Feeding tools for an overweight Lionhead rabbit

A vet flagging obesity in a five-year-old Lionhead is actually really useful — it's a wake-up call that comes early enough to make a real difference. Lionheads are small rabbits and their pellet portions are often way too generous, while hay — which should make up around 80% of their diet — gets treated as an optional extra. The good news is that with the right setup, weight management in rabbits is very achievable. To point you in the right direction: is your rabbit housed indoors or outdoors, and are you mainly looking to control pellet portions, get a better hay feeding system, or both?

Maple is a great name. The eyeballing thing is really common — pellet portions for a Lionhead should typically be just one to two tablespoons a day, and without measuring it's very easy to double that without noticing. Can I ask roughly how much she weighs at the moment, and what pellets are you currently feeding her? That'll help me work out whether the pellets themselves are part of the issue or just the quantity.

Excel nuggets are a solid choice — the vet's right that they're a good pellet, so the issue is purely portion size, which is the easier problem to fix. For Maple at her target weight of around 1.4kg, you're looking at roughly one tablespoon of nuggets per day, which is a very small amount and genuinely hard to judge by eye. For the hay side, the biggest shift you can make is giving her a hay rack that keeps hay elevated, dry, and constantly topped up — rabbits eat much more hay when it feels fresh and accessible, and it directly displaces the calories she'd otherwise get from pellets. My recommendation is the Rosewood Naturals Trixie Hay Manger combined with a simple set of measuring spoons for the pellets. The Trixie hay manger attaches to the cage or pen wall, holds a good volume of hay, and keeps it off the floor so Maple is more likely to graze from it throughout the day. Pair that with a dedicated tablespoon measure you keep next to the food tin, and you've removed the two main guesswork elements in one go.

Gradually is better — reduce by about a quarter over two weeks while increasing hay availability at the same time. The idea is that as the hay rack stays full and fresh, she'll naturally start eating more of it and won't feel the pellet reduction as sharply. Lionheads can be a bit dramatic about food changes, but if hay is always available she won't go hungry — she'll just be getting her calories from the right place. It's worth a weight check in four to six weeks if your vet is happy to do a quick weigh-in, just to see if the trajectory is moving in the right direction.

That's a great plan — small practical changes like this genuinely add up fast with rabbits. Maple's only five so there's plenty of time to get her to a healthier weight and keep her comfortable for years ahead. Good luck with her.