If rabbits don’t chew constantly, will their teeth grow to incredible lengths, causing them to starve?
June 15, 1990
Yeah, sure, I’m really really slow. But actually this message just appeared (TSD apparently is running short of “new” stuff to answer, eh).
But what I was wondering was the apparent misspelling of the character in the title. I’m pretty sure it was SUPPOSED to read “Psychotic dwarf RABBI”. No?
Well, I asked, didn’t I?
NT
Dental malocclusion in pet rabbits is more common than you might think. I went to a lecture on rabbit medicine a few years ago entitled “so it’s not the teeth. What now?” The lecturer started off the talk with “First, go back and look at the teeth again. If you’re still sure then…”
The reason for this is most commonly* a lack of chewing, due to an inappropriate diet (and Cecil, I’m afraid carrots in quantities other than the occasional disc would fall into this category- Bugs Bunny has screwed up people’s views on rabbit nutrition as thoroughly as Popeye has screwed up people’s views on human nutrition).
Basically rabbits are designed to spend a LOT of their time eating fairly low calorie, high fiber foods such as grass and hay. If they instead get all the energy they require from rabbit “muesli” or high-starch veg such as roots they have the options of (a) stop eating and be bored (and get tooth overgrowth) (b) find something else to chew (not easy in a cage, not cheap in a house) © carry on eating and get obese / digestive problems.
Another issue with some foods (including some sold as rabbit foods) is they can often be fairly low in calcium (in particular, rabbits fed muesli will often select the tastier bits and leave the bits with the calcium in). This can cause osteoporosis which, as well as making broken bones more likely, causes the tooth sockets to soften. When under increased pressure anyway from overgrowth (meaning that they push against one another even when the rabbit isn’t eating) the teeth can grow out of alignment. Once this occurs the condition is essentially unfixable without removing the teeth (not too much of a problem with the incisors but a nightmare with molars) or repeated shortening.
Although you certainly can clip a rabbit’s teeth with nail clippers there is a risk that the tooth will shatter longditudinally, with the crack travelling below the gumline. I’ve never had to deal with one of these but I imagine it could be at the very least bloody painful. These days the recommended approach is to trim them down with a high speed dental burr which is a lot more refined (and actually fairly well tolerated by most rabbits - the ones that don’t like it get the incisors removed faster). If the molars are affected then this requires sedation or GA and as the process normally needs to be repeated periodically this can get expensive.
As far as the OP is concerned there is probably a risk of the cotton tee-shirt (which is fairly indigestible) causing a (potentially fatal) intestinal obstruction but yes, the rabbit does need to chew to stay healthy. Pick hay or grass though, not carrots (or straw for that matter). Make any changes to the diet over a few weeks to give the rabbit’s gut a chance to adapt.
*Apparently some dwarf lops to have a genetic component, so you can get the diet right and still have problems.
There’s one new column every week, same as always. In addition, they re-run one or two old columns each week (it used to be one old column and a Staff Report, but the Staff Reports have dwindled away of late).
Oh, you’re learning that rabbits have personalities more like Bugs Bunny than Thumper? Had one that played with our cat by getting into a clinch and they would try to kick each others guts out. Bootsie would keep her claws in but Unnatural Velvet couldn’t retract his. It was horrifying to watch, but they never hurt each other.
We had a wild bunny in our neighborhood that had figured out that a dog on a chain is no threat. A couple of beagles would scream for hours, “Help! Help! It’s a horrible, terrible BUNNY come to murder us all in our beds!”, and Bunny would just sit there a-munchin’ and a-munchin’.