Feeding alternative diet to Pellets?

[LoveMyBarnyard]

I give our rabbits and goats spruce boughs/branches and logs (mostly leftovers from making firewood). They love the bark especially, and spruce has a natural dewormer. I'd have to go back and look up what that chemical is.

Yeah, the internet is full of sites endlessly repeating what someone once told someone...

That's really useful. Thanks. Maybe I should post my list and start color-coding the plants based on if people have real-life positive or negative experiences with each plant...

 

[Rabbit Warren Man]

Thank you for your note! This is just what I figured!! All this talk of hay is to help us humans that can't provide fresh grass all the time. But that is it, there is no magic to hay vs. fresh grass. I am relieved to hear this.

Hay is a winter feed when there is no fresh grass in my opinion. But when winter comes they love the hay, remember hay is cured grass.
People that don’t have access to fresh grass need to feed hay.
Long stem grass like Timothy, orchard grass etc is very important for the health of the rabbits. They need it in the rear gut to feed the bacteria that break down the food and supply nutrients, the same as horses.

 

[LoveMyBarnyard]

Exactly and many many trees help to keep bunnies from getting coccidia. Trees are the natural food of rabbits and have man beneficial properties for them. I fed white pine they love it. Here is a list of branches.
I find that a lot people say, I read or someone said? I go by my experience and what I feed with no issues. I free range my rabbits in a 3000 square foot pen.
https://www.bunnymeadow.co.uk/blog/safe-branches-list-for-rabbits-and-guinea-pigs

Great article!

 

[Rabbit Warren Man]

Great article!

It’s a good starting point eh.

 

[LoveMyBarnyard]

Hay is a winter feed when there is no fresh grass in my opinion. But when winter comes they love the hay, remember hay is cured grass.
People that don’t have access to fresh grass need to feed hay.
Long stem grass like Timothy, orchard grass etc is very important for the health of the rabbits. They need it in the rear gut to feed the bacteria that break down the food and supply nutrients, the same as horses.

We apparently cannot grow Timothy very well here in Central Texas. The guy at the feed store said his son gave his rabbits Coastal hay and they did fine. I would like to just give them the zillion native grasses we have all over and the oat grass we grow and then if I can figure out what to grow... plant some in a small plot. I know rye does well in the cooler seasons here but not the hot seasons. My goal is to not buy grass / hay. Right now we are feeding them the grasses from the fileds here and buying the Timothy from Tractor Supply. But that has got to stop....

 

[Rabbit Warren Man]

We apparently cannot grow Timothy very well here in Central Texas. The guy at the feed store said his son gave his rabbits Coastal hay and they did fine. I would like to just give them the zillion native grasses we have all over and the oat grass we grow and then if I can figure out what to grow... plant some in a small plot. I know rye does well in the cooler seasons here but not the hot seasons. My goal is to not buy grass / hay. Right now we are feeding them the grasses from the fileds here and buying the Timothy from Tractor Supply. But that has got to stop....

You must have loads of good grasses in Texas to feed them. Yeah you would go broke at tractor supply. Do farmers bale hay there for horses? Horse hay is top shelf for bunnies, just don’t want too much alfalfa in it. Alfalfa is a legume in the bean family it is good for them in smaller quantities. I try to find grass hay or a 80% grass 20% Alfalfa mix.

 

[LoveMyBarnyard]

Hmmm. Maybe they are growing this "Coastal" he mentioned. I need to learn more about what you call long-stem grasses I guess. We had a tall grass called Johnson grass that was so annoying to pull that I quickly irradicated it from my garden before it was too late. Everything else is not so tall. The oat grass I planted grows really well here and for long periods of the year. Do you know if that is a decent substitute?

 

[Rabbit Warren Man]

Hmmm. Maybe they are growing this "Coastal" he mentioned. I need to learn more about what you call long-stem grasses I guess. We had a tall grass called Johnson grass that was so annoying to pull that I quickly irradicated it from my garden before it was too late. Everything else is not so tall. The oat grass I planted grows really well here and for long periods of the year. Do you know if that is a decent substitute?

https://ker.com/equinews/long-stem-vs-short-stem-forages/

 

[LoveMyBarnyard]

We are just beginning to grow some fodder to replace rabbit feed. We started out with barley, cloves, fenugreek (for protein), and dandelion mixed, but I was going to trade the barley for wheat. Thanks for the tip about the protein content of field peas, I have no idea how much protein is In the fenugreek, so I was concerned about that. The only trees in my yard are plums and pecans, can we make tree hay with those? We have already started mixing local hay with Timothy because we went a whole month in Fall 2022 where Timothy was not available here unless you paid 4 X the regular price. I was planning to provide small fruit tree limbs to our rabbits anyway and we try to be sure they have plenty to chew on. We are in Mississippi and our most popular trees around here are pines and magnolias, are they okay for tree hay?

We have a lot of mulberry trees which are supposed to be an excellent option. Thought you might have them in Miss...

https://ker.com/equinews/long-stem-vs-short-stem-forages/

Chew time, interesting.

 

[Rabbittracks]

I have successfully fed branches of pine, poplar, maple, apple etc... I have given my rabbit many types of woods and they usually eat the bark. On the occasion that I give them something, wood wise, that they may have trouble with I notice that they don't eat it. I would say that mine are picky maybe because they are pastured and get regular garden veggies as well so they can afford to be picky. If you never give your rabbits other things or only rarely, they may not be as choosy in what they consume. Lately I have tried to stick to pine bark/logs and we have a lot of autumn olive bushes that are safe for humans and rabbits/animals. I also do a lot of new growth apple tree shoots. I have in the past given tulip poplar branches and they weren't too fond of it and didn't chew on it. I didn't know that tulip poplar and reg poplar are a different species all together. But maple branches they love! I read an article that stated that a rabbit can consume sometime wood that is problematic but it won't pose a problem unless they consume a lot of it. I don't know if that is true, but makes sense.

 

[Rabbittracks]

6 seeds a day? That seems very low. I have heard of people offering free choice sunflower. I wonder what that will do?

Let's just say that I feed in the winter and as a treat in the summer a handful of seeds to each bun and I have never had an issue. A couple of mine don't like sunflower seeds and won't eat them. I wonder if it upsets their tummies. But the majority down them first before anything else. I know someone who offers sunflowers free choice along with other grains. But they don't mix the grains, they offer each grain separate in feeders. I have also found that the more delicate the breed, the more you may run into issues.

 

[Rabbittracks]

It's definitely not true that kits can't eat anything but pellets! In fact when confronted with weaning enteritis (the belly ache/bloating sometimes seen in weaning kits), the first thing most experienced breeders will suggest is removing pellets and providing only hay for a time. Sometimes pellets are just too rich for their little guts to process efficiently at first.

Basic rabbit digestive biology goes like this. Rabbits are what are called "hindgut fermenters," meaning they have a blind sac coming off their intestines called a cecum, which does the initial processing of the difficult-to-digest fibrous foods rabbits eat. In the cecum, newly eaten food is deposited and left to ferment; that fermentation releases the nutrients bound up in a herbivorous diet, and it is accomplished by a community of microorganisms that lives in the cecum. After the microorganisms ferment the food, it leaves the cecum and is passed out as "cecotropes" - those are the small, soft poops that look sort of like a cluster of tiny grapes. Usually the rabbit eats these ("coprophagy") and in that way retrieves the nutrients released by fermentation. It's analogous to a cow or goat chewing its cud. In fact if a rabbit is prevented from eating its cecotropes, it becomes malnourished. It's a bit of an oversimplification, but all this taken together suggests that a rabbit is completely dependent on the microorganisms in it cecum to survive.

As stated, the cecum holds a community of microorganisms, which included hundreds of species of anaerobic bacteria as well as low numbers of amoeboids, protozoans and yeasts. In a healthy rabbit there is a balance to the species composition which is maintained by an appropriate high-fiber, low-sugar diet. Certain dietary items feed certain microorganisms, and the rabbit's gut flora changes in response to changes in its diet. So it is that while rabbits can thrive on an incredibly wide variety of foods, quickly changing a rabbit's diet can make it sick when its community of microorganisms tries to adjust to "catch up" to its new diet. It is also why feeding rabbits too many sugary treats (fruit, carrots, etc.) can give it a bellyache: sugars especially feed the yeasts, which can proliferate and cause havoc by overtaking and replacing the more beneficial gut bacteria. Rabbits can handle a little of these, especially if they're allowed to adjust to the presence of these foods; you just have to be vigilant to allow the cecal community time to adapt. This is the case for fresh foods as well; if the rabbits is used to pellets only, too many spring greens at once can make it very sick. (Horses are also hindgut fermenters, and most horse owners can tell you the dangers of spring pasture!)

All the above is true for rabbits of all ages. When kits are newborn, their digestive tracts, like many mammals, are essentially sterile. Their guts are then populated by microorgansisms from their mother and their environment. They start nibbling on poops left by their mother in the nest (which contain microorganisms from her gut), as well as the hay, straw, wood or other bedding in their nest, which also carries microorganisms. When the kits start coming out of the box, they nibble on pretty much everything they encounter. Since they are still subsisting mainly on milk, these tiny bits of new foods and the bacteria on them help prime their little cecums to handle their eventual adult diet. But stopping the milk and throwing them onto adult foods too quickly can do the same thing that a big dietary change does to an adult. They get a bellyache!

So the conclusion is that kits should be able to eat anything their dam has been eating and that they've been exposed to since birth. In fact suddenly removing a source of fiber is more likely to result in sick kits than leaving it. To go back to the beginning, as long as the doe and kits have been eating the cuttings all along, it is actually more likely that a pelleted diet will cause troubles, because high amounts of fiber generally encourage good gut bacteria!

I personally find all this biology fascinating. If you're interested in more detail, here are a couple of pretty good articles:
https://www.mspca.org/angell_services/cecal-dysbiosis-in-house-rabbits-what-the-hay/https://oxbowanimalhealth.com/blog/the-inside-scoop-on-rabbit-poops/

 

[Rabbittracks]

Wow! What a source of information! Thank you!

 

[Rabbittracks]

Awesome way to experiment feeding. I agree and find the same thing, if they don’t like it they won’t eat it.

I agree!

 

[LoveMyBarnyard]

I have successfully fed branches of pine, poplar, maple, apple etc... I have given my rabbit many types of woods and they usually eat the bark. On the occasion that I give them something, wood wise, that they may have trouble with I notice that they don't eat it. I would say that mine are picky maybe because they are pastured and get regular garden veggies as well so they can afford to be picky. If you never give your rabbits other things or only rarely, they may not be as choosy in what they consume. Lately I have tried to stick to pine bark/logs and we have a lot of autumn olive bushes that are safe for humans and rabbits/animals. I also do a lot of new growth apple tree shoots. I have in the past given tulip poplar branches and they weren't too fond of it and didn't chew on it. I didn't know that tulip poplar and reg poplar are a different species all together. But maple branches they love! I read an article that stated that a rabbit can consume sometime wood that is problematic but it won't pose a problem unless they consume a lot of it. I don't know if that is true, but makes sense.

That goes along with my theory that an optimal strategy is to go for wide spread diversity: less of any one thing and more options. That way they will be more attuned to what to eat, and more inclined to pass on something that does not feel right to them, and further that most things will not injure them if only ingested in small quantities.

 

[user8584]

We have a lot of mulberry trees which are supposed to be an excellent option. Thought you might have them in Miss...

Chew time, interesting.

The process you may be interested in is called pollarding, the pruning of trees to encourage off shoots of tender green growth.
look it up.

 

[LoveMyBarnyard]

The process you may be interested in is called pollarding, the pruning of trees to encourage off shoots of tender green growth.
look it up.

Thanks. This goes along w the really interesting YouTube that Rabbit Warren Man cited earlier in this thread:

Looking up pollarding, it seems one really has to commit early on in the tree's life.

 

[Rabbit Warren Man]

Thanks. This goes along w the really interesting YouTube that Rabbit Warren Man cited earlier in this thread:

Looking up pollarding, it seems one really has to commit early on in the tree's life.

Lots of companies do tree pruning be a good opportunity to take branches away.

 

[Rabbittracks]

Thanks. This goes along w the really interesting YouTube that Rabbit Warren Man cited earlier in this thread:

Looking up pollarding, it seems one really has to commit early on in the tree's life.

I did tree hay this year as an experiment and it is easy to do, but most of the leaves fall off and this is what the rabbits really want. You also have to commit to starting early enough to collect it, but it is a great way to supplement their diets.

 

[Rabbit Warren Man]

I did tree hay this year as an experiment and it is easy to do, but most of the leaves fall off and this is what the rabbits really want. You also have to commit to starting early enough to collect it, but it is a great way to supplement their diets.

I have never done tree hay. But do feed fresh branches with leaves and fresh grasses in summer plus some other garden greens. They also get sprouted wheat and field peas.

Winter I feed branches for the bark and to give them lots to chew on plus Timothy/ alfalfa mix horse hay whole oats, sunflower seeds and sprouted wheat and field pea mix.

I always have a blue salt block and a red mineral block in the pen for them. Lots of fresh water.