I’ve been working on the list of Skills, I currently have 77 that I’m planning on teaching, which is a lot, but I think once Buttons and Nova learn one skill, the others will be pretty easy – for two reasons:
- I will know how long it will take to teach a single trick, and whether you can teach more than one at a time without the bunnies or myself getting confused
- Once they pick up a skill, the others nearly follow the same format, so they will know what is required and learn it pretty quickly
Now I have to find a suitable treat… I was talking about training with the Wombaroo Clover Pellets a couple of months ago, but Buttons doesn’t really like them – neither does Nova.
Clover is sweet and bunnies love eating it, but it is full of calcium.
Most places on the internet say that a bunny’s calcium deposits clear up after a week or so. I have found that if you are aware of what causes the deposits, and stop giving it to the bunny, it will clear up in a day or so. You just have to be vigilant and know your bunny.
The table below gives an overview of the things that cause Buttons to get deposits in his urine, mild diarrhoea, stinky farts etc.
| Food | Calcium | Oxalates | Sugar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Celery Buttons can only have a few leaves and no sticks or it can cause issues. I don’t give Buttons celery any more. | Cloudy Urine | White deposits on excreta | None |
| Parsley Buttons can only have one stick with a few leaves once a week or it can cause issues. | Cloudy Urine | White deposits on excreta | None |
| Apple Buttons cannot eat apple. | Cloudy Urine | White deposits on excreta | Black poop, can cause sugar build up and mild diarrhoea, farts |
| Banana Buttons can only have a 2cm long piece a day or it can cause issues. | None | None | Black poop |
| Dandelion Buttons can only have a few leaves a day or it can cause issues. | Cloudy urine, dark carotene coloured | None | None |
| Herbs (Dill, Coriander, Basil etc) Buttons can only have one stick with a few leaves a week or it can cause issues. | Cloudy urine | White deposits on excreta | None |
| Carrot (Not carrot tops) Buttons can only have a maximum 0.5cm thick slice (circle) of carrot a week or it can cause issues. | Cloudy urine, dark coloured (carotene) urine | None | Causes farts (because of the sugar) |
Homemade Bunny Treats
I’ve been thinking about making my own treats for training. All recipes contain the same ingredients – carrot, banana and oats. I laugh at this, because banana and carrot are themselves a treat, and oats… well oats is not a healthy option for bunnies. It’s classed as a filler, and it will cause digestive issues. How can people think these are any good together?
Other websites mention grinding up pellets, or using flour as the base. Fair enough, but aren’t bunnies supposed to have a limited amount of pellets during the day? To train bunnies, you need stacks of treats, and if you use pellets as the base, wouldn’t that feed them too many? And flour… that will bind them up and they will get GI stasis. Some pellets use oats or flour as the base, especially cheaper grey pellets.
Finally, I found two websites that actually agree with me, Bless their Cottontails, and Resilient Bunny Treats and they are Australian!!!! Like they say on that website, ground up Oaten hay would be the best base to use.
As for the binder, pellets usually use sunflower oil, purchasable homemade treats sometimes use butter or even an egg, or cheap ingredients like water or even PVA glue. Sunflower oil is sweet, but has a very limited lifespan (hence the use by date on pellets), butter is a gigantic no-no, because rabbits shouldn’t eat products made from other animals, and especially not dairy. Eggs, again, the for the same reason as butter.
To look for a healthy option, I’d use banana or applesauce, but not together in the same treat. That’s too much sugar. And, will banana or applesauce actually bind the ingredients or just make it sloppy?
For the extras, I’d use herbs like parsley, dill, coriander, rather than a vegetable. But extras are just that, extras. They are not necessarily required.
I looked into the ingredients of pellets. I wish I didn’t because they are dangerous. Honestly, making my own pellets for bunnies is the only option.
I then looked up how to make rabbit pellet feed. This made me want to make a spreadsheet to calculate the correct amounts.
I found the Feed The Bunny website that explains different pellets from overseas. This sparked my interest. They also gave a list of ingredients for each of the pellets. I like their work. Shame that those pellets aren’t available in Australia.
Take what Feed the Bunny says with a grain of salt. The Pellets page in the Health Library explains why.
Banana
Every morning my family have sliced banana on their breakfast. The ends of the banana get given to Nova and Buttons. Nova has learned that really quickly and gets excited to have the banana. She stands high on her back feet stretching up as far as she can to anyone who walks past to see if they have banana. On the morning of the 28th June, Nova couldn’t wait for her banana any more, we were too slow. So she leaped over her pen’s fence and ran up to the person who was going to give her the banana. I picked her up and gave her a cuddle, and she was given her banana.
Bananas are the only way to start a bunny’s day.