Which Hay is best?

Hello everyone, I hope that you’re all keeping well. Today I want to talk to you about hay, this should make up 85% of a rabbit’s diet and they should always have a ready supply of it. I can remember before we were a rabbit family, I just presumed that you bought hay and a rabbit would eat it, if only it was that simple.

I am still surprised at the variation in quality of hay on the market, I can only talk about the hay that I have purchased and the shops that I have purchased it from. The first type of hay we started out with was meadow hay, I guess we started out with this because one, it was the most readily available and 2, we didn’t know any better. Nowadays I find the quality of meadow hay to be very poor, in my opinion it always seems to be more of a brown colour that a green colour and I don’t think our rabbits would touch it now. I can remember when we first adopted Bertie and he would actually choose not to eat rather than eat the meadow hay. If I remember correctly it would have been either B&M’s or Pets at Home meadow hay that we would purchase. As you can already tell meadow hay will not be getting my recommendation for hay to feed your rabbits.

Next is an important hay but not one that should be regularly fed to adult rabbits, its alfalfa hay. This is a hay that is great for young rabbits or rabbits that are underweight. We have only had to use this hay on one occasion and it was purchased from Pets at Home, on this occasion I was actually impressed with the freshness and smell of the hay. Alfalfa hay is rich in protein and fibre. This should not be a regular hay for your rabbits though because it has a higher protein level than grass which makes it very fattening to feed as the main source of hay.

Now my personal favourite is timothy hay, I find it fresh, green and smells great. This isn’t always the case though as pets at home’s timothy hay isn’t much different to their poor-quality meadow hay. We get our Timothy Hay from B&M and I can’t rate it highly enough. You can get a 1kg bag for £1.99 and it comes topped with marigolds and dandelions which our buns go mad for. The only time we have been disappointed is when the bag has been quite short lengths of hay, personally I like the long strands as I think they are just better quality. I imagine that all hay can vary in quality because of the weather though. 90% of the time this hay is great though and for £1.99 I don’t mind the odd dodgy bag.

Other options on the market I have seen recently are companies such as hay box club, they send big boxes of hay straight to your door and are available on a subscription basis. I don’t have any experience personally with this company but I would love to hear your views on them if you have used them.

For more information on a rabbits dietary requirements please feel free to check out our previous blog – Nutrition and diet advice for Rabbits. 

Anyway, I hope you have all enjoyed this weeks’ read and we will see you next time for our blog on our experience with making an insurance claim for your rabbit.