Bad Feed Once Again.

Rainey":1lt0uwa8 said:

Just don't understand why pellets are recommended for beginners.

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Because you are not the average rabbit beginner Rainey! :lol:
Pellets are recommended for beginners, because attempting natural (and especially forage) feeding could kill someone's rabbits outright if it's not done properly. "Properly" totally depends on the individual rabbits one has, which can make research rather difficult.


Very frequently, people bring home baby bunnies, feed a few handfuls of fresh grass, and then contact RT asking why their bunnies are dying.

IMO, most people do not seem to have a firm enough grasp on nutrition to feed themselves properly.

I know that sounds harsh, but I think the US needs more of a dietary wake up call than just that. :|

Perhaps it's because rabbits are inexpensive, they are often brought home on a whim.

Most people do not start into rabbits with a solid understanding of the nutritional makeup of everything that goes into feed, or the will to thoroughly research it.

Most also do not start with an understanding of a rabbit's nutritional requirements, or their health and disease symptoms.

People do not start knowing how to breed them, or even how to house them properly.

It seems like many people start with:
"I have this rabbit, now what do I do?"

In other words, beginners have no way of even knowing if what they are feeding is even the cause of a rabbit's health problems or not.

Pellets can and do cause a lot of problems of their own, but somehow, most rabbits in the US are entirely pellet fed, and they survive. Sort of like how people who eat fast food survive, I guess. I mean, yeah, even humans die each year of food poisoning obtained from eating fast food. It's bound to happen when so many people eat out.

I think rabbits dying from pellet related issues is like that. It's just bound to happen when so many rabbits are pellet fed.

To sum it all up, I guess, my answer to your question would be:

Pellets are generally recommended to beginners to get them through the initial learning curve, and give people some time to research.

macksmom98":29bhrb6q said:

I know many of us don't have a large enough garden to do all natural feed, and I would feel really inadequate trying to come up with all the nutrients needed to keep them healthy. I think the assumption is that the pellets will be a pretty complete feed, when used with good hay. I agree tho that there is very little info on the natural feed, and how all of that works. I know I would be interested in hearing more about it, and seeing if it would be feasible for me to do in town, in TX, with my limited garden experience and space. I will also be checking the dates on what I get. I buy everything (pellets, boss, and hay) from TSC. Usually I find things are fresh and ok around there, but the feed with the mold was Manna Pro brand, which has been getting a lot of bad press on this page. I think it is a problem with the brand. I let them know in case they were interested in pulling that one off the shelves and offering something different.

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Feed is manufactured [more or less] locally, so a "brand with problems" - is usually just a particular "contract mill" who is making the bags of feed you are using, and not a nation wide issue, -switching brands "usually " means switching feed mills, and can often solve your mold problems. A feed mill brings in large quantities of grain, and hay, for making feed, sometimes the hay or grain shipment is compromised, [moldy] Often the employees don't notice, [or don't care] sometimes the manager will order the employees to use it any way to avoid inventory loss, [this happened to me] - so -- if the feed manufacture date is good, and the feed is bad, --buying more of the same brand , made in the same mill should be done with a lot of caution. but-- changing feeds properly is also a pain, .

Zass":2c5it6gr said:

It seems like many people start with:
"I have this rabbit, now what do I do?"

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Unfortunately I think most people purchase animals in this order :groooan:

I agree that feeding commercial feeds is the safest option for the animal and once you get familiar with the species nutritional requirements and confident that you can detect nutritional deficiencies in the early stages (and not after your doe cannibalizes her litter because she only gets 12% protein in her diet ) you can play around with homemade rations

Also, not everyone wants to store 4 or more different feeds - I know many people who have trouble keeping hay on hand because the 10 foot "pet" section at the local grocery store doesn't carry it :angry:

So educate us then. Where is the best place to go to learn more about natural feeding and what rabbits need for a complete diet? To me, i would rather store pellets, hay, BOSS, and oats than a variety of veggies, and I would assume it would be expensive to buy them if you aren't already growing things. But I do give mine an occasional piece of fruit or greens. Here we seem to have a lot of people that understand they need proper knowledge before taking on a rabbit. I know there are irresponsible people out there too, but we have a lot of local places where it's easy to get necessary items I just bought Timothy hay at Walmart.

macksmom98":12ab0aq9 said:

So educate us then. Where is the best place to go to learn more about natural feeding and what rabbits need for a complete diet? To me, i would rather store pellets, hay, BOSS, and oats than a variety of veggies, and I would assume it would be expensive to buy them if you aren't already growing things. But I do give mine an occasional piece of fruit or greens. Here we seem to have a lot of people that understand they need proper knowledge before taking on a rabbit. I know there are irresponsible people out there too, but we have a lot of local places where it's easy to get necessary items I just bought Timothy hay at Walmart.

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Right here on RT--in the natural feed forum

And while some stuff must be bought/grown there are so many good things just growing wild. These of course vary with your location, how much land you have etc. I set aside rabbit food when weeding gardens. A few of the wild growing things I feed--willow (and various other trees, but willow is the favorite), plantain, dandelion, chicory, goldenrod, clover, grasses, multiflora rose (invasive, but the goats also like it so whenever we have time to whack some back, someone eats it ), goldenrod, wild carrot, blackberry bushes.

Here is a starter list for natural feeding. There is some overlap with Rainey's list, but between the two it will give you a good start. If you don't know the plants, google using Latin names and look at pictures.

safe-plants-for-rabbits-list-t55.html

I have raised rabbits for over 50 years, --[and still have a lot to learn] ,My rabbit raising "bible" was in the beginning, and for many years, a war era [1942 or so] book published by Penguin Press, encouraging war time Britton to survive the war by raising their own food . It explains how to raise rabbits on things you can grow, gather, or things normally discarded from the kitchen. [this was well before the age of "rabbit pellets" ]
I, as well as many others on this forum could add a lot to what is in the book, but- I would encourage anyone who is thinking about "raising rabbits without pellets" to give it a read.

Raising Poultry and Rabbits on scraps,
Alan Thompson, and Claude Goodchild,

[an excerpt from the front of the book]
Claude Goodchild, author of the rabbit section, spent the first 35 years of his life on an Essex farm and bred rabbits on a considerable scale from the age of 15. He later went on to run the largest rabbit farm of its time in England at Black Corner, near Crawley, Sussex. He started the Rex rabbit in England,

I just had returned 2 bags of Manna Pro Gro that had clumps in them. I wasn't taking any chances. If I hadn't read this thread last year and the deal with Grumpy, I probly would have removed the clumps and fed the rest. I've been feeding that brand for a year and never saw clumps before. The one bags were smooth on one side like they beat out their bin and let it go in the bag. The other bag was round clumps like the bag got wet in transit.

At TSC the staff is really not experienced, and I had to plead my case and hee haw around to return the bags. They really didn't think it was much of an issue, and was blaming the feed mill. They did give me my money back, after I didn't want an exchange. I looked on the shelf and saw they only had one bag and it was the same tore bag from a week ago. If I was a betting man I would say they pulled the visible clumps out, taped the bags, and put back on the shelf to sell to the next guy. They seem to mess up a lot there and don't have it in stock. So I was fed up and am currently switching them over to Rabbit Chow Complete. Which I am getting at a local feed store, family run. What a difference in staff I realized right away.

I just lost trust in Manna Pro after this happened. I don't think that should happen ever. If its caked on the sides hard and moldy, empty out and discard it. Putting it in a bag is dumb. The other feed store said that is pretty rare to happen this time of year. The bag was manufactured within the past month. So I'm wondering if the feed was actually made on that date, or it was just poured out and bagged on that date, after sitting in the bin for a while.

Wow, ZRab, I'm so glad you knew what to do because of this thread! You undoubtedly saved your rabbits!

I'm sorry you had a time returning the bags, but I'm glad they finally relented. Thankfully, when I had a bad feed issue, it was with a local feed store that gave me no issue at all when I brought it back. The problem wasn't theirs... they had just gotten the feed in a couple of hours before I bought it. When I had the problem again, I decided the mill it was coming from could not be trusted, and switched feed (reluctantly, as I like the people at the local feed store very much).

I don't know the answer to the feed date. It is unconscionable to deliberately package moldy feed for sale.

many employees, store, or feed mill managers are either ignorant, or completely profit driven.
-- I suggest people with "bad feed" contact the "manufacturers" through the company website i.e.: https://www.mannapro.com/ they do , [in my experience] want to know about these things, - if you give them the details, they usually will try to correct the problem, and or make things right with you, even if the local dealer, or feed mill is incompetent or dishonest-- they know that a single "bad" distributor or feed mill, can cost their company a lot of money through loss of confidence in their brand of feed. [there are of course some notable exceptions, and it serves them right if customers leave that brand in large numbers]

-- Tue Mar 01, 2016 4:47 pm --

ZRab":2jv82vl8 said:

I just had returned 2 bags of Manna Pro Gro that had clumps in them. I wasn't taking any chances. If I hadn't read this thread last year and the deal with Grumpy, I probly would have removed the clumps and fed the rest. I've been feeding that brand for a year and never saw clumps before. The one bags were smooth on one side like they beat out their bin and let it go in the bag. The other bag was round clumps like the bag got wet in transit.

At TSC the staff is really not experienced, and I had to plead my case and hee haw around to return the bags. They really didn't think it was much of an issue, and was blaming the feed mill. They did give me my money back, after I didn't want an exchange. I looked on the shelf and saw they only had one bag and it was the same tore bag from a week ago. If I was a betting man I would say they pulled the visible clumps out, taped the bags, and put back on the shelf to sell to the next guy. They seem to mess up a lot there and don't have it in stock. So I was fed up and am currently switching them over to Rabbit Chow Complete. Which I am getting at a local feed store, family run. What a difference in staff I realized right away.

I just lost trust in Manna Pro after this happened. I don't think that should happen ever. If its caked on the sides hard and moldy, empty out and discard it. Putting it in a bag is dumb. The other feed store said that is pretty rare to happen this time of year. The bag was manufactured within the past month. So I'm wondering if the feed was actually made on that date, or it was just poured out and bagged on that date, after sitting in the bin for a while.

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I forwarded this post to Mana Pro -- this was my response...

Leann Meyer <[email protected]>
6:47 AM (9 hours ago)

to Michael Porter
Thank you. I will look into this further, and share with our Quality Control Manager.

Leann Meyer
Regulatory Compliance &
Technical Service Specialist
Manna Pro Products, LLC
http://www.mannapro.com

I hadn't thought to contact the manufacturer about it, M4G. I don't know why, but I hadn't. Thanks!

it would help feed company's "fix" problems,- if the location of the retail outlet was supplied to them- or posted, as feed is manufactured [more or less] locally.

I had some issues with some local feed (clumps, changing colors, sometimes pellets were two different colors within the same bag, it was ridiculous), and the family owned (DH's best friend actually) was well aware that it was sub-par quality (his dad commented on the amount of dust from one of the recent bags he had used when I was asking about it) so he started ordering another brand for me... SO much better! I was going to call or write them but when I tried looking up the feed company I couldn't find any contact information for them! I guess they are that small scale?

I agree that the service you receive at a big box store does not compare to (most) mom and pop places... prices are sometimes a little higher, but I figure I am "voting" with that dollar and I know the family I am helping support rather than the big corporation.