Switching Rabbit from Pellets to Forage

Switching away from a pellet-only diet is one of the best things you can do for a rabbit — so good move. Before I point you in the right direction, tell me a bit about your English Spot. Is she indoor or outdoor, and how much foraging behaviour are you actually seeing from her day to day? Does she graze, dig, nose around, or does she tend to just sit and wait for food?

That's really common when rabbits are raised on pellets — they learn to expect a bowl and never develop the instinct to seek food out. The good news is two years old is young enough that you can absolutely retrain that behaviour. What's prompting the switch now — is it boredom, weight, dental concerns, or just feeling like she deserves better?

The destructive chewing is a classic sign of under-stimulation and not enough natural wearing material — you've diagnosed it correctly. Forage gives her something to actually work through, and the fibrous texture does the dental job that pellets simply can't. Here's my recommendation: Supreme Science Selective Naturals Forage Feast. It's a loose blend of dried herbs, flowers, grasses and meadow plants — the kind of varied, textural mix that encourages rabbits to sort through it and pick out pieces rather than just eating from a bowl. Scatter it across the floor instead of putting it in a dish, and she'll start using her nose within a few days. It's also a gentle transition because the ingredients are familiar to her digestive system, unlike some herb mixes that are very rich and can cause soft cecotropes if introduced too fast.

Reduce pellets gradually over two to three weeks rather than cutting them overnight — her gut bacteria need time to adjust. Start by halving the pellet portion and replacing it with the forage mix, then over the following week drop pellets to a small tablespoon, and by week three you can stop entirely if she's eating the forage well and her droppings look normal — round, firm, plentiful. Unlimited hay should be the absolute backbone of her diet throughout all of this. The forage is the enrichment layer on top, not a hay replacement.

Great — scatter feeding it rather than using a bowl is the single change that will make the biggest difference to her behaviour. Give it a week and you should see her actually using her nose and moving around more purposefully. That should sort the chewing out too once her brain has something proper to do.