"Grass will kill them!"

I was discussing rabbits with a breeder at the state fair yesterday. When I mentioned that we want our rabbits to be grass fed, he was horrified and said that grass would kill his colony. He looked at me like I had three eyeballs! He said it would give them diarrhea and kill them.

I've not heard of this but plan on researching it. Is it because they have been on feed for so long and weren't raised on grass? Has anyone had this problem?

One of the great myths about feeding rabbits. :roll:

What could kill them is not the grass but the sudden change in diet. Rabbits need time to adjust to new foods. Not allowing an ample transition time can cause them great distress and even kill them. But it is not the grass, per se.

If you are starting with pellet-fed rabbits, continue to feed them pellets for the time being. Add a handful of hay and a few blades of grass or other safe plants once you are sure they are eating and drinking fine after the stress of the move. Rabbits are very subject to stress and stress is cumulative. So go slowly.

Grass is only one component of a natural diet for rabbits. They need hay, preferably with a good alfalfa or clover content for the protein. They will need small quantities of grain as well - barley, oats and wheat are all good. And they will need a variety of fresh foods, of which grass is only one. Take a look at the sticky on safe plants at the top of the Natural Feeding section. Learn to identify with confidence the ones that grow in your area.

You don't say what your housing arrangements for your rabbits are. If you are planning on putting them on the ground in a colony, please understand that unless the colony is huge they will eat everything growing there in short order. So expect to be gathering greens for them daily. From April to October, I'm out there with my five gallon bucket... and I am feeding only a half dozen or so adult rabbits. It is work, but I like it most of the time.

This time of year, with the greens dwindling, is a difficult time to make a full transition to natural feeding. Although one relies more heavily on such things as pumpkins, root crops, grain grass grown indoors in tubs and vegetable trimmings from the kitchen to give the fresh component of their diet, it is more difficult than just going out an picking a bucketful of dandelions, chicory, plantain, clover, grasses etc. etc. You may want to keep your rabbits on pellets over the winter, adding hay to get their GI tracts accustomed to natural foods and then as the greens begin to appear in the spring, phase them in at that point. It will be a lot easier.

Before we started this forum last December, many of us were (and continue to be) members of the Homesteading Today Rabbit forum. There is a wealth of information we contributed still available there, mainly in the "stickies" at the top. I suggest you take a look because although much of it is here as well, we were at it over there for several years.

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/forumd ... rune=&f=14

Hello ollitos,
I would like to know from where he got this information?
If the information is true, then I have been slowly poisoning my rabbit since 1989!
My how my whole herd must be suffering while still producing offspring
and maintaining excellent condition. Of course I do not only feed my herd grass-hay,
I maintain them on a Alfalfa based Pelleted rabbit feed and grass-hay fed at least
three times or more per week.
If you want to maintain your herd on a grass only diet you will have to supplement
with quite a few other grains. I would do a bit more research before you toss out
the Pelleted Rabbit feed. It will take more than just grass to maintain a healthy
and strong herd. As always, JMPO.
Ottersatin.

Definitely have to provide salt and minerals in some form. A salt block would work..they'll use it as they need. but unless pellets are horribly expensive there, you should follow Ottersatin's advice and Maggie's. go SLOW with transferring to a non-pellet diet, and make it a varied diet with grains, hay, alfalfa, greens.

I'm developing an area around the new outdoor colony that is a hayfield. My plan is to harvest by scythe a few armsful of the timothy every day and toss it in to the rabbits. They'll have a hay rack, and a feeder area where I'll have pellets. If it works like my poultry setup does, purchased grain goes WAY WAY down. When my birds can freerange the mixed grain is reduced by 2/3rds.

Oops! Yes, definitely provide a mineral/salt block. I use the reddish-brown trace mineral block from the feed store for mine. I just hit it with the hammer to knock irregular pieces off it and serve them in a small ceramic bowl (to prevent rusting of the cage).

I would like to know from where he got this information?

Click to expand...

Pretty common opinion if not the leading one when you go talk to show breeders about rabbit diets. I've learned to just nod when people go on about what you should and should not feed a rabbit. I will take in to account their opinions but mostly on the basis of finding out why they have that opinion. In most cases the "never feed greens/vegetables" opinion seems to come from giving a rabbit a huge amount of fresh grass or a head of lettuce one day when it was raised on only pellets previously. They miss the fact that the concept of slow diet changes also apply to adding any fresh foods. Recently I was told to only give mini rex hay once a week or they'll get too fat. I'm pretty sure this comes from the fact that it's hard to find good grass hay in some of areas of the midwest and most hay has at least some alfalfa or clover. Instead of looking harder for grass hay people just decide or assume that the rabbits should only have hay occasionally. This particular person also fed the same 18% protein pellet to both the mini rex and meat rabbits they had which could add to the difficulty in keeping them from getting bulky.

The way to prevent overly FAT Rabbits is to:
Feed each rabbit as an individual. Some rabbit regardless of breed
will require more or less feed to maintain condition.
I free-feed only my Does with litters. All the rest are fed
a limited ration. Grass hay is a great addition to the feed.
The hay will give the rabbits something to munch on
without adding too much protein. I will sometimes give my rabbis a hay day.
Whatever you are doing, if it works for you then it's the right thing to do.
Ottersatin.

I have also heard the myth that grass will kill rabbits. Like the others, I say it is the sudden addition of greens in the diet that causes the problems. Whether grass, lettuce or other fresh greens all sudden dietary changes can be fatal. If it were true rabbits could not eat grass then there would be no wild rabbit population.

We haven't started raising rabbits yet. We've had a hard time finding meat rabbits in our area but are starting to make some headway. We're also trying to figure out the most practical way to keep them on a salad bar diet given that it would be one person doing all the work for the next 6 months or so. We have sooo many questions about how to get started!

When I had lots of guinea pigs I would fill several grocery bags with grass and other safe forages (many wild flowers are actually quite good but make sure to ID them properly) and stuff them in one section of the fridge. They ate about half a grocery bag a day in place of most of their hay and I did not feed them pellets except during the winter. In the late summer through fall they'd also get various sweet peppers like bell and marble, tomatos, and whatever else we grew in the garden. Sometimes I'd manage to grow extra melons or squash. Usually by winter they'd actually stop squeaking at me when I went to the fridge cause they didn't want more tomatos. :lol: The main thing about going to mostly fresh foods though was that majority of it had to be made up of high fiber foods like older grasses and mature plants not the stuff a human would put in a salad or you can buy at the grocery store. Hay is dried grass or alfalfa/clover so grass should be able to replace hay for most grazing animals. It works that way for larger livestock and guinea pigs. Grass and fresh forage also contains vitamins and minerals that are lost when it gets dried and one of the reasons various concentrated feeds had to be added to livestock diets in the winter. However they need considerably more grass than hay since it has a higher water content. When you calculate how much food an animal needs it's done by dry weight. I can't remember the exact percentage more a horse has to eat of grass than hey but I know we discussed it at length in my equine nutrition classes. Even for large livestock you have to adjust them back to pasture from hay in the spring or you can potentially kill them.

Speaking of fresh forages I need to go harvest the 8x8' plot of mint and pack my fridge full again for the rabbits before the frost kills it off.

Ollitos, please remember that fresh foods - the "salad bar" - are only part of a natural diet for rabbits. Hay with a good alfalfa or clover content and small quantities of whole grains such as wheat, barley and oats are also important. You can grow grain grass in plastic dishpans in winter to provide a fresh component cheaply and easily. My best advice is to read, read, read all you can on natural feeding, both here and on the HT rabbit forum. Make notes of questions that occur to you as you go and we'll do our best to answer them.

Akane, things like mint will dry nicely for winter use... and you'll have more room in your fridge for other things. Ten pound mesh bags like those onions come in are great for drying things that are too short to bundle easily. I save every one I get for this kind of thing.

Drying things loses many important nutrients which is why commercial feeds with added vitamins and minerals got produced in the first place. Otherwise we'd only need hay since prior to drying the plants we make hay out of can be a complete diet for most livestock. The more that can be given fresh the better but I will dry whatever doesn't fit.

I'm sure some nutrients are lost by drying, but I believe air drying out of direct sunlight is not particularly hard on nutrients. The commercial foods were created for ease and uniformity. The process uses heat and that is what destroys the nutrients. Vitamins and minerals are also added in some cases as a way to compensate for using inferior/cheaper ingredients.

By all means store your greens in the fridge if it works for you. A lot of people have limited fridge space and I just wanted to point out that greens like mint dry very well.

you have to wonder what the rabbit breeders fed their rabbits, 50-100 yrs ago long before pellets....and obviously they survived.

DR, that's exactly the question I asked when I wanted to start with natural feeding five years ago. The prevailing thought seemed to be that the rabbits had somehow adapted to pellets and could no longer handle greens in quantity. What I found, however, was that given a slow transition, they handle unlimited greens just fine.

Dead Rabbit":s2nw39dq said:

you have to wonder what the rabbit breeders fed their rabbits, 50-100 yrs ago long before pellets....and obviously they survived.

Click to expand...

I have tried finding out what people fed their rabbits during the depression, when even the government was encouraging people to raise rabbits for meat. Looks like they were fed a lot of kitchen scraps and leftovers. Potatoes were used to supplement the rabbits' diet (I think they had to be cooked first). Definitely not ideal, but it helped people scrape through hard times.

Times were rough during the Depression, but it was wartime rationing in Britain that produced a great deal of the information that one can reference today. And much of it was not ideal. It was a question of survival. Potatoes, cooked, were definitely used to replace grain, which was not permitted as feed. Small rations of bran could sometimes be obtained, but that's all.

We learn a lot from Depression and Wartime books and articles, but I wish I could find more information predating that era. What people fed their rabbits when there was no crisis to be dealt with would be more helpful. I have not found very much, unfortunately.

It's not the strangest thing I've heard, there is a HRS website (I believe in colorado) that said feeding rabbits oats before they're 4 months will kill them.

Maggie....I'd start looking at anything from France, or possibly Germany. (although France would be my first choice since you have a GOOD interpreter in your family ) There is MUCH more info from the European nations than there is in the Americas because of the status of the rabbit. Here it's chickens, beef, pork. europe is MUCH more likely to research ways to raise small animals.<br /><br />__________ Wed Oct 20, 2010 1:49 pm __________<br /><br />oooooOOOO. This might help in your search:http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/pubs/Rabbits/breeding.htm bunches of pamphlets and books to order from the library!

Good idea, Ann! I'll do that.

There are those Rex de Poitou rabbits, in the Charante area of France that are being raised on a natural diet for their fur and meat. 60% of their revenue is from the furs! Imagine that! But their site does not have a lot of detail, so I'll have to get looking elsewhere. Too bad my sis is so busy... but i can muddle along in French not too badly... and there is always Google Translator if I get stuck.