Can Rabbits Eat Celery?

If you have always loved eating celery and wondered if it is good to give to your rabbit, then you can stop wondering now as we are now going to answer the question in detail. 

Can rabbits eat celery? Celery is a versatile vegetable that is helpful for your pet’s digestive health and helps in wearing down their teeth. Celery parts including its leaves, stalks, and roots, can be fed to rabbits. The nutrient content of celery includes fiber, Vitamins A, B6, and K. However, celery has a high water content; hence avoid overfeeding it to your rabbit.

Are you wondering whether or not will your furry pets like eating celery? Or do you feel conflicted between feeding them raw or cooked celery? Whatever your queries are, they will be answered in the article below. So stay with us till the end if you want to learn everything about feeding these veggies to your rabbits.

Do rabbits like eating celery?

As a caring pet parent, you always want to keep your little pets happy, particularly with what they eat. The whole concept of treating pets is based on our desire to make them happy.

Before we talk about whether or not do rabbits like eating celery, let’s ask ourselves this: do rabbits eat celery in the wild? Because anything that is a part of their natural diet will certainly be well-received by them.

It might come as a surprise to you, but celery is not a part of their diet in the wild. As wild animals, these lagomorphs primarily feed on grass and hay. But just because rabbits don’t eat celery in the wild doesn’t mean they won’t enjoy eating it in celery. These little guys do not eat carrots in the wild either, and yet they are a sucker for them, aren’t they?

Despite being excluded from their natural diet, celery is still an ideal snack choice for your furry pets. It is leafy, crunchy, contains water in abundance, and has a lower sugar content than most fruits and vegetables. Therefore, your rabbits will certainly like eating this veggie.

Is celery healthy for rabbits?

Now that you’ve made sure that celery will be a welcome addition to your furry friend’s diet, aren’t you curious about how this veggie will impact their health? Since rabbits have a much smaller diet than us, you must fit in all the nutrients they require in their daily diet without overfeeding them anything. Can celery help you with it? That’s what we will learn in this section.

But before we get into it, how much do you really know about the nutritional value of celery? To help you brush up on your knowledge about it, we’ve curated a table of celery’s nutritional composition below. Take a look:

Serving size: 100 grams

Now, let’s discuss how celery can help your pets in leading a long and healthy life:

Celery is rich in fibers.

As you can clearly see in the table and might also have heard elsewhere, celery is an excellent fiber source. The high fiber content of these veggies is what makes them an ideal snack for your furry pets since fibers can serve two vital functions in their body.

First and foremost, fibers ensure that they have a healthy and smooth functioning digestive system by:

• Promoting the nutritional absorption capacity of their intestines
• Regulating their bowel movements
• Protecting them from digestive and gastrointestinal issues like diarrhea and constipation

Secondly, fibers are beneficial for your rabbit’s oral health. Did you know that the teeth of rabbits continue to grow in length for their entire lifetime?

The average rate of growth for their teeth is half an inch per month. When not kept in check, these teeth can end up injuring the rabbits themselves and can even be life-threatening for them.

To wear their teeth down, rabbits often chew on tough plants in the wild. However, these little guys hardly find anything similar to chew on in captivity. Therefore, it’s your responsibility to provide them with ways to keep their growing teeth in check.

Celery is tough and fibrous and can certainly help your pets in wearing down their teeth.

Celery is loaded with vitamins and minerals.

Celery contains vitamins A, B-complex, C, E, and K and is rich in minerals like iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and zinc.

All these micronutrients can fulfill different functions in your pet’s body and work together to improve their digestive, immune, respiratory, reproductive, and skeletal health.

The problem with overfeeding celery to rabbits

Once your pets are used to munching on celery, they might try to ask for more of these veggies from you. However, as a concerned pet parent, it is your job to draw a line and be firm about it.

Celery, no matter how tasty and healthy it might be to your pets, is still a vegetable and should constitute only a small part of their diet. If they’re eating more celery than they should, they will slowly start ignoring their staple diet, which will ultimately make them nutrient-deficit.

There’s another issue with overfeeding celery to rabbits: its high water content. Because celery contains plenty of water, if your pets eat too many of these veggies, they could easily suffer from diarrhea.

Therefore, the safest way of feeding celery to rabbits is in moderation. It would be best if you fed them these veggies once or twice a week.

Is it safe to offer cooked celery to rabbits?

Although celery is also consumed raw, most people like to steam, stir-fry, or boil it lightly before eating it to make it softer. So, is cooked celery also something you can share with your furry pets? No, absolutely not.

As discussed earlier, the tough, fibrous texture of celery is one of its most appealing qualities for rabbits.

Moreover, the sensitive digestive system of rabbits can have difficulty in breaking down cooked food as it is used to digesting everything raw. And even if we suppose rabbits could digest cooked celery without trouble, it would still defeat the purpose of wearing down their teeth.

Lastly, but most importantly, boiling celery is also known to reduce its antioxidant activity, decreasing its total nutritional value for your pet rabbits.

Can you feed celery leaves to rabbits?

The leaves of celery are its safest and most nutritious part for your pet. These leaves are rich in vitamin C, potassium, calcium, and antioxidants. In fact, since most people discard these leaves while cooking celery, it is also readily available in grocery stores.

When you’re feeding celery leaves to your pets, make sure you purchase organic ones since they are grown in a protected environment and are safe from any toxic chemicals that can make your pets sick.

Washing is another important step that you must keep in mind, whether you’ve bought organic or commercially grown celery. Also, always try to feed fresh celery leaves to your rabbits since these veggies lose their nutrition when they’re stored for a longer period of time.

Can rabbits eat celery stalks?

Yes, celery stalks are safely edible to your pets. However, while feeding celery leaves to your rabbit is fairly easy, preparing the stalks for them can be more complicated than that. Wondering why? Because of the presence of strings in them.

All celery stalks have a thin, white string present in the middle. These strings can make eating celery stalks difficult for both us as well as our pets. This is why we often de-string these stalks before eating them using a knife. You can do the same thing in the case of your pets as well. For more convenience, you can also chop the stalks down to smaller pieces.

What about celery roots? Can it be fed to rabbits?

Just like the other parts of celery, its roots are also safely edible to the rabbits. However, since these are not as palatable as the stalks or leaves, don’t be surprised if your pets choose to ignore them.

If they like eating celery roots, you can wash them thoroughly, chop them down, and feed these to them as an occasional treat.

Frequently asked questions

If I cannot find celery for my pet, which other vegetables can I feed them in its place?

Here is a shortlist of alternative vegetables that can safely be fed to rabbits in the absence of celery:

• Spinach
• Zucchini
• Asparagus
• Carrots
• Parsley
• Cilantro
• Broccoli
• Radish
• Cucumber

Can I feed cabbage to rabbits? Yes, you can. Cabbage is completely safe for rabbits to eat and contains many fibers that maintain your pet’s digestive health. However, make sure you only feed cabbage to your pets in strict moderation. Otherwise, it can upset their stomach and lead to gastrointestinal issues.

Conclusion: Can Rabbits Eat Celery?

Celery has tons of great health benefits and contains tons of water and nutrients. So it’s no surprise that many owners love to feed celery to their rabbits.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this article and have discovered some cool rabbit facts and the health benefits that celery has to offer.

If you made it this far then congratulations on reading an entire article (of course you already know that). That’s a pretty great accomplishment!

And if you read the whole article without changing the page, we should give you a prize of some sort. Like Celery 🥬!

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