I'm Acorn and not feeling so good ...
We have known Acorn and his mom all of his ten years. He has been a very healthy bunny, but is now sick and needing a number of medications and some extra feedings of Oxbow Critical Care. His mom called today for some advice on how to do the syringe feedings to get more of the food into Acorn.
After talking with Acorn’s mom and emailing her a link, I realized this would be something good to let more people know about. The first thing you may want to try if you need to force feed your rabbit is to see if you can take the force out of the equation. It is always better if the bunny feeds themself. I came across these recipes, http://rabbit.org/care/recipes.html, on the House Rabbit Society website.
They feature pellets ground in a coffee grinder which works if you don’t have access to Oxbow’s Critical Care. If you have the Critical Care for a sick rabbit, use that in place of the ground pellets. The Critical Care is specially formulated to have lots of good stuff to assist rabbits nutritionally who are ill.
I suggested trying the Banana Pellet Balls first to see if Acorn would voluntarily consume his Critical Care which would make things less stressful for everyone. Either the Pellet Balls or the pumpkin mix in a bowl can be offered first to a bunny to see if they will eat without having to be force-fed by syringe. Shadow will sometimes eat a Critical Care mixture on his own but our Princess Tigger never volunteers for anything, ever.
Hoping this helps!
