Can Rabbits Eat Cheese?

Can Rabbits Have Cheese?

While it is true that everyone has their own unique palate and way of eating, there are a handful of foods that frequently show up as people’s favorites. One of the all-time most popular favorite foods is cheese. Whether they are eating it on pizza, grated over soups or salads, stuffed into sandwiches, or drizzled atop a heaping pile of tortilla chips, people go nuts for cheese. Die-hard cheese fans will even eat it cut straight from the block—or, in the worst cases, sprayed out of the nozzle of a brightly colored can. There is seemingly no end to the things that we humans will do with cheese.

So, since it is such a common food, most rabbit owners will eventually have to answer the question: can rabbits eat cheese?
 
Can you give your rabbit cheese?

The answer: no, definitely not. Your rabbit should not eat cheese, or any dairy products, even in the smallest of quantities. Dairy products are not poisonous to our pets the same way that some other foods are (they will not result in immediate organ failure or death), but they are extremely unhealthy. If you feed your rabbit cheese regularly, they will most likely suffer from moderate to severe health problems. If your kid already slipped a chunk of string cheese through the bars, don’t sweat it, but make an effort to prevent it from happening again. Not only is cheese loaded with fat, cholesterol, and calories; it is also full of lactose, which is extremely difficult for most adult animals to digest.

Health Benefits?

What’s the deal with digesting lactose? Rabbits, and every other known non-human mammal on the planet, become lactose intolerant by the time they are adults. Those of us who spent most of our lives living in the west may find this strange, but lactose intolerance is normal in adulthood—even within human populations in the southern hemisphere.

Like most mammals, baby bunnies survive by drinking nothing but their mother’s milk. Once they have been weaned, they switch from mother’s milk to solid foods, and they never go back. You will never find a fully-grown rabbit trying to drink the milk from another animal’s body, and if you do, you should contact National Geographic.

Though there are some cases where vestigial traits linger longer than necessary, for the most part, evolution has crafted mammalian bodies to be remarkably efficient. Digesting milk sugar—lactose—requires an enzyme called lactase, which all mammals produce as babies. Once an enzyme no longer boosts the odds of making it to reproductive age (in this case, once the rabbit no longer drinks milk), it isn’t worth the energy it takes to make it, and it usually goes away. So, since adult rabbits no longer drink their mother’s milk, their bodies stop producing the lactase necessary to break it down. This is why your rabbit can’t digest cheese.

If you do happen to feed your bun (or any pet) a large portion of cheese, they will almost certainly start to show the hallmark signs of lactose intolerance. They may suffer from bloating, gas, indigestion, and diarrhea. This can be miserable for any animal, but bunnies may have it even worse than dogs and cats—unlike canines and felines, rabbits can’t vomit, so they are stuck trying to force it through their ill-suited digestive system. If you give your rabbit cheese, the discomfort may cause them to become low energy, irritable, or depressed.

Cheese’s high fat and low fiber content can wreak havoc on their fragile digestive systems in another way. Rabbits need large amounts of dietary fiber to keep food flowing through their gastrointestinal tract. If you give them a fatty food like cheese, it may ‘sit’ in their system for too long. In severe cases, a diet like this can cause a condition called gastrointestinal stasis, where food fails to exit the stomach and cecum properly. This condition can be extremely painful and even fatal.

Things to Consider

Even without the lactose intolerance, giving your rabbit dairy products like cheese would not be a good idea. Baby bunnies thrived on mother’s milk, but their mothers were rabbits—and rabbit’s milk is vastly different from cow’s milk in terms of nutrition. Cow’s milk has been ‘designed’ by evolution to nourish baby cows, not baby bunnies. Looking at it from the most optimistic perspective, cheese and other dairy products are empty calories that will likely lead your rabbit to become overweight or even obese. Excess weight can lead to a variety of health problems in rabbits, including nutritional deficiencies and even liver failure.

Final Thoughts

In sum, no, your rabbit should not eat cheese. Though it is not considered toxic, it can do significant damage to their health in the long term. Cheese is high in fat and calories, low in fiber, low in nutrition, and loaded with lactose that rabbits do not have the ability to digest. If you want to give your bunny a treat, opt for fruits and vegetables instead.