Diet for a sensitive rabbit?

[BridgetsFlame]

So I've had Luther for two weeks now, prior to that he spent three weeks at a neighbors house, they were the ones who found him wandering the paddocks. He was severely underweight when found and is still working on gaining the weight back. He's currently 2270g however according to a vet and two rabbit breeders he should be more like 2500-2600. He used to be 1900 so we are getting somewhere.

So while at the neighbors house his diet was a molasses coated stud mix, as much grass as he wanted and hay. He lived out doors and I only saw him every few days so there's no real telling whether he reacted to that as well.

Since he's moved in with me we've discovered that he's allergic to loose hay. He gets crusty red inflamed eyes and a snotty nose that disappear within an hour of removing the hay. We've experimented enough times to be totally confident that it is the hay that's the issue.

He also can't eat vegetables, even a fingernail sized piece leads to a poopy butt and an unhappy bunny.

So his diet is currently restricted to free fed lucerne pellets, a constant supply of fresh grass (I try to pick the toughest, most hayish grass I can find for his teeth) and lucerne hay cubes which don't seem to aggravate his allergies.

Everythings free feed at the moment till he gains the weight he needs.

I'm Aussie and lucerne is all that's available in the packaged items as I won't buy Oxbow.

So he is still gaining weight so I'm assuming his diet can't be too bad for him, but I just wanted to check that I'm not going to give him malnutrition keeping it so restricted? His new coat is finally growing in and it's gorgeously lush so he looks a lot less bald. Considering he's a cashmere I'd expect the coat to be poor and brittle if his diet wasn't adequate...

 

[tonyshuman]

For putting on weight, as long as he's not having urinary issues, lucerne is fine. I think his diet sounds ok. Are the pellets more than just hay? Do they have nutrients, etc in them? It will have to be a slower process than you want for him to get to the right weight. You don't want him to put on a lot of body fat.

 

[BridgetsFlame]

From memory the pellets are only 50% hay. Not my favorite choice but far better then the stud mix he was on previously.

He pees like a horse so I don't think there's any issues there. Though I am often amazed at the output, after all he is only a little bunny LOL.

I'm working on the assumption at the moment that if the natural diet is entirely grass I can't go wrong if I just keep feeding him as much grass as he wants.

I am going to have to change his current litter box design though. Currently it has that plastic mesh over paper litter. It'd work perfectly if he always did perfectly formed poos but as it is I'm scrubbing the mesh a few times a day to clean the grossness off. Just checked on him and there's no pools of poo for once but he has managed to mash some ceacals into the mesh.

 

[Nancy McClelland]

ray: We've had a couple that we've had to limit veggie intake on or else it was a lot of gooey discharge too. Never had one allergic to Timothy though. Good luck.

 

[BridgetsFlame]

Not Timothy, I'm aussie we don't grow Timothy here. He's allergic to lucerne, oaten and grassy hay. I haven't tried the others, twas getting to be an expensive experiment.