Adding greens and veggies to diet, what to look for and how to treat?

I recently gave a small clump of wheat grass to four of my buns in an attempt to slowly introduce veggies to them today one of my books he generally looks uncomfortable and unhappy because he’s hot in the summer in Florida appears a bit more clumped up and uncomfortable than normal. I’ve heard I can give gas drops if it’s bloat and G.I. stasis you’re supposed to get the moving in with both you’re supposed to make sure that they eat and drink. What can I do to ease the transition to veggies? Ideally I’d like these bunnies to be on some form of fodder, hay with minimal pellets long-term right now they’re on pellets and hay.

Anyone have any blogs they can point me to or info on the beat transition?

The point with transitioning bunnies is to go very slowly. So if I (after a winter of no greens) in the spring start to give my bunnies greens, I'll give them their hay and add two or three pieces of grass to that. Then the next day, more hay, a bit more grass, and gradually increase grass/decrease hay. Takes me about two weeks but I know other folks it takes them a solid month.

Once they are handling grass okay, I will SLOWLY start to introduce other greens like various garden weeds that are easy on the digestive system. DO NOT add brassica types plants until your rabbits are well adjusted to a variety of plants.

My plan is dandelion greens, herbs (rosemary basil parsley oregano etc) and wheat grass.

We started with wheat grass but already have dandelion greens.

I’ll go slow!

I suppose my spring transition is about 2 weeks also. Pretty much as the greens appear the pellets disappear. By the time I have plenty of forage for them I've stopped the pellets. In the autumn as the greens are harder to come by I start the pellets again.

Zee-Man said:

I suppose my spring transition is about 2 weeks also. Pretty much as the greens appear the pellets disappear. By the time I have plenty of forage for them I've stopped the pellets. In the autumn as the greens are harder to come by I start the pellets again.

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So just increase/decrease daily? And watch fo signs of pain? Any ideas what to do if anyone reacts negatively? Just get them moving and make sure they are drinking?

if you go slowly, you shouldn't see gastric upset. If you do, my personal policy is to hard cull since once a rabbit gets ill I will NEVER breed from them or allow for the potential to be bred. To me, it signifies a poor immune system. A rabbit SHOULD be able to handle slow changes to its diet, if it can't, there's a fault in the rabbit. Others will baby them along and sometimes bring them around okay. I just prefer not to breed weakness into my lines.

This may sound too risky for you but thought I’d share. We transitioned two Rex rabbits to forage on our lawn just by letting them out for a 2-4 hours each day. We don’t have traditional hutches but instead used a 6*8 duck brooder house to house them which is set up against the edge of our lawn. We had no issues in the transition and I suspect they self regulated - initially eating hay and pellets a lot to counteract the diet change. They are super healthy looking now (3 months into the change) and eat very little hay and pellets. For the most part they have free choose of a lot of diet items inside their pen and house, both dried and fresh. Of course they prefer the fresh food most of the time.

Do remember that not all ‘greens’ are the same. Grass is a totally different plant than garden herbs, brassicas and lettuce. From a human perspective greens tend to be lumped together as greens, but for a rabbit they are all very different things. Also, if they are sitting in cages and bored all day they may eat more things that ultimately may not be good for them due to boredom. I recommend starting with mostly grass and/or lawn clover because it is most similar to their dried diet. Add garden ‘greens’ or herbs slowly. We do not feed a lot of brassicas to our rabbits compared to lawn plants. We have a diverse lawn which is nice, and which includes a lot of broadleaf ‘weeds’ that the rabbits love.

FluffleFarm said:

So just increase/decrease daily? And watch fo signs of pain? Any ideas what to do if anyone reacts negatively? Just get them moving and make sure they are drinking?

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Im pretty bold and give each rabbit a good handful of stuff. As summer gets on and there are lots of wild forage they get more stuff. I do a mix of long fiber and short. So in the morning they each get a large handful of grass, horsetail, kentucky blue, crab, even sedge. In the evening they get stuff like mulberry, goldenrod, fleabane, ragweed. I grow sunchokes for them. Blackberry, rose, and mustang grape are also favorites. As to quantity, i'll give each 6 or so entire ragweeds.