great stuff but as has already been mentioned, the big issue is educating Joe Public. So far only the RWA is doing that in a major way but with the big brands buying supermarket shelf space and marketing their way into the vets the odds are stacked up against the little guys like us unless we find a way to educate the public.
Not just on diet, but as has already been mentioned on the proper kind of housing, exercise facilities, bedding, environmental stimulation, behavioural needs and health considerations.
I would no more consider bedding rabbits or other small furries on sawdust than I would sleep in nylon sheets with a paraffin burner for heating and my windows closed.
Nor would I want to live in a hutch with my food bowl two paces from my toilet; no room to stand up or lie down in comfort and in solitary confinement like many rabbits do.
It sounds as though we are all singing from the same hymn sheet in terms of wanting a better life for rabbits and their kin, but I suspect we will only achieve that by pooling knowledge and resources to create best of breed information and products.
Right now I think Nigel/Betty Miller who have the manufacturing know-how should use the very valuable grass roots and highly knowledgable feedback from Tamsin and Michelle to drive their production of product and literature in a healthier direction.
I have the know-how and contacts to create an entire lifestyle range (including housing and hygiene/health) for rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas and degus but without cash it is worth nothing. Cash is essential for marketing and PR AKA Customer Education and this is hugely expensive because regular pet owners are not going to even know about the RWA unless their vet promotes it and they go to the vet. They are even less likely to read Fur & Feather or Cavies magazine which in any case are breeder orienated.
With no easy vehicle to promote a product range to the public: no cash to promote to vets, to buy supermarket shelf space or support 90+day terms to pet superstores the routes to market are severely limited.
Given that climate I would advise any rabbit owner to follow the advice on this blog rather than recommend any of the commercial feeds currently on the market other than as a supplementary feed.
My rabbit has a well balanced diet, Yes i do give him the mixed pellets, but only in the evening, and a smaller amount in the morning (not very often – once a weeks or so) as my bunny will always eat the pellets over EVERYTHING else, he also has carrot, used to have apple, but won’t eat it now, he also Used to have a Small portion of Banana once a week, but he won’t have it now, down to not having it for months, down to the floods we had, so prices of them went high.
During the day he has full access to grass and hay, as well as any carrot he didn’t finish during the night.
i give him the carrot whole, this way the carrot stays fresh, and is still fine for him to finish it next morning.
Easy way to keep and outdoor Bunny Cool:
take an empty Bottle (juice bottle drink bottle…) fill it 3/4 full and freeze.
(water expands as is freezes to it needs room)
I use 2ltr bottles so more than 4 hours to freeze, round ones don’t works as well, as the rabbit will want to lay next to/between (if you have 2 or more given). I offer 2 bottles, and he lays between them, he lays between them for hours, give it around 10am…still nice and cool around 3pm! they even get a cool drink….mine lick the condensation off!
My mini rabbit has free run of the back yard in the afternoon until late in the evening, so he has access to lots of fresh grass. The rest of his day is spent in his cage. When he is in his cage my rabbit eats Cherrio’s. He will not have anything to do with treats or pellets and now he will not touch the yogurt drops he once loved. He is healthy, active, and full of energy.
Hi Margaret, it sounds like he’s filling up on fresh grass so it’s bother about anything else. Grass is good for bunnies though so that’s not a problem! It’s natural behaviour for bunnies to spend time outside eating then go back to their warren to digest. You could try offering him some other fresh plants like dandelion, bramble/blackberry leaves etc. just to make sure he’s getting a good range of different nutrients.
Hi Tamsin,
What a brilliant blog post this was, I have loved reading it and hearing Nigels reply and the fact he started up Supreme was fascinating and great reading. Really interesting. Good on him for replying!
I wanted to say this…
I have owned rabbits previously when I was a child and a teenager. I am 31 years old now (eeek) and I have bought 3 Rabbits for my children (well for me if I’m honest!) from a local breeder (I specifically avoided a pet shop after previous experiences of painfully shy bunnies). I stummbled accross your blog when I was googling something about rabbits.
I wanted to say to you… Thanks to your blog, our three new baby bunnies have a completely different life to the life of my previous rabbits and for that they thank you!!!
My previous rabbits lived in a hutch most of the time and on their own (especially my rabbit when I was a child, my rabbit when I was a teen roamed the garden a lot, I was more aware of his feelings I think) but it never occured to me that maybe the complete foods were lying to me and my rabbits needed more. If it wasnt for your blog, we wouldnt be foraging in the woods with the children for weeds, bramble leaves, nettles, making our own hay (the kids love picking grass for some reason hehe), making toys for the rabbits, building levels in their insulated out house (who knew rabbits loved to perch high up, what the hell lol!?!?), making grass, dandelion and nettle rings, etc… You are right, it is about education, education, education and you have educated me! I love your blog, so do the children. I have a blog and I am blogging about the things we do for our rabbits too. Hopefully I will reach someone who didnt know rabbits needed this either :).
Thanks again and please keep doing what you are doing.
Carly x