What has been your experience feeding fodder?

[ek.blair]

Here is my fodder system... currently taking it to the kitchen sink to water twice a day. I am feeding three buns and they all love it! It has only been about a week so no real findings on how they are doing other than they all seem happy and healthy. They also get free choice grass hay, about a 1/4 cup of whole barley (I will be weaning off of this as I increase the fodder I am feeding) and a tablespoon of BOSS every other day. And I also give them an alfalfa cube to nibble on which usually lasts them for the week. I feed half of one of these tubs a day between all three buns and will be feeding twice a day by next week. So that means I will be feeding one tub a day. I have also starded sprinkling a tablespoon of Flax seed onto the fodder two days before I feed it to give it time to sprout. I haven't been able to get the fodder to grow in as thick as I have seen others, but I am trying some different soaking methods to try to help with that. <br /><br /> __________ Tue Feb 11, 2014 8:57 am __________ <br /><br />

There are two main outstanding questions that I have - how should I give the fodder to them? It seems like if I put the mat on their cage floors, there will be significant waste. And the J-feeders are not really the ideal dimensions... Second - if I pick up fresh fodder 2x a week, how do I store the half-eaten fodder biscuits from day to day? I would guess the fridge, but I haven't heard anything suggested before. It's still getting below freezing here every night (though we are nowhere near as cold as the east coast), so keeping the fodder outside is probably not wise.

I have been storing my fodder in the fridge since I don't feed a whole tub in a day and it has seemed to work fine. when feeding it I have been setting it straight on the bottom of their cages, however since it has been -25 here it quickly feezes to the bottom and they are able to finish it with very minimal waste. My Buck tends to not finish all of the root mat but the does finish every last morsel! I would think you could get shallow pet dishes to feed it from if you didn't want it on the cage bottom.

 

[BlueMoods]

I feed pellets, grew up with a grandfather that fed fodder to all his grazing animals (cows, Sheep, Goats, rabbits) and saw the mold problems and the hassle of keeping a supply growing. I've got a life other than rabbits and, pellets are simply easier. Balancing nutrition with fodder is harder - it's all in the pellets. For me a tray of fodder is a treat if I'm bored for a week and want to do it for my rabbits.

Now rabbit tractors in the summer, that's another matter. I love using them. My rabbits become my lawn mower and lawn fertilizer machine in the summer. Too hot to breed then here and, what better place than out under the shade of the hickory trees for them in that heat.

 

[JessiL]

HoppinHalfPints, I have heard of folks feeding only fodder (plus oyster shell and free range) to chickens, and others who feed fodder, pellets, additional seeds, meat scraps, etc. I've heard a lot about folks feeding fermented seeds to chickens, or feeding fodder grown to a younger age (3-5 days). I think it depends on the quality of your free range. Ours in the winter probably wouldn't be enough, as chickens are true omnivores and there's relatively little crawling about with the freezing nights, but might be ok during the growing season. So I'm afraid you'd probably have to experiment given your local conditions. <br /><br /> __________ Tue Feb 25, 2014 6:49 pm __________ <br /><br /> Update - I have my fodder versus pellets trial underway, with the fodder bunnies mostly weaned off of pellets. My solution for feeding vessel was repurposing a few metal bread loaf pans, they are a good size for holding up to 3/4 pound of fodder. And storing the fodder in a fridge seems to be working to keep it fresh enough to feed. I can tell that it would be better to pick up fodder twice a week instead of once, and I'll be working with my supplier to see if that can happen.

Assuming things progress well enough, I'll soon start a new thread with updates. I plan to weigh everyone involved every two weeks along the way, and have been keeping close tabs on how much feed is going out to the various cages. I also have a litter weaned to a rabbit tractor who will be a part of all of this, though I have yet to set up a pellet bucket for them to track how much pellets they get. But the pastured rabbits won't be representative of "normal," our pasture is in winter shape though starting to sprout a bit.

 

[michaels4gardens]

I hope it works well for you-
- I used to do feed testing for a feed company, and tested ,and feed trialed a lot of animals-- the results of experiments with fodder were less then "shiney" I did see some good use as an addition to a more complete feed program.[ for instance -fed with sugar beet, carrot, and grass hay] but-- when I used fodder as "the feed program" I got poor results in growth rates and over all health, and Does raising young on fodder alone crashed. Chickens almost quit laying eggs. -The best fodder seed mix I trialed was "bird seed" with boss- it out performed the other mixes I tried .[mostly -wheat, oats, barly, corn, seed mixes]

 

[Veliraf]

ek.blair- do your fodder pots have holes drilled into the bottom? It look like a pretty good system for a few rabbits.

 

[ek.blair]

yep! And the easiest way to add holes is a HOT nail. I tried to drill holes at first but it left a little bit of plastic shavings stuck around the holes that prevented the water from flowing as freely. With the hot nail the extra plastic is left in a nice smooth lip around the edge and the water escapes much better.