Dental disease is the most common serious health problem in pet rabbits and a leading cause of chronic suffering, with prevention depending heavily on correct diet and housing design.
Rabbit dental disease is one of the clearest examples of welfare problems created by domestication and market-driven breeding. Wild rabbit teeth are adapted for high-fibre grass diets that wear teeth continuously through their long eruption. Domesticated rabbits fed low-fibre diets — pellets, vegetables, minimal hay — develop the malocclusion, overgrowth, and dental pain that characterise this epidemic condition. Dwarf breeds add a further genetic predisposition through skull shortening. The welfare solution is primarily dietary: hay provision that meets natural dental wear needs prevents most acquired dental disease. However, owner habits are deeply ingrained around feeding vegetables and pellets as primary diet, and changing these requires sustained education. The genetic predisposition in dwarf breeds cannot be managed through diet alone and represents a breeding welfare problem that requires selection away from extreme skull shortening.