What Kind of Feed Are You Using

[Dirty Harry]

I have been feeding Purina Feed to my rabbits for some time. I have tried Kent. The price of both of these keep going up way too fast, even buying it by the ton. I need to find a cheaper feed to make any money. Someone showed me a cheaper brand the other day but when I looked at the ingredients list it had pork and bone meal in it. I don't like the idea of feeding animal products to rabbits. I was just wondering what others have tried and what it is costing. Any info would be appreciated..

 

[akane]

Horse pellets, hay, and these soft mineral/vitamin blocks (not the hard trace ones) that also have grain ingredients. That way the pellet doesn't require the fiber to be in it bringing the cost down to $13/50lbs year round while nutrena and kent which we used in the past are nearly $20 per bag here and nutrena is a 40lb bag instead. Grains are fine in summer but go up to about $16/50lbs in the winter. If you can buy in bulk to store enough in the off season a custom grain mix can work without any type of pellet.

The high level of oats to other grains in the horse pellets does lead to slightly too high of fat except for the rabbits that are raising litters nearly year round. I cut it with straight barley to get the fat % down around 3-4 like many rabbit pellets. Mainly for the mini rex who tend to get chubby very easily. They are actually my biggest problem using something other than rabbit feed. The meat breeds have done great on both grain mixtures and the horse pellets.