What Do Rabbits Eat
What do rabbits eat? If you watch cartoons, it would appear that carrots might be the food of choice. If you have your own vegetable garden, many of those things you've planted taste very good to the rabbit. We often assume that it is the lettuce they mostly go after, but in truth lettuce leaves are not the best food for them. A rabbit will eat lettuce, but given a choice, will often eat something else instead.
Carrot Tops, Not Roots - If in response to the, "What do rabbits eat?", you said carrots, you really weren't all that far off. They will eat a small slice of carrot if offered to them, but what they really like in the vegetable garden is the carrot tops. I guess they figure that since we don't eat them, they might just as well. They also will go after cilantro and parsley if available, preferring both of those plants to lettuce.
In the absence of a vegetable garden, a rabbit's diet consists mostly of grasses and hay, especially Timothy hay. They also like a variety of wild flowers as well as a variety of leafy weeds, such as dandelions. If you have a pet rabbit you can feed it dandelion leaves and flowers from your lawn as long as chemical fertilizers haven't been used on the lawn. Rabbits have a very sensitive digestive system and ,while they seem to get along fine in the wild, if you have one as a pet, you have to be a little careful about not only what to feed it, but how much, while at the same time avoiding any vegetation which has come into contact with chemicals.
An Occasional Treat Is OK - We tend to spoil our pets, believing that the greater the variety of things we feed them, the happier and better off they will be. While a rabbit in the wild will sample from a variety of plants, hay and grass is the staple and a pet rabbit will be perfectly happy and healthy given a diet consisting only of hay, pellets and water. It will enjoy a piece of fruit or vegetable on occasion, but care must be taken not to give it too much of any one thing. Too much fruit at once can upset its digestive system, but a slice of apple every few days will do no harm, and give the rabbit some added nutrition. The same goes for raisins and bananas which a rabbit also will eat. The equivalent of a teaspoon of either of these is plenty for one day's treat.
Disgusting But Necessary - Besides what's been mentioned above, what do rabbits eat? How about rabbit poop? Yes, they do eat their own poop, and it's not a case of being "bad rabbit". Rabbits digest food slowly, and much of their diet consists of cellulose which they do not digest very well. Consequently, many nutrients never find their way into the rabbit's blood stream, but remain in the rabbit's poop. There are actually two types of poop, or feces if you prefer. One is a hard pellet, and the other is soft. Rabbits eat the soft stuff to get the nutrients that they didn't get the first time around. Rather than showing bad manners, the rabbit is actually being very efficient in the use of the food it eats.
Hay Is Really Important - If you have a pet rabbit, it's important to give it some hay in addition to just feeding it commercial rabbit pellets. It needs the hay for something to chew on, and it needs the long fiber that hay and grasses contain. Commercial rabbit food may contain some of the nutrients that the rabbit is going to normally get from eating its own feces, but it will probably continue to do that anyway.