feeling more confident with natural feed

Looking back over a year and a half with rabbits, I'm so grateful for all i've learned on RT and how much more confident I feel this year as the season changes compared to last fall. I haven't ended up completely following any one persons way of feeding but have taken parts from different plans and adapted them to fit my situation. We're just raising meat mutts but they have been healthy and productive--and delicious --and I'm learning so much. Thanks to the pioneers in natural feeding.

We still feed forage from wild places, produce from our garden, hay we make ourselves, wheat and oats and BOSS from the local feed store. I've just begun growing out wheat fodder again now that it is cool enough so I don't think I'll have mold trouble. We have willow and brambles and nettles dried and roots stored in a root cellar for winter feeding.

This year we planted mulberries which survived the summer but didn't grow much. We also fed turnips--tops and roots--which we hadn't done last year. And we grew garden chicory (same latin name as the wild genus and species but different variety) and the rabbits really liked it--hope to grow more next year. Also want to add another kale and sugar beets to garden plants to feed. And to plant some of our Jerusalem artichokes where they have room to spread (they are hemmed in by a building, lawn and rugosa roses now) without having them spread anywhere that will annoy anyone I live with

It feels good to have more confidence going into the winter and to have plans for the growing season to come--after a long rest

congratulations, --- it sounds to me like you have done well...

I'm glad you've had such success! It was a bit of a learning curve for me to find out that when people say "you should switch to it gradually" what they really mean is over several generations of rabbits, not just slowly switching the one generation over. I lost several litters of kits and adult rabbits to natural feeding even after countless amounts of research on the subject and always keeping an accessible mineral block and fresh hay at all times. After that failure, I realized that genetics plays a huge role in feed (those rabbits returned to normal after switching back to pellets for a few weeks thankfully) Unfortunately, some generations are so used to pellets they fail miserably without them BUT with my rabbits I have now, I have faith I can do natural feeding too but it's going to be years before that'll happen. My plan is to feed SOME forage to this generation along with always keeping hay out with the pellets. Then once I start getting more successful Gen2's I'll feed them more kinds of forage and so on and so forth. Hopefully one day I will get to say I've had the same kind of success as you (I still have yet to pick what vegs I will focus on growing the most)

Hm, reading this I realize that I'm quite lucky with my stock. Never had any feeding issues. I feed forage and hay, pellets as an about 10% addition.

Over generations? I got my buck from a breeder who doesn't feed any greens, switched that one over to forage in two weeks or so. Still offered him hay, which was ignored.
As far as I'm concerned I stick to the green stuff.
Ok, it takes me about an hour per day ( now, November) to gather enough (about 30-40lbs), wouldn't have much time outside without that. And, it's not my own land I graze. :?, swing the sickle and be gone...

Preitler":cisa10yg said:

As far as I'm concerned I stick to the green stuff.
Ok, it takes me about an hour per day ( now, November) to gather enough (about 30-40lbs), wouldn't have much time outside without that. And, it's not my own land I graze. :?, swing the sickle and be gone...

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Can you find green forage all through the year? Already in midNovember what we can find fresh is very limited and soon there will be none until sometime in April.

And responding to Sali (sorry, I don't know how to quote from more than one previous post at once )
We transitioned our original 2 ZNW does and our SF buck from pellets to natural feed over just a few weeks last year. Just blind beginner's luck I guess that we didn't have any problems. But it does make me reluctant to bring in new rabbits because I doubt we could find ones raised as we do.

No, in winter the only greens they get are those they dig up themselfs, but since I try to keep the hay consumption low (23 instead of 4 rabbits to feed through winter :? ) and it's a really warm november they still get greens.

Wierd weather, I remember years when I was waist deep in snow this time of the year, on the other hand, the latest date I did waterski was Nov. 25. about 10 years ago.

Rainey":3uwf29rq said:

We transitioned our original 2 NZW does and our SF buck from pellets to natural feed over just a few weeks last year. Just blind beginner's luck I guess that we didn't have any problems. But it does make me reluctant to bring in new rabbits because I doubt we could find ones raised as we do.

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Yeah, in our parts NOT ONE PERSON where I'm at feeds more than pellets. Not even for mutts. I am hard pressed even finding anyone who feeds hay. I actually was extremely excited when I found my current stock as the breeders fed greens from their gardens, SOME hay, but still mostly pellets. I had to drive a loooong way for that and I've kept it up with some success. I attempted to feed a little more forage /greens to them while slightly lowering pellets offered but then Mr. failure started to rear his ugly head after a month of it so I'm sticking to what their breeder did until they're more productive. I'll play with the babies once I actually get a decent number of babies to work with.

I'm rather suspicious that it may be related to soil minerals in my region or quality of hay being sold? It could be there's some sort of deficiency in it? Who knows. I just know I have copious amounts of wild grape and blackberry going mostly to waste.

Sali":2ko9pqe6 said:

I'm rather suspicious that it may be related to soil minerals in my region or quality of hay being sold? It could be there's some sort of deficiency in it? Who knows. I just know I have copious amounts of wild grape and blackberry going mostly to waste.

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This is so sad to me. I think I am the only nut who is happy when the kudzu leafs out, because my buns love it so much.

Marinea":lsmbm8z2 said:

Sali":lsmbm8z2 said:

I'm rather suspicious that it may be related to soil minerals in my region or quality of hay being sold? It could be there's some sort of deficiency in it? Who knows. I just know I have copious amounts of wild grape and blackberry going mostly to waste.

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This is so sad to me. I think I am the only nut who is happy when the kudzu leafs out, because my buns love it so much.

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It is extremely frustrating and depressing. If I could JUST get them to a point of not dying horribly on forage, I have friggen TONS of the stuff. About the only thing I have that grows that isn't appropriate for buns is beauty berry. Everything is else is about 2 acres of tightly packed rabbit edibles that I can't even walk through without a machete.

It is so strange too. I do NOT feed roots, only leaves and shoots (and berries @ black berries).

Basically what I experienced during both attempts was disinterest in the forage until I decreased the pellets. Once I decreased the pellets they finally ate the stuff (after they ran out of pellets). Then they started acting like they were hungry all the time. It didn't matter how much forage I gave, they only ate the "good parts" off it and simply ripped up the rest and made a pile to urinate and defecate on. then would act like they were starving when I'd go to feed again (two feedings a day). Then once pellets were no longer in the diet, I'd start seeing some serious issues in buns (mind they had the red mineral spools available at all times) such as becoming disoriented, weak, consuming twice as much water as usual, and losing a LOT of weight. I was able to save buns both times with JUST liquid oral vitamins (but still a couple died the first time before I realized that liquid vitamins were all the buns needed to get them through while converting back to pellets). Both times the rabbits JUMPED on their pellets as soon as they were offered again. Like when I say jumped, think of throwing a bowl of wet dog food to a puppy that has a pack of dogs surrounding it to compete with. Would bite you if you got in the way.

Mind you, I was having to collect significantly less amounts of grapevines for my goat with her twin kids at the time and they were doing a lot better than the buns were. :|

Selenium deficiency?
http://mrdata.usgs.gov/geochem

alforddm":3n8szzpg said:

Selenium deficiency?
http://mrdata.usgs.gov/geochem

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I found my general thereabouts but I am not sure what the numbers mean exactly.

Selenium <0.2 parts per million by weight

Doesn't sound very vast

Florida soil is "notoriously " deficient in a lot of nutrients. and those with sugar-sand for soil have it the worst, minerals, and protein rich supplemental feeds, are very often a necessity.

There is so much information available now through the internet but many aspects of growing one's own food depend very much on the particular place, the animals or crops being raised, the goals of the grower.
How frustrating though to have all those plants that ought to be rabbit food but don't provide necessary nutrients. Makes one wonder about the crops grown for human consumption in Florida.

Rainey":25ddspq3 said:

How frustrating though to have all those plants that ought to be rabbit food but don't provide necessary nutrients. Makes one wonder about the crops grown for human consumption in Florida.

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Hmmm, good point. My buns don't receive a pellets and eat all forage /kitchen "waste" that used to go to the compost heap. They happily eat wild strawberries and Lil' Mama had red lips after eating strawberry stems from local berries I was turning into jam. They ignored the stems from the store-bought ones. (They were organic, so it wasn't from pesticides.) The berries were from Florida. Now I'm wondering if it was significant or a coincidence...