Root crops for rabbits

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Sheila

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I am planting mangels this year, for the calves, chickens, and hopefully rabbits. Also turnips, carrots, etc. I have great hopes for the mangel, an old-fashioned beet that grows to two feet. High nutrition and easy to grow.

We also grow some wheat, oats and sunflowers. I am planning to get meat rabbits and am interested in opinions on root crops as feed for them.
 
Feeding root crops, including mangels, is a time-honoured way of feeding rabbits in winter. The old timers say not to feed mangels before Christmas. I believe this is to give them time to age so they are sweeter and more digestible.

I recently bought a reprint of a 1941 book called Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps. The authors were Claude Goodchild and Alan Thompson and it was published by Penguin.

Britain, of course, was in the middle of World War II when it was first published and desperately urging its citizens to help the war effort by growing their own vegetables and raising small livestock. There is a lot of information on natural feeding, including root crops. There were numerous copies available on eBay at around $5 each and shipping was very reasonable, if anyone is interested.

I feed my rabbits on alfalfa hay, some grass hay, grain (wheat and barley at present) and fresh foods: greens, root crops etc. I haven't fed pellets (except while transitioning newcomers) for several years.
 
Found it at Amazon also, for $7.99. It was recently reissued with the original drawings, etc. It's on my Wish List now. Thanks.

Our biggest project this year will be food storage for us and the critters. We are going to need some serious space.
 
Storage is always a problem here too. I can only store 8 - 10 small bales at a time in our goose house and still have room for the rabbits in winter. I use plastic garbage cans to store grain. Each holds a sack easily.

I save those mesh bags that onions and other vegetables come in. The big 10 lb. onion bags are good for dried greens because they can hang up on a nail out of the way. The small ones are good for medicinal plants or ones you can only get in small quantities. Burlap potato bags are also useful. Sometimes I make a sling out of an old sheet and use it for loose grass hay. Our shed has a fairly high roof so making use of off-the-floor storage helps a lot.
 
I got some mangel seeds from Paquebot (sp?) over on HT last year and grew them as a trial. They got huge. I din't keep them as I had no space, just wanted the experience for the future. They grew fast when we had plenty of moisture and sort of just survived when it was dry. The soil wasn't the best where I planted them and the above ground part was sort of woody. As it turns out, I could have planted them much closer toogether than I did. We gave them to the neighbor for his cattle.
 
Mangles are great. They do like a good soaking every few days since they gather moisture from the ground, and not at all from the leaves. If you plant them close like regular beets, you can pull every other one as they start to grow and use the small ones like regular table beets (or give to bunnies). The large ones will keep for months in a dark, dry, cool place.

Pigs love them. Poultry will peck at them, but it's not a real WOOHOOOOO favorite. I don't know about rabbits, but since rabbits like normal beets, I'd think they would.

When they get big, you REALLY need a mangle saw to cut them up, btw. or an axe. A simple knife won't work. A mangle saw is a contraption that holds the beet in place and you saw thru it at "the cut". It's kind of like a bread slicer or bagle slicer in theory.

If you can grow them and you find that the critters you have don't like them well enough, find someone with pigs and offer to barter for feed or pork maybe :)
 
Anntann":2ni8ceav said:
Pigs love them.

:cool: Do you know of anything pigs don't love ? :D

I lost a bet once, when I was young. A friend bet me pigs would eat coal...He threw a big lump into the hog pen, and you would have thought it was rock candy the way they went after it. I din't have any idea they could break it off with their teath like that :p
 
:rotfl:
no...chuckle...come to think of it, I don't know of ANYTHING they don't love. :) At least mangles are better nutrition than COAL :lol:

Lady, they don't grow all that fast..but they're really only good for people food (tasty, that is) until they reach maybe 2" diameter. after that they taste like feed ;) The tops do stick out of the ground as they grow upwards a bit...I'v been told that you can heap straw on top to solve the hard/woody problem..or mound dirt. I've not tried it tho.
 
but rabbits and guinea pigs like them right?
any type of mangel will work???? (just thinking about trying to find seed for them).
 
mangels are beets. so...if a bunny likes beets, he'll like mangels. they're less sweet than the normal table beet tho...

there are pretty much 2 varieties...a golden yellow, and the humongous red. the yellow tends to be a little more tender.
 
I ordered my seed from Johnny's in Maine. Best price anywhere. They are not easy to find. I believe the seed was $15 a lb. Bought a lb. of each, red and yellow. The red is back ordered but is supposed to be available next month. I figure I have enough for three years or so.
 
I just bought the book--thanks Maggie!<br /><br />__________ Thu Jan 21, 2010 5:07 pm __________<br /><br />when would you sow mangels?
 
This will be my first year with mangels, but they are 78 days, so I'm guessing that since they are a kind of beet, you could have two plantings. Maggie noted above that they should be fed after Christmas (sweeter), but they should still be usable in a first crop, I would think. Anntann grew them in Wisconsin. I'd be interested in knowing more about her experience with them.
 
Shiela, if you hop over to HT to the Gardening section, you'll find that Paquebot has some mangel seeds, I believe. He grows acres of various plants for seed saving, trading, propagating, and he also tries to keep as many of the heritage plant breeds going as he can. He only charges the price of postage on most things.

I remember a thread there from last year Spring about Mangels....you might find more info there.
 
I did not get my mangel seed from Martin into the ground last year, but I'm sure it will grow well this year. Trying so hard to get so many things done here, and feel like nothing is moving forward.

But I do so want to become more self-sufficient on the animal feeds.

Think I'll go sort seeds and pray for enough warm days so I can get my seedlings started...
 
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