High-fiber hay for Mini Rex rabbits

Your vet's advice to increase fibre is spot on — and the good news is that the right hay solves this directly. Hay should make up around 80% of a rabbit's diet: it's the foundation of gut health and the only thing that keeps a rabbit's continuously-growing teeth properly worn down. Pellets are a small supplement, not a meal. For a 4-year-old Mini Rex who needs a fibre boost, the type of hay matters. Before I point you to something specific — what is your rabbit currently eating day to day, and do you know roughly how much hay he or she is actually getting through?

That's a very common pattern — pellets are convenient so they become the main event, but for a rabbit's gut they're too rich and too low in the long-stem fibre that actually keeps things moving. Your vet is right to push hay hard. For a 4-year-old Mini Rex with slow gut motility, I'd go with Oxbow Western Timothy Hay. It's a genuine high-fibre grass hay, consistently cut with long strands intact, low in calcium and protein compared to richer hays like alfalfa, and it's widely available on Amazon UK. The long fibre is what does the mechanical work in the gut and keeps the teeth grinding properly. It's also dust-extracted, which matters because dusty hay often puts rabbits off eating it freely.

They're all good options — the honest answer is that any quality grass hay is better than pellets as a primary food. But Timothy has a couple of practical advantages here. It's very consistent in fibre content from bag to bag, which matters when you're trying to make a specific dietary change on vet advice. It's also well-studied in rabbit nutrition and tends to have good palatability — rabbits actually eat it, which is half the battle. Meadow hay is fine and has more variety, but quality can vary a lot between batches. Orchard grass is slightly softer and lower-fibre than Timothy, so for a rabbit specifically flagged for low gut motility, Timothy is the stronger choice right now. Once her digestion is back on track, you could introduce a meadow hay mix for variety.

The guideline is hay available at all times — not measured out, just a constant supply she can graze whenever she wants. That's how a rabbit's gut is designed to work: small amounts moving through continuously, not two meals a day. For pellets, the standard recommendation for a healthy adult rabbit is around one tablespoon per kilogram of body weight per day, and given your vet's concern I'd sit at the lower end of that or even drop slightly below while you're actively working on her gut motility. Keep greens going — leafy veg like romaine, spring greens, or fresh herbs are fine and add hydration — but make the hay the centrepiece. If she's been on mostly pellets, she may take a few days to really start eating hay freely. Don't panic — just keep it fresh and accessible.

Good plan. Oxbow Western Timothy Hay is easy to find on Amazon UK — just check you're getting the larger bag if she's going to be on hay-first feeding, it works out much better value. Give it two to three weeks of consistent hay access with reduced pellets and you should see her gut motility improve noticeably. If it doesn't, or if you see any signs of GI stasis — no droppings, hunched posture, refusing food — go back to the vet promptly. But for most rabbits in her situation, getting the diet right makes a real difference quickly.