Overgrown incisors

The rabbit's front teeth, the incisors, continue to grow throughout life, so that wear is always made good. This is a great advantage in the wild, but can become a problem for captive rabbits who may be fed rather soft food and have little or no access to bark.

In severe cases the incisors grow so long as to make feeding impossible. Either they slowly lever the jaws apart, or an unopposed incisor will grow until it locks into the opposite jaw. This occurs when, as sometimes happens, one incisor falls out.

To keep the incisors in trim, rabbits need both hard food and a gnawing block. Greenstuffs such as kale and Brussels sprouts are best fed on the stem, which is tough enough to offer some resistance to the incisors, and root vegetables should be fed whole to rabbits big enough to manage them.

Any wood will serve as a gnawing block, but for choice a newly cut log with the bark left on is preferable. There is no danger of the rabbit swallowing splinters. When gnawing, the cheeks are drawn into the diastema, the space between the incisors and the cheek teeth, and this forms a barrier.

I have had several rabbits, that despite being given the correct food and wood to chew on, have suffered from overgrown teeth. In this case I have had to take the rabbit to the vet to have the teeth cut as it wasn't something I personally felt comfortable with doing. At one vet's they were able to laser the teeth which causes less stress for the rabbit. In extreme cases, your vet may recommend that the rabbit's teeth are removed.