The Hagen Living World Green Wood & Acrylic Hay Rack is a free-standing hay feeder in rubberwood with clear acrylic sides. It does the same job as a wire rack and looks considerably better doing it, which is the reason to pay more for one.

Key Features

• Rubberwood: Hagen describe the wood as sustainable rubberwood, the timber of the rubber tree once it stops producing latex -- a by-product rather than a tree felled for lumber
• Clear Sides: You can see how much hay is left without lifting the lid, which in practice means it gets refilled
• Free Standing: Nothing to clip to the bars, so it works in an open pen or a cage
• Keeps Hay Clean: Hay held off the floor does not get sat on, slept in or soiled, and so does not get thrown away
• Small: 13 x 13 x 26.5 cm
• Medium: 16 x 16 x 32.5 cm

Hay Is The Main Food, Not The Bedding

Grass hay should make up the bulk of what a rabbit or guinea pig eats -- the usual figure given is around eighty per cent -- and it should be in front of them all day. It is what keeps the gut moving and what actually wears the back teeth down, since those teeth grow continuously. A pet that fills up on pellets instead ends up with dental disease and a slow gut. Keeping hay off the cage floor in a rack or feeder is worth doing for one plain reason: hay a pet has sat on or urinated on gets wasted rather than eaten.

Who Makes It

Living World is the small animal and bird brand of Rolf C. Hagen, the Montreal company founded in 1955. The range covers cages, hay feeders, houses, dishes and supplements for rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters and cage birds.

Good To Know

• Wood absorbs urine and cannot be fully cleaned once it has. Stand it away from the toilet corner, and accept that a wooden feeder is a replaceable item in a rabbit pen.
• It will get chewed, and that is fine -- plain untreated wood is safe to gnaw. Replace it when the acrylic starts to crack rather than when the wood is marked.
• Sweep out the fine dust at the bottom regularly. Hay dust left to sit is the part that irritates airways -- the pet's and yours.
• A rabbit or guinea pig that stops eating, stops passing droppings or sits hunched and still is an emergency, not a wait-and-see. A gut that stalls can kill within a day.