I am thinking of buying seeds and trying to grow a little garden of sorts for the rabbits. I'm thinking plantain, dandelion, Echinacea, Chamomile, Lemon Balm so far. I have space down by the barn but it will have to be fenced off to keep the horses out and I don't know if that part would be feasible. We could grow it in a small section of the yard also. Are there any others I should add? I thought about blackberry and raspberry bushes also.
I like your choices. My rabbits love dandelion and plantain. And I don't know if anyone would intentionally plant it because it spreads everywhere, but they
love chickweed too.
Raspberries are a great idea; their leaves contain an oxytocin analog that can be very helpful in helping a doe whose labor has stalled.
Parsley is another good one because it can help stimulate appetite in rabbits who are off their feed.
The other plants I wouldn't be without are willow and comfrey. Both of those are perennials and serve many uses.
Willow is an excellent forage; the whole plant is useful. The bark contains salicylic acid, a natural analgesic, which rabbits experiencing any sort of pain or discomfort can use to self-medicate. You can harvest the leaves or entire branches and dry them for later feeding. A nice willow hedge can be a combination privacy fence, windblock and forage source. It's easy to propagate; just cut a few branches off an established tree or shrub and stick them in the ground. Really.
Russian comfrey is another plant you can use for feed, and it seems to be a general tonic for rabbits. (You do need to start with it slowly, like all other dietary additions for rabbits). The dried leaves are high in protein, somewhere around 20-30%.
Most varieties are super vigorous and will take over your garden, so I grow a sterile variety called Bocking 14 Russian Comfrey. It won't reproduce unless you want it to, which by the way is
super easy, a lot like willows. When we moved one year in the late fall, I dug up some comfrey tubers from our old garden and tossed them in a bucket with a little bit of dirt. The next spring I chopped them into pieces, stuck them in the ground, and now I have four huge plants at our new place. So don't buy a bunch of tubers - just one or two will do you, as they will get B-I-G and you can divide to make more plants if you want them. The older leaves and stems are a little prickly and the rabbits prefer the small fresh leaves, but once they're used to it they'll happily eat it all.
