Roses and Rabbits

[Mickey328]

After seeing a post here about giving buns (safe) flower leaves and blossoms, I pulled a few rose leaves off our dormant plants. OMgosh...our buns have never gone after anything like this! They don't fight, but they'll nibble on one right from the other's mouth!

So, my question is...how much? They're only 3 months old (Silver Foxes) so right now I'm pretty generous with the feed; they still have a lot of growing to do. Their grain mix is barley, oats, beet pulp and BOSS. Gonna quit putting in the beet pulp though since they won't eat it...neither to the chickens They also have free access to Timothy hay and get a couple of good sized handfuls of alfalfa every day. As we have it, they get greens like kale, lettuce...whatever we can get our hands on...they're pretty fussy with that stuff...like kale but only so-so with the romaine and carrots. None of them like raisins, and one of the 3 is crazy for pumpkin seeds while the other 2 will eat it...maybe, LOL.

I'm digressing again...sorry. My actual question is...how much of the dried rose leaves can I feed them? I haven't checked the nutritional value (yet) but I'm sure it's not as high as their actual "food" and I don't want them to eat so many that they don't eat their food. Should I consider it a "treat" and just give them a handful or so a day?

Thanks!

 

[Dood]

Yes, just as a treat, a tablespoon each / day

Mine also like to gnaw on cuttings and the hips/seed pods of roses.

They also like wild raspberry, willow and apple tree cuttings.

 

[Mickey328]

That's kind of what I thought, thanks Dood. I was looking at the hips too, but I didn't harvest them in the fall and they're in pretty sad shape just now, LOL. We're going to put in a raspberry patch this year so they should be getting some nice treats from them in a few months as well. We'll be pruning the grape fine soon too...I'll be interested to see how they like that and of course the leaves later on.

I found an ad on CL for someone just a couple miles away who had taken down both a cherry and a willow tree...they gave the address and said "come and get it"...so we did, LOL. The buns are loving it! They eat the smaller twigs whole and chew the bark off the larger branches.

 

[Frecs]

I give my rabbits -- also Silver Foxes -- fresh trimmings from my rose bush and flowers. They get a branch about a foot long each during times when the bush is growing. When there are flowers, they get a flower plus branch/leaves. I'm adding a lot more roses (rugosas for the hips) to my yard and so hopefully will be able to give them more in the future. You don't want to start out with a lot...build up to it gradually and give along with other greens...I like to give two or more different forages at a time so they can pick and choose.

 

[Dood]

My farm, and the surrounding lands, was a fruit farm 100 years ago so there are lots of apple, pear, and cherry trees that have gone wild or grew from seeds the squirrels buried and they from a sort of hedge around the property line and I harvest from these. I have s couple car sized wild rose bushes, 4 huge weeping willows and have planted several more in our valley, all for the rabbits to enjoy.

 

[MaggieJ]

I found an ad on CL for someone just a couple miles away who had taken down both a cherry and a willow tree...they gave the address and said "come and get it"...so we did, LOL. The buns are loving it! They eat the smaller twigs whole and chew the bark off the larger branches.

Cherry is not really a good choice for rabbits. In fact, any of the drupes (trees with single stoned fruits) may have varying degrees of toxicity. I'm not saying they are "drop dead poisonous", just that they are problematic. I do not feed them to my rabbits for this reason.

Willow, on the other hand, is high in protein and safe for rabbits.