overweight?

this was sort of mentioned in passing on a different post I made, but how does one tell if a rabbit is getting fat? I know how to tell on pretty much any animal you show me, but bunnies. I know I have a growing girl, but I want to make sure she is growing in all the right ways, unlike me lol!

Pretty much the same as any other animal- feel the ribs! They should be easy to feel, but not visible. The spinous processes should have quite a bit of muscle on them, but you should still be able to feel the top as well. And you should be able to feel the iliac crests (the hip points) fairly easily on their lower backs.

Yep, the ribs. You can also weight your rabbit from time to time to know what's her normal weight (carrying her and weighting yourself with her is the easiest) and to make sure it stays stable. Fat does tend to have a big dewlap, but then again some thin does do have a big dewlap and my Aki, which is getting a bit plump in her granny years (the vet and I decided that a small reserve of fat wasn't a bad idea for an old lady, considering how fast they lose weight when something goes wrong) never had any - it's a bit like cellulite, you risk it more if you're fat but it's mostly a genetic problem ^^.

If you have an itty bitty rabbit like my Brandy, her weight doesn't register accurately when you put her on the scale with me (she's about 3 lbs- I'm 110lbs), so I bought a little kitchen scale and trained both my rabbits to stand on it on command. That way I can measure if she loses even 100 grams. I weigh my cat every day with the method Aki describes, though, and it's VERY effective for her.

Of course, I weigh my other rabbit on the scale too, and he's quite a bit overweight. (He's very much not social and so we work with him with treats a lot- which of course makes him fat). But I agree with Aki that weighing your pets weekly is a great idea!

The following link may help. It shows how to tell by visual and by physical inspection (with drawings):

http://www.therabbithouse.com/diet/rabbit-weight.asp

Thanks guys! The link has been book marked, that is fantastic! I do have a kitchen scale I use for weighing my turtles so I can use that to check her too. Right now using the people scale method probably wouldn't work since she's so little

erikamc said:

Thanks guys! The link has been book marked, that is fantastic! I do have a kitchen scale I use for weighing my turtles so I can use that to check her too. Right now using the people scale method probably wouldn't work since she's so little

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I think i need buy one kitchen scale now

merryken said:

I think i need buy one kitchen scale now

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Just bought one kitchen scale from Amazon