Cucumbers for rabbits?

[Richard & Tresa]

Hello and thank you to everyone on this site. Can't tell you how much we've learned before beginning our rabbitry and hoe often we return to learn more.

We have a NZW doe who we are expecting her first (6 months old) kindle in two weeks. My wife is a teaching master gardener and we began naturally fertilizing our grow beds early this year. We have one half of one large bed (8' X 16') that is specifically plated for rabbit food.

Tresa's cucumber bed is now going bonkers (like everything else in her gardens) and we have an abundance of cucumbers. We've read that cucumbers are not only on the "safe list", but desired natural food list as well.

She has "regular" cucumbers as well as "lemon cucumbers" (smaller, rounder) and we are wondering if these "lemon cucumbers are also safe/desired? Everywhere we've read about cucumbers, the writers just say "cucumbers" without specifying any difference between the varieties.

We want to be extra careful especially with our young, first time doe...

Any advice/information would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you from the both of us!

Richard & Tresa

 

[Marinea]

I feed mine regular cucumbers, as a treat, when in season. They each get a slice or two, and that's it.

The lemon cukes are the same species, just a different cultivar of the cucumis I believe. I would think it would be fine. But remember, slowly introduce them, and small amounts. I would be concerned about diarrhea.

 

[MamaSheepdog]

:welcomewagon:

Welcome to the forum! It is wonderful to know that you have learned so much here while "lurking", but even better that you have decided to join us.

My wife is a teaching master gardener

Oooh! Really? There are a lot of gardeners on RT, as rabbits and gardens go hand in hand. :lilbunny: :farmer2: :lilbunny: Hopefully she will help us troubleshoot our gardening problems!

For a start, :twisted: any recommendations on effective natural control of pillbugs and sowbugs? How about earwigs? So far my most effective earwig traps are containers with soybean oil to which I add a little soda or even soy sauce... I am constantly experimenting with different attractants to lure them to their doom.

I have yet to figure anything out for the pillbugs though, aside from bringing a couple of chickens over to eat them when I find them... and I don't like to do that when the beds are planted since they have no regard for the roots of the plants themselves.

we began naturally fertilizing our grow beds early this year.

Careful... rabbit manure is just about as addicting as the rabbits themselves. If it isn't their adorable faces that cause you to bring "just one more" into your herd, it is their amazing output from the other end. Trust me... I know. :lol:

She has "regular" cucumbers as well as "lemon cucumbers" (smaller, rounder) and we are wondering if these "lemon cucumbers are also safe/desired?

I would say they are fine. We have grown them, and other than their shape and color, they are just cukes, after all. As Marinea said, just introduce them slowly, as with any new foods.

 

[Richard & Tresa]

Thank you to both of you!!!

I'll have to share your posts with Tresa... I'm sure she has answers... I remember asking her about her young sprouts being eaten and remember her saying that they only get the first few leaves. The rest of the plants (now really tall!) have no signs... but I will ask her and hopefully get her to come on and answer "in person".

Addicted to rabbit poop? HA! :lol: When she first asked if I would help her pick up some poop from a 4H kid, I wondered why she wanted to use the truck... 37 55# bags later, I was wondering what she was going to do with it... The little girl was so cute and proud standing by her mom that she had made so much money... You should have seen her face change when Tresa told her to remove her Craigslist ad and just call us when she had more... SEVERAL truck loads later.... Let's just say I watched her planting "seem" like being "dormant" until things started to grow... Holey Smokes, you'd think she planted the magic beans from Jack and the Bean stock! She's actually had to hack away at some of her tomato plants which are nearly 5' tall! LOL!

We've gotten into a lot more than just gardening and rabbits... We added Chickens (eggs only as we live in the city) and Quail (meat and eggs as the roosters are much quieter) and several Aquaponics systems raising Tilapia and Catfish! We have two indoor aquaponics Tilapia Breeder tanks too! (Nitrogen cycled using goldfish and pond water from our front yard pond.

I'll see if I can find a few photos before I log off... Unfortunately, I have no recent photos...

As a professional prototype developer and motion picture special effects artist, I create the technical end and Tresa and I met in the middle combining what we each know and come up with collaborative ideas and solutions...

The rabbit "hutch" is a two shelf system Buck and tow does on top with grow out cages on the bottom. Right now we're using water bottles, but I came up with automatic watering systems for the Chickens and Quail where a "bucket" is filled and travels through plastic pipes to the cages, coop and pen. The pipes don't stop however... They continue back up to the bucket where there is an aquarium water pump that cycles the water constantly. In the summer, we place 1 gallon frozen water bottles to keep the water cool and in the winter, I plan to place a submersible aquarium water heater to keep the systems from freezing.

I love watching Tresa's efforts and mine blend into our "Urban Homestead" and reaping the results... last week I completed a special evaporative cooling system for the house. It takes only 250 watts (Maximum on high) to lower the temperature of the entire house by 26 degrees! (Our central Air conditioning did the same using 12,000 watts on low!)

OK... back to work here... Thank you again for the info on cucumbers. I'll share your reply and see what Tresa can come up with for you.

Richard <br /><br /> __________ Tue Jul 15, 2014 2:51 pm __________ <br /><br /> Hello...

I'm back...

Not the best with computers (especially since I use them for my work! LOL!)

I've searched high and low, FAQ, Gallery, Creating a gallery... Pressed Img, Album (Seems I don't even have one and when I pressed "Create Album" I didn't see anything change or a menu pop up. I can't figure out how to upload photos I wanted to share with you all...

Can you help? (I'm sure I missed something somewhere...) :?

(But I CAN press "smiley faces successfully! :lol:

Richard

 

[Zass]

The mods are really the best for describing how to use the systems, so I'll let one of them do that.

I just wanted to say, :welcome:
and I can't wait to see pics of....everything! opcorn:

 

[Richard &amp; Tresa]

I can sympathize with losing plants to pests! Those pesky earwigs are some of my least favorite insects. At least with the pill bugs, their appearance indicates you have some rich soil. The following website gives some good information about sow bugs and that insect family. The second one is a link to another PDF regarding common garden pests. Hope this helps!!

On another note, we downloaded a "tonic" for pregnant does that was posted by Rise and Shine Rabbitry that lists ingredients as follows:
"Combine the following - dried raspberry leaf, nettle, and goats rue (Galega officianle) in equal parts, and half part Milk Thistle (Silybum marianum). All organic either grow your own or get it from a health food store.
Feed: 1 TBS per day at feeding time, to pregnant Does beginning one week before kindling through the first month. These herbs help ease kindling, offer nutrition and support lactation. Just sprinkle 1 TBS over their food, once a day."

I was able to find the dried Raspberry Leaf and Nettle, but could only find dried Milk Thistle seed, and I haven't a clue what Goats Rue is. Does anyone know if the dried Milk Thistle seed is safe for rabbits? The recipe doesn't specify the parts of the Nettle or Milk Thistle plant and at this stage of our development we don't want to risk our rabbits lives on our lack of knowledge.

From the same source, there is a suggestion to brew a dandelion root tea to add to the water and also suggests "cranberry treats" several times a week to aid with any bladder sludge caused by high calcium intake. Do rabbits eat plain cranberries? Has anyone tried this?

Thanks all for sharing your experience and knowledge. Richard and I really appreciate it!
Tresa

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://idl ... nEt8LQQPbw

http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui ... ec1586.pdf

 

[Miss M]

I've searched high and low, FAQ, Gallery, Creating a gallery... Pressed Img, Album (Seems I don't even have one and when I pressed "Create Album" I didn't see anything change or a menu pop up. I can't figure out how to upload photos I wanted to share with you all...

Can you help? (I'm sure I missed something somewhere...) :?

First off, welcome to RabbitTalk!

As for photos, we have recently experienced some problems with personal albums for some reason. We do have two tutorials explaining two different ways to post photos:

picture-tutorial-t6003.html

attachment-tutorial-t5.html

The first explains how to navigate the gallery, but I will be honest -- I wrote that on our old platform, and there might be some very minor differences. I'll need to check it over. It explains how to upload to the galleries and how to post pictures that you have uploaded. If you can't get your personal gallery to work, you can upload to the various other galleries. It also explains how to post pictures you have uploaded to external image sites like Imgur.com or Photobucket.com. If you think you will post a lot of pictures, that would be the better thing to do anyway, as it will help keep costs down for RabbitTalk.

The second tutorial explains how to upload an image directly into a post. You may find this very useful, while you figure out the galleries or Photobucket.

Just so you know, pretty much everything you have said would be good material to post here. Your whole-house evaporative cooler, with explanations and pictures, would be an excellent addition to "Around the Coffee Table", for instance. Hint, hint.

 

[Homer]

Richard & Tresa - welcome to the best little rabbit hole on the internet! :bunnyhop:

Actually you created 4 albums. They are your "personal albums". Look at the upper right corner of any page and you will see buttons you can click for "Board index, New messages. User Control Panel" etc. Choose "Gallery" then scroll down to the bottom of "People and Places" heading and pick: Gallery ‹ Users Personal Albums » Your Personal Album That's where you store your pictures.

 

[Marinea]

I can answer the cranberry question. Mine get a couple of dried cranberries a couple times a week. They are kinda high in sugar, so I limit them to "treat" status.

As to the goat's rue, I did some reading through my gardening books. I doubt you will find it- it's on the noxious weed list here in the States.

 

[Richard &amp; Tresa]

THANK YOU EVERYONE for helping me figure out how to post photos... I do have TONS of our "Urban Homestead", including rabbit stuff, Chickens, Quail, Gardening, Aquaponics and much more...

(It was suggested that I start a thread to share all of these photos and information on how I created them and how they worked...)

This post is just an experiment to see if what I "think" I learned actually works...

Seem that one of my "experiments" that didn't meet my expectations would go hand in hand with experimenting with my ability to post photos...

Before we began most of these project (with the exception of Gardening (Tresa has been a teaching master gardener for years) began last October when I discovered Aquaponics... this led to how to produce protein (meat). We live in the city so chickens were out (needing a rooster to produce fertile eggs)... Then I discovered the "magic" of raising rabbits!

Months of research (mostly here at Rabbit Talk and "sticking to here" because of all I've learned and the friendly, positive, supportive atmosphere I discovered) later.... And I became concerned with keeping our (yet to be found) buck cool in summer (we have had at least 2 weeks of 99 degrees plus!)...

Being a prototype designer/developer, motion picture special effects artist and having a complete shop and studio on our property, I can build ANYTHING! lol! really...

So I came up with this idea to create a special cooling hood for our buck's cage. It starts with the box in back of the cage and works up towards the top where there is a low watt fan that blows air out of the back box forward towards the front of the cage. In the top hood, is a series of soldered copper tubing that has special louvers that direct the airflow along the twisting pipes to direct air downward into the cage.

The pipes are fed ice cold water from a large ice chest filled with water and several 1 gallon frozen water bottles. An aquarium pump pumps the cold water up to the copper pipes and the fan blowing the air goes over the pipes and gets chilled. The intake for the box in the back is just above the urine guard and is open upwards for 6"... Instead of just starting with hot air from the outside, the fan sucks the pre-chilled air from inside the cage and re-cycles it back up and over the chilled water pipes...

I worked... Kind of... I did not attain the massive refrigeration temps I was hoping for. (I had planned on controlling temperate using a gate valve in the plumbing coming from the ice chest...

I ended up adding clear plastic sides to keep more of the cold air inside... It helped but I realized I'd have to enclose more of the cage and something I learned early on in my research here at RT was that rabbit need fresh air!

So back to the drawing boards....

For now, I ended up adding a second shade set up for the hutch with an air baffle between the shade roof and the primary fiberglass roof (This keeps the heat radiating from the upper shade roof from radiating downward onto the primary fiberglass roof.) The outer shade roof also extends sideways and outward from the hutch to provide more shade surrounding the hutch. I then built a home made watering mister with a swivel along it's length so I could direct the water towards or away from the hutch... Along with frozen treats, frozen water bottles and frozen marble tiles, so far, we're doing pretty well... Thermometers inside the cages rarely get over 85 degrees...

Tresa and I will be interacting here more often, together and separately... She covers the medicinal care focusing on natural herbs and gardening, while I focus more on the technical side...

I've got lots to share covering all sorts of areas of urban homesteading with some great success stories... (I don't remember which forum I was invited to start this thread, but I have it in an email...) When I do begin the thread, I'll come back here to tell you where it is and invite you to join us...

Now.... Let's see if these photos really do appear! (Fingers Crossed...)

Best,
Richard <br /><br /> __________ Wed Jul 16, 2014 7:34 pm __________ <br /><br /> Hurrah! It worked!

Ok... I'm currently working on two client prototypes and may not be back for as long as a week... but I will be back! And I'll start that thread and share with you where it is...

Thanks again for all your help!

Tresa and I feel like we've found a new "home"! :campfire: