It’s getting a bit chilly and the leaves are turning on another year. I love autumn leaves, the colours, the crisp crunch as you walk on them, even the smell.

Just because Scamp’s a house bunny, I don’t see why he can’t enjoy some of the autumn season too. These are leaves from our grape vine, it’s a bit damp at the moment, so I collected them on a dry day and left them to dry out, like I did with the other dry leaves a few weeks ago.

What do you think, Scamp?

Then I piled them up in his favourite corner:

And he quickly popped out of bed to take a look. He wasn’t completely sure about the crunching sound when he walked on them at first, but he got over it fairly quickly once he realised he could eat them!

I think autumn colours rather suit him!

Dry leaves can be eaten, picked up and tossed, crunched under your paws and dug through – wonderful rabbit enrichment.

Today I’m going to let loose my inner geek, want to see something cool?

Look at those pointy bits! What do you think, a cactus, saw blade, sharks teeth… ?

Nope, that’s a blade of grass magnified a few hundred times and those pointy bits are the reason grass (or hay) is an essential part of a rabbit’s diet.

Rabbit’s teeth grow continually throughout their life. To stop the teeth growing too long and causing problems they need to be worn down at the same rate they grow. That sounds fairly logical. But what seems to puzzle a lot of owners is: why does it have to be hay? Surely pellets are harder so would create more wear or even some nice crunchy carrots – wouldn’t they work?

Whilst other foods may contribute some degree of wear, as you can see from the picture, there is something very special about grass and this makes the number one thing for maintaining rabbit’s dental health.

Most people think of grass as soft, like me, you have probably enjoyed sitting on it at some point. But grass is actually very similar to sand paper. Sandpaper isn’t hard, it’s flexible  and you can tear it easily, but if you rub it against something it will wear away the surface. Like the sandpaper, the reason grass is good for wearing teeth is how rough the surface is, not how hard it is. Here is another close up of your rabbit’s dinner:

Hay (Dried Grass) Magnified 200x

The reason that grass is rough is it doesn’t really want to get eaten. So to protect itself, it sucks up silica from the soil and uses it to build rough spiky structures called phytoliths.

If you don’t have a microscope to hand, you can feel them with your fingers. Run your fingers down a piece of grass they will catch on the surface – you can see why from the picture above. This is the same reason hay is so great at catching on your clothing and spreading itself around the house. And why it is so good at wearing down rabbit’s teeth!

Pellets are hard and carrots are crunchy, but neither are rough enough to act like sandpaper on rabbits teeth. For the same reason, grass is just as good as hay for wear, even though hay seems harder because it’s dry and crunchy.

Hands up all those about to go fondle their hay to see how rough it is… 🙂

I believe it is traditional to reward your loyal blog readers with a free giveaway (can you tell I just read the handbook). I thought I’d save my one hundred and first book just for you. I want something in return though, yes, I know a little bit cheeky. As my book is about behaviour and I often write about Scamp’s odd habits, I thought I’d ask you what is the oddest thing you’ve even seen your rabbit do?

I’ll pop the names of anyone that comments with their rabbit’s odd quirks by Monday  in a hat and send the winner a free copy of my book.

Then I’ll sit back and enjoy the funny/weird/wonderful bunny tales you share.

Ps. Has anyone tried making bunny biscuits? The sort for rabbits to eat not human biscuits in the shape of rabbits. I found a bag of fenugreek in our herb draw and apparently that’s like rabbit cat nip, so I was wondering about home made treats. Anyone got recipes/instructions?

Edit: And the winner is Annette! I’m glad I just pulled the name out a hat (well random number generated) instead of having to pick. I feel sorry for the people that don’t realise how wonderful bunnies are with their entertaining little quirks and individual personalities.

This time last year I was writing about all the rabbit safe plants that I found in my garden for Scamp to enjoy. I’ve been picking leaves again and Scamp’s been enjoying them, but I know shortly autumn will turn them all pretty colours and that will be it for tasty leaves until next spring. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was some way to store them up so Scamp could eat them all year around? Well, maybe there is. My experiment with making my own hay proved that it was possible to store tasty summer grass for eating later (I’ve made several more batches since), so why not do the same with other plants.

I started by collected a pile of tasty looking leaves. Look for green healthy looking ones without blemishes (or bugs) and collect them on a dry day.

Dandelion, thistle, strawberry, hazel, ginko, raspberry & basil leaves

Don’t forget to get your bunnies approval, there is not point going to the trouble of drying and storing leaves your bunny won’t eat. Scamp gives all these a pass on the taste test. I divided my pile in two, half for his supper and half to dry out.

Just checking the flavour!

The leaves for drying, the ones Scamp hadn’t eaten, I spread out on a tea tray on top of a couple of sheets of kitchen roll:

Then I popped them in the airing cupboard where it is warm and dry. I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but it was surprisingly fast! In just 4 days they looked like this:

It’s surprising how much they shrink! The Ginko leaves (which are thicker) needed a couple more days but everything else was dry and crispy. But the big question is, do they still pass the bunny taste test?

The answer is yes, Scamp seems just about as excited about dry leaves and the fresh ones. So I’m going to be drying a lot more leaves to provide tasty, home grown, rabbit food full of vitamins and completely free!

Other was to Dry Plants for Your Rabbit

There are several ways to dry out leaves for storage:

• Leave them somewhere warm and dry like I did … I put mine in the airing cupboard! It takes 4-5 days to dry them out.
• Lay them out outside and let the sunshine do the work. The drawback is you need sunshine! You may want to stretch a bit of clear plastic above them to keep the rain off.
• Use your oven. You can dry leaves in an oven on the lowest heat setting, or better yet, save energy and just use the leftover heat after you’ve cooked something. The downside is you can’t fit much in at once and something can be a little stinky. I doesn’t take long though (about 15minutes), we did this with Scamp’s first greens when he was a tiny baby.

My bunny book is with the printer, so it’s time to relax and have some fun! We’ve had a sack of children’s play balls sitting in the garage for ages so I thought I’d see what Scamp thought. They are the sort of balls you find in ball pits so they are quite soft plastic and very light. They wouldn’t stand up to chewing but are cheap and good for nudging about.

As you can see, the pesky balls are all in the wrong place and need rearranging and rearranging, and shouldn’t that yellow one go on the left instead.

And for those that like live action rabbits, a quick video too: