am i feeding rabbits too much greenery?

[SlartyBartFast]

i feed rabbits a bowel of breakfast in the mornign but in the evneing, when i feed guineapigs, who need the vitamin C, i feed rabbits too.
shoudl i not be doing this.
they have the leaves from the cauliflower for example, guineapigs dont like this and have kale.
but i always feed rabbits similar, if slightly less, to what i feed pigs. what could be wrong?

Are they unwell? How much are you giving them? To be honest rabbits do best (gut and teeth) on a diet of mainly hay, supplemented with a small amount of the same boring veg, fresh grass and pellets. I usually give mine their veg in the morning (a carrot, couple of spring green leaves, bit of broccoli per rabbit) and 50g pellets each in the evening. Hay in a hay rack available all day. Don't make any sudden changes in their diet but if they're good hay eaters they will probably do well on one bowl of veg per day then dried food in the evening.

Unfortunately rabbits are liable to eat things that aren't good for them (like phone cables ). Cauliflower and kale are both in the cabbage family and are likely to give them tummy ache and gut problems, although not necessarily - some are just more senstive than others.

spacedog is right that hay is more important than anything else. The one time one of our drs (darling rabbits?) got gut problems it was due to too much apple. Now they get a fairly limited menu of 'safe' food - unlimited hay plus carrot plus carrot green (they prefer the green to the carrot) plus pellets each day, and grass in summer. They don't need anything else.

thanks for your responses
the hop about the garden and the youngest one eats all my plants. i assume she knows they are safe, but perhaps not
they do have hay, when i remember every other day or so.

how would i know if they had a gut problem?
a runny poo?
don;t they eat their runny poos?

oh and my youngest loves my prunings from the roses
i leave them for her now. i read bramble was good for them so assumed rose prunings would be the same?

I personally wouldn't trust a domestic bunny to know what is safe for them to eat. So if you allow them to free range you should remove or screen off any poisonous plants. If you do a google search you will find a list of plants and foods safe for rabbits to eat.

They produce caecals (poos which are wet looking, look like bunces of grapes) at night and yes, they do eat those- you should see very few of those as they usually pass them straight from the anus to the mouth-yum!

They then produce the round dry droppings which should be numerous and frequent. If you see a lot of caecals around that could indicate a problem. As could a sudden drop in the number of dry droppings, or a rabbit which stops eating. Take rabbits in these situations to the vet immediately as gut stasis in a rabbit can be fatal quickly.

My house rabbit is only fed in the evening - she gets her dry food when we have our dinner and then has a few peanuts and her green stuff for supper. Green stuff tends to be carrot leaves (I keep them in water in the kitchen - some people have vases of flowers!), carrots, broccoli, celery leaves, the occasional grape and sometimes a small piece of apple. If I'm in the kitchen she will come and beg for a carrot leaf sometimes and is always rewarded. Hay is available all the time and topped up/replaced regularly.

I only notice a problem if she's had too much fruit, then she can have more caecals than usual. I just lay off the green stuff for a day and she's fine. However, I only do that cos I know her tummy very well - if your bunny suddenly has a lot of sloppy poops, it's a good idea to get it checked out.

Sloppy poo and smears around her bum area were the ways we noticed our one rabbit had a gut problem. We took her to the vet to check that it was not a sign of an underlying condition (I got that advice from a really good website that I now can't find, but it was American and I just googled something obvious like 'rabbit stomach problems') and then cut out the fruit altogether.

It was a bit unfair on the other rabbit she shares the hutch with who does not react badly to apple, but that's life. It took a few days to clear up, and each day we had to clean her dirty bottom with wet tissues and then blow-dry it gently!