Nutritional requirements for rabbits

I was trying to find something that would break down the nutrional requirements for rabbits so I could assess my mix. The only thing I could find was from 1977. Does anyone know of a source for this? I found out what was to be in there (minerals and so forth), but no quantities.

Renee
S CA

I had this bookmarked, but don't know if it is of any help to you. It is also 1977, so it may be what you already have.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=35&page=R1

Thats a pretty useful bit of info (if I could read it...)
If anybody actually has that PDF (blown up for normal peoples reading eyes) I would like to see it.

There are easy ways of enlarging it. If you use Firefox, hold down the Control button and use the scroll wheel. If you are in Opera, try holding down the Control button and hitting the + a few times. There's likely a way in Internet Explorer too, but I haven't used it in a few years, so can't advise on it. I use Firefox. I saved mine as a bookmark after enlarging it, so I didn't realize it wouldn't transfer that way as a link.

Another source that might be helpful (from the UK) http://www.provet.co.uk/Rabbits/rabbitfeeding.htm

Interesting information, Ann.

But... but... but... 2100 calories for maintenance? I don't use that many to "maintain" myself!

yah...I saw that and thought "my god...I'm on 1500calories. " When I thought about it tho...they have what..101F temp? that would require more calories to maintain than our 98.6. And they don't sleep much, if any. Snooze occasionally, but they're almost always alert in a split second.

Dogs are the same way with calories. Amazes me how many calories it takes to put weight on an active dog.

Ok, this was driving me crazy, so looked it up. Kcal is smaller than a calorie.
From Wikipedia:
The small calorie or gram calorie (symbol: cal)[2] approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.2 joules.
The large calorie, kilogram calorie or food calorie (symbol: Cal)[2] approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 °C. This is exactly 1000 small calories or about 4.2 kilojoules.

So then it's .001 X 2500 = 2.5 Calorie per digestable energy per kilogram of diet for weight gain. There are 0.45359237 kilograms in a lb. So that is 2.5 X .0.45359237 = 1.133 and then 1.133 X the DE of the food for weight gain. My brain is tired! http://www.ker.com/library/advances/107.pdf is a spot I found that gives some approximate levels of DE.

If someone wants to check math, please do!

Renee
S CA<br /><br />__________ Wed Feb 09, 2011 1:44 pm __________<br /><br />So then it's .001 X 2500 = 2.5 Calorie per digestable energy per kilogram of diet for weight gain. There are 0.45359237 kilograms in a lb. So that is 2.5 X .0.45359237 = 1.133 and then 1.133 X the DE of the food for weight gain. My brain is tired! http://www.ker.com/library/advances/107.pdf is a spot I found that gives some approximate levels of DE.

Should have mentioned that "translation" is from the 1977 book "The data suggest that a level of 2500 kcal of DE per kg of diet will satisfy the energy needs for rapid growth". Just for fun later I'm going to try to build a worksheet to put in values for different foods.

Renee
S CA

YAY!

Oh, yeah, that part gets lost in translation, see a calorie is the amount of energy required to raise 1 gram water 1*
so...
a Calorie is the amount of energy required to raise one KILOGRAM of water 1*

yeah-- that Kcal/cal thing- most nutritional analysis charts use Cal- and it gets confusing when Kcal is used instead. For the math, remember that K means to multiply by 1000.

oh-- 2.2 kilo = one pound 2.54 cm = one inch