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Rabbit Heads.. Just the Heads..

This is a dedicated place for all of your questions and answers about Raw Diets. There are also some really cool groups like "Raw Fed" on the topic you can join. This forum is for people who already know they like the raw diet or sincerely want to learn more. Please remember that you are receiving advice from peers and not professionals. If you have specific health-related questions about your dog's diet, please contact your vet!

  
Zack

Move or I'll- plough you down!- (lovingly)		 
 
Barked: Fri Dec 7, '12 6:48am PST 
Would it be ok to feed a rabbit head without the rest of the body? I know people do it with deer and pig and stuff, but is a rabbit too small? May have found a rabbit head supplier as they just throw them away. Also, Zack has never eaten 'whole' prey before apart from fish, which doesn't really count for a lot of experience, haha. Is there anything I should know before feeding him this? I plan to feed it frozen.

Also, Zack is a Staffy, so he's not a huge dog or anything. The 'too small' comment was in regards to the size of a rabbit head compared to a pig or deer head.
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Saya

I want to play!		 
 
Barked: Fri Dec 7, '12 7:22am PST 
Is Zack a careful chewer? Bella is, but not every big dog is.

I'd get small order in case he doesn't like them don't want ton and no dog to feed it to.

It might take some time for him to get used to it and eat it who knows he might like it and eat it.

Crunching the head is bit different Saya gets whole baby rabbits and if I offer head first she bites it and leaves it and goes for back end first then head last. hehe
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Maxwell

I'm triple- superior MAD- now!		 
 
Barked: Fri Dec 7, '12 8:46am PST 
Definitely try them out before investing a lot of room to storing them. Be a great addition if this works out.

Hard to believe a dog would be able to swallow a furry head whole but I guess it could happen.

Max liked them fine after he figured out about the yummy center but he was dubious about the fur. I had to play with them a little to get him interested the first couple times, jerked it on the ground like playing with a toy on a string with a cat.
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Zack

Move or I'll- plough you down!- (lovingly)		 
 
Barked: Fri Dec 7, '12 10:16am PST 
If I do end up ordering some then the minimum order would be £25, which isn't too bad I suppose. Hopefully I can only order two or three heads and the rest of the order can be made up of the other things I have asked for, such as brain, eyeballs, spleen etc as this all (assumingly) gets thrown away too. If not then there is another raw feeder who is local, and I'll ask her if she wants them or knows anyone who does.

Zack has never had whole prey or anything like it, he's had ribs and chicken quaters, but nothing with fur on or even resembling whole pray. I think he'd like it, and play with it, but it will probably need a bit of playing with to get him to eat it. Maybe a bit of bashing too (ugh!) He tends to bury pig trotters and then whine that he's hungry, and I suppose it's because it takes him a while to realise that trotters are, in fact, food. So I think we'll have an issue there as well.

The other thing is that he's never had brain before and there is nowhere I can get it locally - how big is a rabbits brain? Although his stomach is pretty iron and he can take around 30-40g of a new organ straight away with no problems, I wouldn't want to over power him with it and give him loose stools.
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Saya

I want to play!		 
 
Barked: Fri Dec 7, '12 10:37am PST 
Not sure as Saya's are baby or juvenile rabbits which their heads are smaller then adults, but the bone content in the head should be enough to help keep it firm. If not could feed with a bone in meal til your sure.
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Zack

Move or I'll- plough you down!- (lovingly)		 
 
Barked: Fri Dec 7, '12 10:55am PST 
Good idea, Saya, thanks smile I wasn't really looking forward to scooping bits of brain out for another meal, haha. Saying that, when I began the raw diet I was funny about touching raw meat and stuff - now look at me big grin
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Maxwell

I'm triple- superior MAD- now!		 
 
Barked: Fri Dec 7, '12 11:12am PST 
You might consider peeling back the fur before offering it the first time. I don't think I have ever let Max open up whole prey, I cut a slit and expose the innards for him. Since the skin is fairly tight around the cut he might be better able to get started if he can taste familiar bone and meat.

Does he even like rabbit much? I guess I would buy more rabbit heads if the price was right but the heads he went gaga over were the llama heads.

Somebody on that yahoo list cleaned a head of some animal and determined it was 30% bone. Seems reasonable to me, except for the lower jaw the bone is mostly thin stuff. I give Max a rabbit head and meat to make up a larger than usual meal and the following day he got a smaller meal only meal and both of us were happy [poop was acceptable not too hard, not too soft].

Besides the brain there are eyes and some glands that count as organ in a head. Here is some information on what they might weigh. For a whole rabbit 100 grams might have .74 grams of brain and .24 grams of eye. For the 10 pound rabbits that provided the heads I bought that might mean about an ounce of brain and 1/3 ounce of eye. It is rich organ as brain and eye are mostly fat. Maybe since the rest of the head is very lean it will all work out.
http://web.archive.org/web/20061016171802/www.serve.com/BatonR ouge/nutrition/tissue_percentage_of_common_prey.htm

More information that you need I am sure. Hope you can combine the first order so you don't have all those heads just in case they don't work out.
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Farley

Farlekiin the- Dragonborn		 
 
Barked: Fri Dec 7, '12 11:38pm PST 
Farley eats whole rabbits, fur and all for the smaller ones and leaves the pelt if it's a bigger one (over 4 lbs)

He always eats the head last, even on a bigger rabbit he will crunch it up and swallow it ears and all in like, 10 seconds. I'd say heads are pretty boney, you shouldn't have a problem with loose stool providing Zack does okay with rabbit in general. Staffies have wider mouths and might be gulpers, so obviously the bigger the better when it comes to the head (and raw feeding in general).
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Zack

Move or I'll- plough you down!- (lovingly)		 
 
Barked: Sun Dec 9, '12 3:10am PST 
I know this may sound silly but he's never tried rabbit, haha. He generally loves just about any meat though so I'm not worried that he won't like it. I'm not planning to purchase any heads until the new year, so will be introducing rabbit this month so that his gut has time to get used to it. Saying that, his gut is pretty impressive when introducing new foods as it seems to take to them straight away, although I still introduce them gradually anyway.

The rabbit head will be skinned and fed frozen to begin with, and eventually will be fed with the fur on if he allows it. He's never had fur, so I'm not sure how he'll take to it. He likes to tear things though so I can imagine him playing with it more than anything else, haha. Is there anything different to normal that I should know about feeding heads, or is it just the same rules of 'know thy dog' and be watchful when feeding them?

Still waiting o
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