Two checks that explain each other
A rabbit's teeth grow continuously and are ground down by hours of hay chewing. When wear falls behind growth anywhere in the mouth, eating becomes effortful before it becomes obviously painful, and the earliest objective evidence is usually a falling weight in a rabbit who still runs to the food bowl. Checking teeth and weight together, weekly, connects those dots: the front teeth you can inspect directly, plus a weight trend that reflects the whole mouth — including the cheek teeth at the back that no home check can see. Run both on the same day and the pair becomes a genuine early-warning system rather than two vague impressions.
Weighing a rabbit without a battle
Use a flat kitchen or luggage scale big enough for a low box, carrier, or litter tray your rabbit will sit in willingly. Weigh the container, settle him in it with a treat to occupy him, and read the scale once he is still — or weigh container and rabbit together and subtract. Record the number immediately, with the date, in the same place every time. Judge the trend across a month rather than single readings: a line stepping down week after week in an adult rabbit whose diet has not changed is a finding, not a fluctuation.
Lifting the lip: the front teeth
With your rabbit settled on a low surface or supported on your lap, draw the upper lip gently upward and look at the four front teeth. Healthy incisors meet in a clean, chisel-like bite, upper pair resting just in front of the lowers, with level edges and no great difference in length between neighbours. Look for overgrowth curling the teeth, a diagonal wear line, teeth splaying apart or crossing, a snapped tooth, or the small peg teeth behind the upper pair looking damaged. While the lip is up, note the gums and any drool at the mouth corners. Also feel along the outside of the jaw: a smooth outline is normal, while new bumps can reflect tooth roots pushing where they should not, and belong on the vet list.
Reading the signs that stand in for the back teeth
The cheek teeth sit deep in a rabbit's mouth and cannot be examined at home — full stop. Their stand-ins are functional: how long a hay meal takes compared with last month, whether strands get chewed and dropped, whether he has started favouring soft greens and pellets over hay, whether droppings have shrunk, and whether one eye waters persistently, since upper tooth roots sit close to the tear duct. Combined with the weight record, these observations are how a home keeper monitors teeth that are physically out of sight. None of them is a diagnosis; together they are a well-timed reason to book the examination that can actually see.
Keeping wear ahead of growth day to day
The home routine supports itself through diet. A rabbit eating hay for most of the day performs the wide, circular chewing motion that wears the entire tooth row evenly; a rabbit filling up on muesli-style mixes and pellets chews briefly and vertically, and selective feeding from mixes makes the imbalance worse. Keep hay constantly available and appealing, and treat a sudden drop in hay interest as a symptom to investigate rather than fussiness to indulge with more pellets. After any tooth break or dental work at the vet, shorten your check interval for a while, because a changed bite wears unevenly until it rebalances.
When the notebook says vet, not next week
Book a vet appointment if the weight steps down repeatedly, front teeth look overlong, slanted, or broken, droppings shrink alongside slower eating, or you find a wet chin, jaw lump, or persistently watery eye. Bring the weight history — a dated run of figures is one of the most useful things you can hand an examining vet. In KinsLe, his Pet Passport holds those weekly weights and teeth notes together with his wider health record, so the trend is ready to show at the surgery rather than summarised from memory at the desk.