Lettuce

[Devon's Mom Lauren]

Just remember a cup of shredded lettuce weighs about 47 grams, 43 grams of that is water. The rest is calcium and potassium and a few vitamins like K. So if you are feeding pellets and dry hay and your rabbit is drinking water according to this and then his diet suddenly involves a lot of lettuce... well his system would be over hydrated and that's how the diarrhea gets started. If your rabbit was dehydrated to begin with then its not such a problem.

 

[MaggieJ]

Some random links for entropathy in rabbits:

http://wildlife1.wildlifeinformation.or ... bbits.html

http://www.showbunny.com/gastrointestinal.html

This last one, I found interesting in that it differentiates between enteritis and entropathy. Apparently the latter is infectious.
http://www.raising-rabbits.com/epizooti ... pathy.html

 

[Tom in Kingman]

I have a feeling that good substitutes for pellets need to be found . If the economy takes a dive there might not be pellets at a store that might not even also exist .

Tom, you will want to take a look at the SAFE PLANTS list and also at the other threads in the Natural Feeding forum. It is perfectly possible to raise rabbits well on good alfalfa hay, some grass hay, gathered greens (weeds mainly) and a bit of grain. How much land do you have?

I have an acre and a quarter . With discounting the land the house and steel building/garage sits on I have about 3/4 acres to do pretty much what I want . We have a 12X15 greenhousethat hopefully will benefit from the manure and the worms that I will raise . We have NO worms around here to speak of since we are for all intents and purposes high desert . I have just started to investigate Timothy Hay as a good feed . It is my hope to begin with all the "usual suspects" of food just to get started . Then as time goes by and confidence builds I will begin to investigate some other feeds without any fast changes . It's easier to back off from a small error than a big one . If the economy has big problems I will be forced to grow whatever I need , unless I can glean some food from the surrounding areas . One big problem however , we DO have about a jillion wild rabbits around here and I would think that if something is good to eat then they ARE eating it without any consideration of Tom and his rabbits . As for Alfalfa Hay , it comes from about 100 miles away . It costs about $11 for a 135 pound bale . I haven't done the math but distance X fuel costs (which BTW keep rising) blended with growing seasons does not bode well for a cheap and unending supply . I could get it for $8 a bale BUT I would have to buy a semi load . I guess there ain't no free lunch .Thank you for your reply and I will keep doing my research .

 

[MaggieJ]

Yeah, I thought you might have problems with a completely natural diet for rabbits, due to your location, Tom. But if you have a good wild rabbit population, it may be possible to work around it. Start observing what they are eating, then identify the plants and double check for toxicity.