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According to veterinary statistics, one of the most common reasons for a rabbit having to visit the surgery is dental problems. Overgrown incisors and molars causing malocclusion.

If a rabbit is 'not acting like he normally does', it could be that he is having trouble eating or is in pain due to his teeth.

In some cases, dental problems are hereditary and developed through years of breeding in man's effort to 'create' an appealing head shape. But many dental problems can be alleviated or even prevented by rabbit owners.

The teeth (lower incisors) in the photo below were removed along with the top incisors as they were useless to the bun. These particular ones were sticking straight out of the mouth in a horizontal fashion and were hindering the bun's eating. Each of those teeth were clipped prior to extraction and were therefore approximately another inch longer before being photographed. The 'bloody' part is the root, the clean white part is the 'tooth'.

Your rabbit MUST eat hay! Some rabbit owners fill up their bunny's food dish with pellets or rabbit food, and keep topping it up throughout the day. This means that if bunny eats out of his dish all day, there's no need for him to eat hay. This really isn't good practice. It's a bit like letting your child eat sweets all day and then they're not hungry enough to eat their tea!

Now, I'm no expert on this, but I've found that if you give your rabbit a very small amount of pellets in the morning along with a good helping of fresh veg and herbs and then the same again in the evening (usual eating times for crepuscular animals [ie. most active first thing in the morning and later in the afternoon and evening]), if they get hungry or bored during the day, they will munch on their hay.

Rabbits are HYPSODONTS, meaning their teeth grow continuously throughout their life. The rabbit's front teeth (incisors) are used for cutting only, the back teeth are for grinding and chewing. So the progress of a piece of hay is: first it's picked up by the incisors which cut the piece of hay into a manageable length, it's then moved (and sometimes expertly folded!) by the rabbit's lips and tongue to the back of the mouth for chewing and grinding before moving on for swallowing and onto the GI (gastro intestinal) tract for further processing.

When a rabbit is chewing hay, the action of it's mouth is totally different from when it's eating pellets:

- Pellets use more of a crushing mouth action and take little or no effort to consume

- Hay uses a grinding mouth action (a bit like the way a cow chews the cud)

It's this grinding mouth action which keeps the back (or cheek) teeth in shape. If a rabbit doesn't use it's back teeth in this way, then 'spurs' develop and can eventually cut into it's cheek, tongue, or gums.

If your bunny is showing any signs such as

Drooling

Runny eyes

Eagerly going to food, but then acting unwilling to actually take it into the mouth

Gradual (or sudden) change in dietary habits (e.g., refusing to eat pellets, but happy to eat hay - or the other way around!)

Unusual eating habits, such as a willingness to eat only one or two food items, and rejecting other types

then it's time to get him to the vet!

My second bunny, Missy, a dwarf lop had dental problems. We only had her for three years. Unfortunately we didn't know she had the problem until it was too late. She didn't act any differently and showed no signs of discomfort or pain (we would have noticed if she had as she was a houserabbit and a big part of our lives). One day we noticed blood around her mouth and immediately took her to the vet. She was examined under anaesthetic and found to have severe problems with her cheek teeth. Her lower jaw was one full centimetre narrower than her upper jaw, and her teeth (not just spurs) were growing inwards towards her tongue. Her teeth were, in effect, wearing away her tongue. The vet couldn't understand how she'd managed to survive as long as she did as her tongue was so badly damaged. Sadly she had to be put to sleep as nothing could be done for her. I felt guilty and angry, guilty for the fact that I could have perhaps had something done about it had I known earlier, and angry because breeders have allowed this sort of thing to happen in their efforts to create 'new' rabbits.

Missy showed no symptoms as is common with prey animals. In the wild, any animal which shows pain, weakness or illness, will be watched closely by predators who will pounce and kill at the earliest opportunity.

Some rabbits need to have their incisors removed if they are causing problems. This is less traumatic if your vet is familiar with the procedure. The roots of a rabbit's teeth are very long and curved, and for the operation to be successful, they need to be removed completely. If they are not, the tooth will grow back in, causing more problems!

Incisor removal does not affect the quality of a rabbit's life, they cope very well. The only difference is you have to cut their veggies and hay up into little pieces and make sure their bottom is kept clean.

This is an xray of a rabbit with very poor teeth: