Thunderlanefarms
New member
This is a great site....I found this site from the feeding rabbits naturally site at Homesteadingtoday.com which also has some great info, but that site lead me to this one which is also great Seems that everyone from that place has migrated over here so I'm going to post the same post here and maybe someone knows.....first a bit about myself.
I grew rabbits commercially back in the late 80's and early 90's and sold to Pel Freeze which I believe is still the largest rabbit producer in the U.S. Had about 125 does at one time. Only fed commercial pellets.
All this came crashing down (literally) in February of 1993 when we had an 18 inch wet snow storm and my rabbit barn, which was 28 x 50, collapsed under the weight of the snow with over 500 rabbits inside. Before you panic too much, we actually did save nearly all of the rabbits, but what a nightmare over the next month, trying to keep them alive in another barn in a colony setting and in another location with some makeshift and salvaged cages, till we could finally grow them big enough to sell out and butcher the rest. Anyway, after that, I swore I would never touch a rabbit again!!!
But in the last year or two, I've been thinking about getting just a few for our own meat purposes.... we also have a couple horses, pigs, chickens, dogs,cats and ducks...... and I sure do miss that rabbit manure on my garden also.
This is some great information and I think I have just about every plant mentioned here around my 100+ acres, so I'm sure I would go this route when raising again.
One thing we do have a lot of around here that I haven't seen mentioned is Sericea Lespedeza.. also known as Chinese bush Clover..... Goats eat it great..... Cows will only eat it as a hay, but how would the rabbits do on it both fresh and dried. Has anybody fed it? I know it gets a bit stemmy when mature and does have quite a bit of tannin at that point, but young and tender the tannins are lower, and not supposed to be as bad either when dried as hay. It is a noxious weed in several states....grows here by the ton and would be easy to collect. I'm sure the young plants would be much better than the older stemmy plants. I actually found a study that shows it is OK and was fed to rabbits....just wondered if anyone else was feeding it and how their rabbits were doing with it. Here is a link to the study.
http://etd.auburn.edu/etd/bitstream/han ... sequence=2
Here are links to a couple pictures:
Young plants: http://www.hrwc.net/images/invasiveplan ... edeza1.jpg
Older Plants: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/Invasives/photo ... 55&spec=21
Distribution Area and more info: http://oklahomainvasivespecies.okstate. ... edeza.html
Thanks so much again for all the great information. Hope to be a contributor soon, rather than just someone who is absorbing all your great info.
Lee
I grew rabbits commercially back in the late 80's and early 90's and sold to Pel Freeze which I believe is still the largest rabbit producer in the U.S. Had about 125 does at one time. Only fed commercial pellets.
All this came crashing down (literally) in February of 1993 when we had an 18 inch wet snow storm and my rabbit barn, which was 28 x 50, collapsed under the weight of the snow with over 500 rabbits inside. Before you panic too much, we actually did save nearly all of the rabbits, but what a nightmare over the next month, trying to keep them alive in another barn in a colony setting and in another location with some makeshift and salvaged cages, till we could finally grow them big enough to sell out and butcher the rest. Anyway, after that, I swore I would never touch a rabbit again!!!
But in the last year or two, I've been thinking about getting just a few for our own meat purposes.... we also have a couple horses, pigs, chickens, dogs,cats and ducks...... and I sure do miss that rabbit manure on my garden also.
This is some great information and I think I have just about every plant mentioned here around my 100+ acres, so I'm sure I would go this route when raising again.
One thing we do have a lot of around here that I haven't seen mentioned is Sericea Lespedeza.. also known as Chinese bush Clover..... Goats eat it great..... Cows will only eat it as a hay, but how would the rabbits do on it both fresh and dried. Has anybody fed it? I know it gets a bit stemmy when mature and does have quite a bit of tannin at that point, but young and tender the tannins are lower, and not supposed to be as bad either when dried as hay. It is a noxious weed in several states....grows here by the ton and would be easy to collect. I'm sure the young plants would be much better than the older stemmy plants. I actually found a study that shows it is OK and was fed to rabbits....just wondered if anyone else was feeding it and how their rabbits were doing with it. Here is a link to the study.
http://etd.auburn.edu/etd/bitstream/han ... sequence=2
Here are links to a couple pictures:
Young plants: http://www.hrwc.net/images/invasiveplan ... edeza1.jpg
Older Plants: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/Invasives/photo ... 55&spec=21
Distribution Area and more info: http://oklahomainvasivespecies.okstate. ... edeza.html
Thanks so much again for all the great information. Hope to be a contributor soon, rather than just someone who is absorbing all your great info.
Lee