A rabbit that skimps on hay while still eating pellets and greens is usually telling you about the offer, not staging a protest. Hay does the heavy work in a rabbit's diet, wearing the teeth and keeping the gut moving, so the job is to make hay the easiest, freshest, most interesting food she meets in every place she already loves to sit.
Start with presentation and variety, change one or two things at a time, and give each change several days before you judge it.
Hay in More Places, in More Forms
Put hay where she loafs and beside her litter tray, because rabbits often graze and pass droppings in the same sitting, and a pile within reach of a resting rabbit gets nibbled almost by accident. A rack keeps strands clean above the tray, a low cardboard box invites digging and sorting, and hay stuffed into a paper roll or woven toy turns eating into the foraging work she is built for.
Refresh little and often rather than heaping one large pile in the morning. Fresh hay smells sweet and feels springy, while a flattened pile that has been sat on, scattered, and left all day loses its appeal, so a small top-up at each visit to her area can restart grazing several times a day without wasting much.
Variety of Cuts and Strands
Mix different cuts and strands together in the same offering. A coarse, stalky handful behaves differently in the mouth from a softer, leafier one, and many reluctant eaters accept a blend they can sort through even when a single uniform hay bores them, so combine what you have and notice which textures vanish first.
Weave a few dried herbs or a small amount of a second grass hay through the main pile as a scent trail if she needs extra persuasion, keeping the extras light so hay remains the meal rather than the wrapping. Store hay dry and airy, buy in quantities you turn over while it still smells fresh, and discard any bale that smells musty or shows damp, because stale hay gives a picky rabbit a fair excuse.
Pellets Measured So Hay Can Compete
Keep her pellets measured and modest, served at set times rather than topped up through the day. A rabbit that can fill up on a concentrated bowl has little reason to spend hours grazing, while a measured portion leaves her comfortably ready to work through hay between meals, which is the rhythm her teeth and gut are designed for.
Watch the evidence rather than the hay pile alone: steady weight, plentiful round droppings of a good size, and active grazing spells all say the new presentation is working. Keep a simple note of which placements and blends she favors, because her preferences, once spotted, make every future bale and box easier to plan.
Keep the boundary clear in your mind, though: this rabbit eats, but skimps on hay. If she stops eating altogether, produces much smaller droppings, or leaves her pellets and greens as well, that is an urgent vet contact rather than a presentation puzzle, since tooth trouble is among the possibilities a vet would investigate.
Placement inside her main living area deserves one more experiment if grazing stays low: move the biggest hay supply to the exact corner where she settles after meals, even if that corner looks untidy to you. Rabbits are creatures of route and habit, and hay that sits on her natural path between resting, drinking, and the litter tray gets eaten in passing all day long, while a beautifully filled rack in a corner she rarely visits can stay almost untouched for reasons that have nothing to do with the hay itself.
At home, hay rounds stay reliable through Care Teams in KinsLe, assigning each refresh and pellet measure to a named person with a completion mark.