Grains??

[dearsrock]

Maggie "when my rabbits were in cages". Pray tell, where are they now? Just curious!

Renee
S CA

 

[MaggieJ]

I set up a small colony in half of our goose house. A space about 8 feet square with lots of "furniture" to give them places to perch and hide. Two nest tunnels that can be opened from the top for kit checks. Everybunny is pretty happy with it, although there are some small changes that we will be making along the way. I have three does and a buck in there, plus 5 six-week-old fryers and 2 two-week-old kits.

 

[SaratogaNZW]

My mix for the next 5 buckets: (about a week per bucket) as I am expecting 3 litters of kits to transition to solid food and even be weaned through this feed cycle, I used more 17% pellets than I normally would.

3 parts 17% alfalfa feed pellets
1 part BOSS
1 part whole oats
1 part whole barley
1 part whole red wheat
Labels on the whole grains said they were all 10%, Totals out at about 14% for the feed. But I am free feeding a pretty hot 3ed cut alfalfa hay, so that should bring things up quite a bit. And that's considering BOSS at 16%, protein but the 25% fat isn't taken into account. The feed mix is a lot hotter than 14%.

I made a 6th bucket with calf manna specifically for fryer kits between 8 and 12 weeks
2 parts 17% alfalfa pellets
1 part 25% Calf manna
1 part boss
1 part whole oats
1 part whole barley
1 part whole red wheat
=15% plus BOSS Fats, helps them pack it on before going to freezer camp.

Something that the rabbits are really going to notice is suspiciously absent is the molasses. This mix ix not going to be as palatable, as sweet as the last mix, which I mixed COB+, BOSS and pellets. But they wont miss the cracked corn, they picked most of it out anyways.
I guess we will see about 2 days from now when the cob mix is gone and they are completely on this whole grain mix.

 

[hoodat]

Just a comment about corn. Almost all of the corn you buy nowadays is GMO and I've read reports (whether true or not I can't say) that wild animals avoid GMO crops. I'd trust the insticts of wild animals. The same is true of soy but of course soy is an iffy proposition for rabbits anyway.

 

[OneAcreFarm]

:evil: I bought what I thought was a 50lb bag of WHOLE oats and it turned out to be CRIMPED oats. The rabbits seem to eat it just fine, is there any reason one might be better than the other? The crimped ones fall out of the feeder easier....

 

[MaggieJ]

You are certainly within your rights to return it. Crimped oats will store for only a few months without losing nutrients, whereas I figure whole oats are good for a year plus. If you're wasting a lot because it falls through the feeder, that is another minus. Other than that, not much difference. Some rabbits prefer the crimped... a little easier to eat.

 

[OneAcreFarm]

Well, I was wrong I think.... I looked up online and what I thought I was getting was ROLLED oats and what I got seems to be WHOLE oats....what do CRIMPED oats look like?

 

[trinityoaks]

Well, I was wrong I think.... I looked up online and what I thought I was getting was ROLLED oats and what I got seems to be WHOLE oats....what do CRIMPED oats look like?

Crimped looks a lot like rolled, but not nearly as flat. Think of cookie dough flattened with your hand compared with rolled with a rolling pin. Whole grains look like actual seeds (which they are). Where we lived before, the only barley I could get was crimped. I use the Fine-X II feeders from Bass, and didn't have any trouble with the crimped falling through.

As Maggie says, crimped/rolled/whatever grain doesn't keep as long as whole grains, but otherwise they're fine to feed to the buns.