Healthy?

Question
My rabbit Toasty is 1 years old and he loves to eat everything i eat (other than meat of course) I usually let him try a little, mostly he likes cereal in the morning and a bite of a cookie after dinner...will this kill him?

Answer
Hi Tina,

if the cereal isn't a high sugar cereal, and if it's a very small bite of cookie, and he is otherwise healthy, then probably not.  

The rabbit gi tract is a lot more delicate than ours.  It is not designed to eat high octane (hi sugar, hi carb) items.  It causes overgrowth of bad bacteria and causes imbalances that can lead to your rabbit stopping eating and potentially dying.  He needs lots of hay, he can/should have this all the time, a few greens per day, a small amount of food pellets (no extra junk in them, just pellets).  Really keep the treats and high carb/sugar items down.

If he ever has stomach problems I would not feed him anything like this.

If you want to read more about rabbit nutrition, go to:

www.rabbit.org

and type in keywords like "diet", "nutrition" in their site search engine.

Lee