Rabbit Dental Care
In our blog post Five Areas of Focus for Pet Rabbit Care, we discuss how vital a rabbit’s eating habits are to its survival. A good diet will include plenty of vegetables, fruit, hay, and well balanced pellets. Proper nutrition is important; but the amount of nutrients in your rabbit’s food means nothing if it’s not consumed at a rate fit to sustain life.
Rabbits eat around the clock, and must continuously feed to thrive. In fact, non-consumption of food becomes fatal in as little as 24 hours. Although various factors can affect a rabbit’s eating routine, there’s one cause for a lack of eating that can be prevented by owners, and that’s proper dental care.
Proper dental care for rabbits doesn’t include brushing or teeth cleanings. The best way to care for your rabbit’s teeth is through early signs and detection of abnormalities, a presence of adequate chew toys, and a diet conducive to sufficient tooth grinding.
Grinding teeth isn’t just a habit of rabbits, it’s a necessity. Unlike most animals, a rabbit’s teeth continue to growth throughout its lifetime. Without trimming their teeth, rabbits will develop harmful deformities like tooth misalignment, mouth lesions, and abscesses. These conditions are extremely painful for rabbits, who are known for their low tolerance for discomfort. The pain and inefficiency of the teeth will result in a lack of desire to eat, and quickly decrease your rabbit’s chance for survival.
- Annual Check-ups
Rabbits in good health conditions typically only require one preventative-care check-up a year. During the check-up, your vet will look for signs of dental abnormities including malocclusion, overgrowth, tongue entrapment, and infection. If caught in the early stages, your vet can help you make the proper steps to stop further damage.
Malocclusion is a misalignment of the teeth, which causes severe pain and makes it difficult for a rabbit to eats due to tongue entrapment.
In additional to misalignment, overgrowth is another serious tooth deformity. An overgrown tooth can become sharp and lead to your rabbit creating cuts and deep oral wounds.
Booth conditions can lead to root infections and cause gum abscesses. Depending on the severity of your rabbit’s condition, your vet may distribute antibiotics to stop the infection, or recommend a tooth extraction.
- Chew Toys
Rabbits have more teeth than what meets the eye. Although known for their pronounced front teeth called incisors, rabbits actually have a totally of 28 teeth! Most of the teeth sit behind the front incisors, and are to chew and grind food. These hidden teeth are called molars. Similar to incisors, molars continue to grow throughout the course of a rabbit’s life. If left untrimmed, both molars and incisors can grow beyond lengths that are comfortable while chewing.
To prevent malocclusion, overgrowth, and infection, a rabbit’s hub should contain chewing toys that serve as filing mechanisms. Toys like wooden blocks, and even old cardboard paper towel rolls are effective grinding tools. Without ways to grind and trim their teeth, rabbits will inevitably succumb to oral dysfunction.
- Diet
Well balanced pellets are a great sources of nutrition, but does very little to aid in filing teeth. In addition to pellets, include food well suited for teeth grinding such as hay, and hard veggies like carrots. Baby rabbits should be given alfalfa hay, while adults thrive on timothy hay. While most pet owners are cautioned to ration food portions, rabbit owners can rest assure that there is rarely such a thing as too much hay.
What a rabbit eats and chews has a direct effect on its ability to continue its feeding cycle. Diets that include lots of nutrition, but lack adequate tooth grinding materials is ineffective in maintaining the longevity of your pet. Luckily, with a few easy steps, your rabbit can sustain good oral health and reduce the risk of dangerous tooth deformities. If you currently care for a rabbit or considering owning one as a pet, consider reading Five Areas of Focus for Pet Rabbit Care for additional tips to keep your rabbit healthy.
