24/06/2026
Rabbit Awareness Week day 3!
Food, glorious food!
Wild rabbits are designed to live on dry, tough grasses, weeds and shrubs. Our pet rabbits have exactly the same anatomy and physiology and benefit from a similar diet.
High carbohydrate diets like muesli and grains, or just an excess of pellets, can upset the delicate intestinal microbial balance causing poor digestion, slow or erratic intestinal contractions, altered dental growth and an increased risk of diarrhoea and uneaten caecotrophs. A lack of fibre from feeding lots of processed foods or root vegetables, with little grass or hay, slows down the intestines making rabbits prone to stasis, alters digestive processes and risks tooth overgrowth.
The ideal diet for rabbits is as much hay and grass as they will eat, with a big handful of fresh leafy greens (ideally weeds and leaves), and a small amount of high fibre pellets, with root vegetables and fruit reserved for high value treats. Over winter this gets tougher as natural foraging reduces but good quality dried forage or even frozen weeds can help reduce reliance on shop bought greens that aren't always as high fibre and nutritious as wild foods.
Check out the great breakdown of garden foraging options from for some inspiration for safe summer foraging
