The_Dutchess":1xeh871p said:
I know nothing about natural feeding and would like to ask a few questions regarding what you've had better success with: commercial or natural feeding.
I think your questions could be more easily answered if you were more specific about what you mean by a "natural diet."
Some natural diets are mainly constructed from purchased hay and grain, some grow their own fodder, some contain a lot of leftover garden and kitchen scraps, some pasture their rabbits on lawn, and some gather forage for their buns.
Most people feeding natural diets I've spoken to use a combination of the things I mentioned , and many commercially fed rabbits also get some amount of natural feeds as a dietary supplement. (For example, Grumpy feeds his commercial rabbits on hay too, with is arguably one of the main components of most natural diets.)
All (except the pellets) are considered "natural" diets, but the nutrition the rabbits are getting from those varied diets will be
drastically different.
Actually, the same "type" of natural diet is still going to be highly varied.
We are all going to design things a bit differently, the quantities will vary, our hays are not the same, the grains available at the feed mill are not the same, the garden or kitchen scraps we produce will not be the same, and the wild forage plants available are certainly different!! People do not necessarily even recognize the same ones as "rabbit food."
With commercial diets, there is also quite a bit of variation among different brands of pellets. Some I consider to be the equivalent of rabbit junk food, and others are well balanced and very nutritious.
So...My own answers will be based around my very limited experience.
I tend to feed my rabbits a combination diet of natural feeds, along with purina complete brand commercial pellets.
This past summer I did have a few rabbits eating mostly forage for several months. Not much to go on, but I'll answer what I can
Which is cheaper in your experience?
For me, the pellets.
I can buy a 50lb bag of pellets with two hours of my time spent at work. There was no way I could forage feed my rabbits for an entire week with less time invested.
Which kept your rabbits in better condition?
Forage, because they had less fat, and less fat is good for breeding. My harlequin doe actually gave me 15 live and healthy kits on almost entirely forage. My herd sire was in great shape. Since I've been working full time and my husband has been overfeeding on pellets, the whole herd is struggling with obesity..
Are rabbits that are fed naturally generally more healthy than rabbits who are fed commercially?
Those are
far to broad of categories. For that, I think you would have to be quite specific.
What style of natural feeding, in which area, and how committed to understanding rabbit nutrition is the person designing the diet? VS Which brand of pellet (free fed or limited feed), and from which mill?
Is it harder to naturally feed if you have a large group of rabbits? (Like 30 instead of my four)
It would depend on which style of natural feeding, but in general I think anything that involves mixing or gathering your own feeds is going to be take more time and energy than simply filling j-feeders with pellets.