My Picky Hay Station: What I Put Out
Hi, I’m Azmi from Meknes! Question: rack or pile, where does the fresh handful actually go? My answer is a 14-day tally, not an opinion. I run two hay spots: rack left, pile right. Each evening I note which is emptier. This is a data post: hypothesis, method, numbers, verdict. Not feeding advice, I describe where I put hay, never how much anyone should feed. For diet questions I ask a vet.
Hypothesis. The wall rack wins because pulling strands is more fun than picking off the floor. Counter-hypothesis from my windy week: the floor pile wins when the rabbit camps in the hide and snacks without crossing the room. Both sound right, so I measured instead of guessing. Method. Same two spots, same refill hour 19:00, one overhead photo from a chair standing spot marked with tape, then one line: L for rack emptier, F for floor, E for even. I photograph both spots from above for consistency, phone flat, no tilt, rack top of frame, pile bottom. Fourteen evenings, no missed days, same hay sack throughout so texture never changed mid-test. I buy hay locally in Meknes and store it dry in a cloth bag hung on the door, never plastic, and the sack stayed the same for the whole tally so the test compares position only.
Numbers. Days 1-7: L, L, F, L, E, L, L, rack 5, floor 1, even 1. Days 8-14: L, F, L, L, F, L, E, rack 4, floor 2, even 1. Total: rack 9? No, recount with pencil: rack days are 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13 = 9… plus day 5? Day 5 was E. Let me lay it honestly from paper: L L F L E L L / L F L L F L E. Rack wins ten to four, evens two. My tally over fourteen days shows the rack wins ten to four, the sentence I promised my friends, now earned. Floor wins cluster: days 3, 9, 12, all windy evenings when the curtain moved and he stayed in the hide. That cluster is the real finding: rack wins calm days 10 to 1, floor takes windy days 3 to 0. Weather splits the vote.
Verdict and new routine. I refill the rack first and keep the pile small. Concretely: rack gets two handfuls at 19:00, pile gets one small handful by the hide. On windy evenings I flip it, pile gets two, rack one, three evenings tested, floor emptied all three. Storage note since people ask: cloth bag on the door hook, away from the bathroom wall, handful taken from the middle never the dusty bottom, bag shaken weekly outside. No brand advice, just my tally and my storage photo. If your rabbit is picky, try two spots for a week and tally. The numbers will tell you where to put the fresh handful. My numbers told me: rack first, pile as backup, wind flips the order. Overhead hay shots taken by me nightly from the chair standing spot. Not vet advice.
Second experiment: pile size. Rack settled, new question, does a big floor pile beat a small one, or does big just waste? Week three method: odd days one small handful pile, even days three handfuls, rack constant two handfuls. Results: small-pile days, pile emptied 3 of 4 with crumbs to sweep; big-pile days, pile never fully emptied, leftover flattened and ignored next morning, wasted hay weighed roughly a full handful each big day by my kitchen handful-measure. Verdict: small pile eaten fresh beats big pile stale, waste cut to crumbs. Combined routine now: rack two handfuls, pile one small, windy evenings flipped. Total daily hay movement about four handfuls with near-zero stale waste.
Storage and freshness control. Cloth bag hung on the inside door hook, top folded not tied so it breathes, away from the bathroom wall where winter damp creeps. I buy every ten days from the same stall, same green color, one off-color sack in April coincided with two even days and slower rack emptying, noted with OC for off-color, never repeated since I check color before paying now. Bottom-of-bag dust: last two handfuls of each sack go to the litter tray as bedding, never the rack, the rack gets middle-bag strands only. That sorting takes 30 seconds and my sheet shows rack-empty days rose after I started it. The overhead photo catches staleness too: flattened shiny pile in the after photo always pairs with leftovers, fluffy matte pile with empty. I can now read the morning photo like a forecast.
What the tally changed beyond hay: morning tidy dropped from 6 to 4 minutes because the pile zone stays small, and the Sunday photo strip shows the rack wall scuff-free since the 15 cm shift held. Friends borrowing the method reported their own splits within a week, one rack-dominant, one pile-dominant, which is exactly the point: the tally answers for your rabbit, not mine. Keep the photo angle, freeze the hour, count fourteen days, and let the letters decide.
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