Water

[Richard0600]

My rabbits seem to be drinking a lot more water then they use to...
I read somewhere that they should only drink 100ml/Kg bodyweight. Since my
rabbits are 2.5 kg each, this means they should only drink 250 ml each, so 500 ml in
total. But recently, they've been drinking 800 ml in total, which is 60% over the
supposedly recommended water intake. Is this right?

I've been feeding them more timothy hay recently..like a big handful everytime the
bowl's empty if that has any correlation with water intake.
As for their pellets they both get a little under 1/2 a cup of timothy pellets everyday.

 

[Gordon]

I don't have an answer about the increase in thirstiness, but I am sure someone here will shed some light on it.

My rabbits have never been big drinkers, so it would definitely puzzle me, too.

 

[Mrs. PBJ]

When I put storm on more hay. His water intake increased.
He is about 2 1/2 pounds and drinks about hhalf a cup of water a day.
He is healthy but hay is dry witch calls for more water intake.

More hay more water.
Someone more experienced will chime in but that's what I was told when I asked the same question

 

[Richard0600]

It's also winter here in Melbourne..and its relatively dry i guess..
So that might be another factor... but i dont recall them drinking
more water the last couple of winters...so...yeah i'm a bit puzzled...

 

[Saudade]

Howdy Richard!
Good to see another aussie on the forums!

This increase in water is nothing to worry about, the recommended daily intake for humans is 8 glasses of water spread out over the day (actually a false statistic, but doctors do admit that this is healthy), but I know personally that in the hotter weather (and colder!) I'll drink above that.

As with any nutritional or medical problem, it is much easier to think of the patient as a machine rather than as a living being (However in theory life is just a complex organic machine!).
Rabbits, like all mammals have to maintain an average body temperature, if their temperature drops too low, their body's start to slow down and they will die! The same applies to if they get too hot!
This heat has to be generated (and removed) somewhere! In the colder weather such as we are experiencing at the moment (brrr it was 1 degree here last night and I'm just above sydney on the coast!), rabbits need to pump more fuel in to their furnace to keep them going. More fuel (food!) means more water is needed (this is also fuel but serves many other purposes), as the weather gets cooler your rabbits will drink more throughout the day and eat more food to keep their bodies running at the right temperature.
The increase in hay will also act as a contributing factor as Mrs. PBJ has pointed out, these things combined will act as major factors.

The same will apply in the summer, as the weather heats up your rabbits will need more water and you will see their intake spike above the so called 'recommended' levels.

I've seen Lucy put back a whole bottle of water in one day, then only sip at it for a whole week at other times.

It is always good though to measure your rabbits output and make sure it roughly coincides with the input. If you are seeing a big increase in water consumption and a big decrease in the rabbits urine then there could be a major problem.

I like to give Lucy perhaps a 3/8ths of a cup of pellets on a cold winter night instead of 2/8ths, it seems like a small amount but for their body size it is fairly big (like having a salad with your main course). I provide her with unlimited hay (which your boys and girls should be getting anyway) and unlimited water. You need to trust in your rabbit to keep it's intake and output equal.

Also at your rabbits current age they should not be getting more than a 1/4 of a cup of pellets along with unlimited hay. Try to mix your hay and your pellets up a bit too, it promotes good digestion to have a mix of differen't hays and grasses (i.e. give them timothy pellets and alfalfa hay, or orchard grass and timothy pellets.).
However everyone has their own opinions as to what rabbits should be fed the general consensus is that 1/4 cup along with unlimited hay is healthy.

 

[BethM]

I can only add my own observation.....

I have two bunnies who eat a lot of hay. When it was just them, they went through a 25lb box of hay in two months. I have since added two more bunnies, and the same box of hay lasts 5-6 weeks. So those two eat WAY more hay than the other two.

The big hay eaters also drink a lot more water than the other two. They usually drain their water dish every day. The other two drink a fraction of that.

 

[Richard0600]

thanks for your input everyone, my girlfriend was a bit worried about kidney problems.
Which is the reason for writing here in the first place, but nice to know that its nothing
serious and that everything is normal. I'm just pissed at the fact that I have to change their cage
3 times in 2 weeks now, as oppose to once a week... they pee SOOOO MUCH now... and it quickly turns
my bedding into mulch... if I get lazy and dont change their bedding often enough the
level of the bedding of the bedding goes too high and they start peeing off the side of the
cage... grrr... which use to mean I had to scrub the carpet..but luckily we bought a large
plastic container, and used the lid as a pee catcher

 

[Richard0600]

oh and fyi we encourage to give our bunnies all the play time they want, so we let them roam
around the living room 24/7, everythings rabbit proofed so they have a blast... we bought
a small animal/cat carrier that's like a small plastic cage with a metal wire top. We removed
the top of the cage and use the bottom as a large litter tray it's lined with a medium sized garbage
bag(easier for me to change the cage come cleaning time, just have to lift the garbage
bag and put it in another) and for the "litter tray" bedding we use a cat bedding
thats 100% bio degradable, non clumping, and made from compressed wood, it turns into
a mulch (the pellets break when it comes in contact with water)anyways hope that gives
people some ideas about indoor bunny house care lol...

 

[jamesedwardwaller]

Richard0600 wrote:

My rabbits seem to be drinking a lot more water then they use to...
I read somewhere that they should only drink 100ml/Kg bodyweight. Since my
rabbits are 2.5 kg each, this means they should only drink 250 ml each, so 500 ml in
total. But recently, they've been drinking 800 ml in total, which is 60% over the
supposedly recommended water intake. Is this right?

I've been feeding them more timothy hay recently..like a big handful everytime the
bowl's empty if that has any correlation with water intake.
As for their pellets they both get a little under 1/2 a cup of timothy pellets everyday.

environmental factors/heat/illness/dusty-dirty-hay(food)/-activities-need extra water to flush it all down,,input equals output,,watch body signs for illness:shock:,sincerely james waller