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That's not balanced for minerals and it's low protein so it can't be the sole diet. As the main diet or even much of a supplement corn is a rather bad idea for rabbits. Rabbits don't have fat throughout their meat like the marbling in beef. That's one of the main reasons corn is used to...

My guess is along the same lines of something infectious in the environment or a diet issue that the stress of pregnancy and kindling is pushing them over the edge. I've never heard of anything specific before though. The closest I had was cocci killing specifically weaning age kits. I'd...

Himis. Not all get good and complete feet and ear markings but sometimes it takes awhile to fully show up.

Adding a pure salt source is rarely necessary though. As I said when you have animals on straight pasture sometimes a supplemental source is needed and that would apply to some all fresh food diets but pure salt still isn't usually the best choice. Certainly not in uncontrolled amounts that a...

Animals rarely need straight salt added to their diet. White salt licks are generally useless except sometimes to animals on pasture with limited feed options. Even then they are better off with trace mineral salt licks. I have used himalayan salt that is much higher in minerals for rabbits...

BOSS (black oil sunflower) is a good addition and I've used it but you end up getting a lot more fat and kcals than legume protein sources. Soybean meal per cup is around 2.9g fat and 55g protein. The numbers really vary for sunflowers but I have seen them come out far more equal for fat and...

You can bake soybean meal into things or just stick it together. I've used horse supplement blocks with soybean meal mixed into them for the colonies. They make several types of things like that for livestock. The easy way to get such powders into larger livestock is to use molasses to bind...

I'll just quote myself there... :p:

When breeding animals and even more so something like rabbits you also have to prepare for losses. You can certainly try to save them but survival without rabbit milk is low. Especially if they never managed to get even the first meal. Some consider it not worth trying. Even if you get...

Straw is often better for bedding, hides, or nest boxes than hay because of the reasons it doesn't break down as quickly as hay. It is more resistant to moisture and doesn't mold as easy if it's been harvested mature enough and dried properly. Moldy hay (or straw but less likely to occur) can...

I got some type of weird nettle or low thistle that utterly took over once from the hay. It poked through gardening gloves and jeans as it spread about a foot high across all the garden plots. I ended up actually abandoning the area since the giant black walnut was giving me issues anyway and...

Most grass hay in Iowa is best summed up as simply calling it "weed hay". Nearly all livestock are fed legume hay and grass hay sold is whatever in the heck people bale between the corn fields. I've certainly never seen named grass hay and had to bring it over the state line myself until feed...

If your hay is not certified weed free then putting it directly on the soil can result in a lot of weed pulling. Sometimes hay is used to suppress weeds but it will only do that in a thick cover and will then grow weeds from the area after it breaks down if it has seeds in it. If you compost...

VM means the offspring would have a 50% chance of being a carrier. Your doe might not even be vc at that point. Unless she's produced vm or bew the odds of your kits getting it could be 50% if she is vc or 0% if she isn't. Usually that is just stated as a 25% chance of being a carrier but...

I think the issue of a bolt not producing the same force as even a pellet makes not just placement but angle more important. People have even recovered to live normal lives or close to it after impressive injuries from their brain being impaled and reports of people or animals with smaller...

I got a pair of chocolate mini rex with very long 20 gen pedigrees when I started. All blue, black, lilac, and chocolate the whole way. Buck produced a harlequin with my red after a few years. :lol: REW is one of the most recessive, most obvious, and most common genes. Practically...

Urine will steadily leave a discolored layer. It's near impossible to get off completely without something strong enough to damage plastic or metal trays. The stuff is like trying to dissolve a rock since it is partially made of minerals. All you can do is reduce it to a smooth layer that...

The existence of a pellet did cause some waste since most of mine went to the dogs. I have a rabbit wringer but never really somewhere to install it permanently. I was looking into a captive bolt gun at one point. I couldn't really find much several years ago besides something like the $500...

Broomstick works fine. I never trusted whacking them and then hoping to finish killing them with them fully unconscious. A pellet rifle was so easy though and with no distress for the rabbits. Less than the video of that website with the bolt gun because I didn't even restrain them. I set...

Looks a bit high to me and possibly tipped enough to just barely slow death. I did always use my pellet rifle behind the ears angled toward the nose though so I haven't shot rabbits specifically from the front.