Rabbit Feeding Guide

If you search the internet you will see repeated over any over the rabbits should have 80% hay or an all hay diet. The 80% hay recommendation and propaganda was started by House Rabbit Society. Oxbow is a partner to House Rabbit Society and funds them. For the past two decades House Rabbit Society has approached soon to graduate DVMs going into exotics specialty and offered them "Assistance " on rabbits, even help starting their practices! This makes many vets beholden to HRS and their practices are colored with HRS faulty information. I advise you to look at your sources a second time.. even the big colleges, Purdue, UC Davis, Colorado, WSU.... look at their Rabbit care guides, then scroll down to the citations and fine print... and you'll have House Rabbit Society's fingerprints in it. Hence why Oxbow bags carry their feeding recommendations. Oxbow has a near monopoly on the pet rabbit market and thus this incorrect info spread over the last 2 decades.

ARBA care guides are written by an entire panel of DVMs and pellets making up the majority of the diet is their recommendation. Not only that, but a study of the teeth/jaws and digestion of wild rabbits vs domestic rabbits concluded that hay is poor in nutrition, hard to chew which actually cause malocclusion, and causes periodontal disease from hay getting stuck between teeth. Wild rabbits are high nutrition selectors, they only resort to dried hay like grasses in times of starvation/deep winter, just to stay alive.

Feed related

Rabbit Tracks: Feeds and Feeding April 24, 2017 - Author: Michigan State University Extension

Impact of feed restriction and of the hygiene of housing on rabbit performances and health

Effects of Rocket Seed Oil, Wheat Germ Oil, and Their Mixture on Growth Performance, Feed Utilization, Digestibility, Redox Status, and Meat Fatty Acid Profile of Growing Rabbits

RECENT RESEARCH ADVANCES IN RABBIT NUTRITION December 2000

Reflections on rabbit nutrition with a special emphasis on feed ingredients utilization January 2004

[https://www.vetfolio.com/learn/article/nutrition-know-how-pet-rabbit-nutrition Nutrition Know-How: Pet Rabbit Nutrition Nutrition] September 2011 (Vol 32, No 9)

Hay:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5606619/

Debunked Studies whose info is still used as "evidence" for House Rabbit society Propaganda:

[Preference of rabbits for drinking from open dishes versus nipple drinkers https://www.proquest.com/openview/aab930d5ae37a871a6db58254da14fdb/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2041027&fbclid=IwAR231sEmTCZBjH9nE5l6q1mFN-Hb9dXPREmaXCS279ipOCuc4BZDUXeJGtQ] Tschudin, A; Clauss, M; Codron, D; Hatt, J-M.The Veterinary Record; London Vol. 168, Iss. 7, (Feb 19, 2011): 190.

This study was widely discredited, and removed from Researchgate, and Pubmed , becuse the sample size was 12 dwarf rabbits total. Not large enough sample to gather any concussive evidence.