Hayes, R. A., Baker, C. L., Birke, L. L. 2024. Reducing hay waste from New Zealand white rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) by switching to hanging wire feeders from conventional food bowls. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 12(3) (May/June), 40–42.

Rabbits require daily dietary fiber (hay) to help maintain a healthy digestive tract. As per our standard operating procedure (SOP), we give the rabbits hay and other daily food enrichment in a bowl. Rabbits are intelligent, playful, and curious animals and will find a way to tip the bowl over, spilling out the contents. This spilled hay falls into the waste catch pan or becomes soiled by rabbit urine and/or fur. In this study, we measured how much hay was wasted using our typical SOP compared to the new wire hanging feeders. We hypothesized that switching to the wire hanging feeders would result in less hay waste than the bowls while maintaining rabbit health. Overall, we found that the rabbits transitioned to the feeders without any issues and that the new feeders drastically reduced the amount of hay wasted per day for each rabbit. Something we did not consider in the beginning was that the hanging feeders gave us an additional health parameter that we could observe daily as the feeders are clearly visible on the cage door and care staff could easily see if a rabbit stopped eating the hay. At the conclusion of this study, we have switched to hanging feeders for rabbit hay as it reduced waste and added a rabbit health marker.