Home Made Rabbit Treats
Disclaimer - Many of the recipes below contain fruit, carrot and /or oats. Personally I prefer to avoid all of these. However I've included them here because rabbit owners often ask about them.
Remember, these are treats and as such should be fed infrequently...
Out of the recipes included here, the first is the most preferable in my opinion.
Bunny Cookie Recipe
Grind a cup of rolled oats and/or pellets.
Finely chop as much hay as you want - or use chaff.
Add whichever chopped greens, forage, herbs, fruit etc as desired.
Mix the ingredients and add water gradually to bind it until it forms a dough.
Place between two sheets of baking paper and using a rolling pin, roll to the desired thickness Cut into whichever shapes you want.
Bitesized is good!
A dehydrator is best to dry them as they are designed to remove moisture without cooking the food which means it retains its nutritional value.
It can take up to 10 hours to dry depending on the thickness of the cookie. If using an oven use the lowest temperature you can until they are dry and hard. Using a higher temperature will bake them which will lose nutrients. Cool thoroughly before storing in an airtight container.
Source: Bunny Mummy & Friends
Melissa’s Banana-Pellet Balls
For rabbits who aren’t eating because they’ve just had surgery, have sore teeth, or who are elderly or are depressed, you might also try the very famous Melissa’s Banana-Pellet Balls, developed by Elizabeth TeSelle. These are high-protein and high-fat and not suitable as a steady diet for young healthy rabbits.
You will need:
- electric coffee grinder
- 1/2 banana
- 1/3 c. pellets
- rolled oats (bulk rolled oats from a health food store or Quaker Old Fashioned rolled oats — NOT quick-style)
- non-dairy acidophilus, or whatever else you need or want to add (Oxbow Critical Care could be used here)
Mash banana in a shallow bowl with a fork.
Add acidophilus and mash it in.
Grind up 1/3 – 1/2 c. dry pellets in coffee grinder until they are dust, and add slowly to banana.
Cream the pellet dust into the banana with a fork just as you would cream butter and sugar.
The mixture will be very stiff.
When fully blended, add a small amount of rolled oats and cream again. Form the mixture into stiff balls with your hands.
It should make 2-3 balls, enough for one or two meals per day.
Discuss the amount with your vet and weigh your rabbit weekly to ensure that she is maintaining weight (or gaining, if that is what is desired).
Some rabbits may like the mixture firmer and others may like it gooier. Experiment a little to see what your bunny prefers. You can add a little less pellet dust to make it gooier, or make the recipe as is and add a small amount of banana baby food.
Do not add water, as it provides no calories.
Source: Medicating Your Rabbit - House Rabbit Society
Stacie’s Rabbit Treats
1/2 cup rabbit pellets (watered down)
1 cup plain oats
1 carrot
2 bananas
2 heap Tb oregano
1 bundle of parsley
Mix together and blend well.
Separate into circles on baking paper.
Sprinkle crushed basil on top.
Oven bake on 170C for 30 min.
Let air dry and refrigerate in container.
Grass Biscuits
About 500gms grass cut into small pieces (2-3cm)
A hand full of oats (or substitute ground pellets/Dual Care/Critical Care)
2 bananas, mashed
Mix all together and press into trays.
Dehydrate or bake for around 3hrs at 130 degrees.
Source: Making Grass Biscuits - The House Rabbit
Fenugreek and Banana
2 small bananas
1 Tbsp fenugreek
2 handfuls rolled porridge oats (or substitute ground pellets/Dual Care/Critical Care)
1 handful dry rabbit food (pellets)
a splash of water
Add fenugreek, porridge oats and banana to a mixing bowl.
Collect dust from bottom of rabbit food bag/tub, decide there isn’t quite enough and smush some pellets up to make more.
Mix together, adding a splash of water if necessary until it binds together.
Put some grease proof paper on a baking tray (the dabs of oil at the corners are underneath to stop the paper rolling up).
Break off sections of the mix and roll it between your palms to make a ball.
Place the balls on the baking tray and flatten.
Place the baking tray in the oven, we tried using the left over heat after cooking a meal but it needed a little longer to dry out completely, so a low heat e.g. 150 oC for 30-60 minutes and just keep an eye should do it.
Obviously, these are treats, so will be portioned out gradually to avoid porkiness. Easy and cheap to make though and much less of the processed odds and ends that you get in many store brought treats.
Source: Home Made Rabbit Treats - The House Rabbit
A Word About Ice Treats ...
Making treats to cool your bun in hot weather is quite commonly suggested in many groups, pages, websites and blogs. However opinion about the safety of this is varied. Here at WW we tend to err on the side of caution and suggest that it is not such a good idea due to the risk of it slowing the gut down, leading to stasis. A few of our group members have shared the following information with us which lends weight to our stance -
“Ice cools the internal organs and the body then draws blood away from the extremities to warm the internal organs leading to a higher core body temperature and reduced blood in the extremities to cool things down.”
- Tricia Bingham.
”Ingesting frozen food in the heat can also trick the hypothalamus in the brain into treating the body as too cold so creating a cascade of events that can lead to an animal getting very unwell.”
- Carly Milburn
Another Current Fad ... is smoothies. We warn against these because as soon as you grind or smash up greens with a liquid and or sweet things like fruit - especially in summer, they begin to ferment. Giving your rabbit anything that has a remote chance of fermenting is not a good idea at all as it can cause gas and serious gut disturbance. You are far better to simply wet the greens down with cool water and offer them on a shallow plate for your bun to enjoy.