Meat rabbit feed

Bunnylady said:

There are a lot of "factoids" running around about feeding rabbits. Some people absolutely have cows about alfalfa, and some of the major manufacturers of feed produce formulations that don't have alfalfa in them. This is not recognition on the part of the manufacturer that alfalfa is "bad" for rabbits, it's a matter of catering to the demands of the market (there are chicken feeds that tout "no animal protein" on the bag, because that's what some owners seem to want, even though chickens are omnivores and an all-vegetable diet is of absolutely no benefit to a chicken). I have no idea why some people think there shouldn't be corn in rabbit feed, or even if their reason(s) for thinking that have any basis in fact at all.

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Thanks i just couldn't understand why corn would be bad when the cottontail family at our house now will munch on the corn if we open up an ear and leave it on the grown for them even the kits (who like to camp around in our garden without mom and dad lol)

I know all to well about chickens, cuz we do things that are against the pet chicken owners and give our chickens that are supposedly a no no lol.

I just never want to give an animal something that could harm them or even kill them out of accident so just wanted to make sure if it mattered with the corn etc.

Corn is great for rabbits. They love it. They can have it while or cracked as a grain, and it is great in pellets. You've been told nothing but rubbish about how corn isn't good for rabbits. If you can grow your own corn, rabbits love the stalks and shucks. Not too many green ones, though. It is better to dry them first.

@minibackyardfarmer, you mentioned free-feeding your rabbits. If you mean leaving pellets available to them all the time I think that is a mistake. Rabbits will eat all the time given the opportunity. Unless I have a nursing doe, who I do free-feed because she is nursing, I only give pellets in the evening. A fat rabbit does not breed.

Regarding alfalfa, my rabbits enjoy it and as I have goats I get double duty out of the alfalfa in that the goats get first crack at the alfalfa flake. The goats eat all the leaves and most of the stems and anything left the next morning gets put in a storage can and doled out to the rabbits. This way I have very little spoilage of the alfalfa which I buy in a 3-strand bale.

Buying a bale for your rabbits may not be economical for you. I've found, in the grocery store no less, a product that is timothy cubes.
You can get them online as well as other forms of timothy hay. At the grocery store this product is $1.99 here in Texas. The cubes are dense enough to give the rabbits a good time gnawing.

I'm feeding a high protein pellet (18%) and free feed them flakes of alfalfa. The alfalfa hay is cheap at $7 a bale and it slows down the amount of pellets they go through. I bought this bale a couple of months ago and still have some left with 5 adults, and now 16 babies eating it. They all have pellets available 24/7 but I've noticed they'd rather hit the flake of hay than the pellets if it's there.
My doe with 6 kits (5 weeks old) is starting to get lean from the nursing, but everyone else is a nice healthy weight. I've been debating weaning the babies off her so she can recover some, just trying to figure out where to put them all.

@AClark , a lower protein feed may be more beneficial. Rabbits can become obese on that much protein. Rabbit pellets these days are too high in protein. Rabbit's digestive system is not designed for that much protein in such a concentration as a pellet. I feed 16% protein, but would feed lower protein pellets if I could find them. As for alfalfa hay, it is a very good quality hay, but is also very rich if not mixed with other grass hay. How did you find alfalfa hay so cheap? My local feed store doesn't even sell it. It just sells grass hay in bails. I guess the hay in my area is more geared towards horses. @animalmom , free choice pellets should be given to lactating does and kits up to 6 months old.

Alfalfa hay grows very well out west here. It is cheap because the farmers irrigate fields off the Rio Grande river - I pick it up with a 20 minute drive directly from the farm, and it is also sold on the side of the road on trailers by the bale. This is horse quality alfalfa, not cattle quality. Cattle quality goes for cheaper, especially if it's not fit for horse consumption (mold, wet, etc) - the local dairy's buy that stuff up.

Oddly enough, grass hay is the expensive one here if you can find it. It isn't like upstate NY (I used to live near Watertown) where grass actually grows, everything has to be irrigated. Nobody irrigates grass except in orchards, and sometimes you can find orchard grass but it's $12+ a bale.

As for pellets, that's what I can get cheap and local. Costs $16 for 50 lbs, made by Hi Pro I think, though I don't have a bag handy since I dump it in a container and chuck the bag in the trash. This is for meat rabbits, so some fat on the babies is no big deal. I haven't had any issues with the adults becoming obese, even the bucks.

I used to feed alfalfa, but it was to expensive, and what I could get was super dusty. I can get a bale of grass hay for $5 to $7 a bale, though. My pellets cost about the same as yours. I put mine in a container, but still hoard old feed sacks.

Yeah and have to keep in consideration that being we are in the desert we have an extended growing season, it's 83 degrees at almost 4 PM here. You get first cutting around the first week of May most of the time.
Folks don't have open fields they can cut and bale, they have to water that crap to make it grow, and watering stuff is expensive here! lol

Glad we don't have the problem of water. It rains all the time. It makes the feed bill cheaper, but the wet weather makes the wood on my hutches swell up. It makes opening the hutches pretty hard sometimes. Our growing season in only a few months.You probably know that up here, you have to start your seeds inside pretty early, or your plants will be killed by frost before the end of September. It also means months of frozen water crocks. Yay. Do you have any suggestions on how to make watering more efficient for when everything turns to ice?

AClark said:

Alfalfa hay grows very well out west here. It is cheap because the farmers irrigate fields off the Rio Grande river - I pick it up with a 20 minute drive directly from the farm, and it is also sold on the side of the road on trailers by the bale. This is horse quality alfalfa, not cattle quality. Cattle quality goes for cheaper, especially if it's not fit for horse consumption (mold, wet, etc) - the local dairy's buy that stuff up.

Oddly enough, grass hay is the expensive one here if you can find it. It isn't like upstate NY (I used to live near Watertown) where grass actually grows, everything has to be irrigated. Nobody irrigates grass except in orchards, and sometimes you can find orchard grass but it's $12+ a bale.

As for pellets, that's what I can get cheap and local. Costs $16 for 50 lbs, made by Hi Pro I think, though I don't have a bag handy since I dump it in a container and chuck the bag in the trash. This is for meat rabbits, so some fat on the babies is no big deal. I haven't had any issues with the adults becoming obese, even the bucks.

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@AClark - you used to live near Watertown? Small world - I did too, when I was a child; a little town called Cape Vincent. I sure don't miss the lake-effect snow!

As you know, it's a common practice to feed a higher protein feed to rabbits that are being used in an intensive breeding program; several manufacturers make a 18% protein formulation for that purpose. A bit of extra protein won't make rabbits fat; overfeeding will. Anybody heard of the Atkins diet? Yes, that's for humans, but it takes a fair amount of energy to convert protein to fat, whatever kind of animal you are. It's far easier to make a rabbit fat with things that are high in carbohydrates and fats, like grains. A lot of people feed hay mainly for its fiber content, so whatever hay is produced locally is usually the cheapest and therefore what gets fed. For us, it's Coastal Bermuda; Timothy has to get shipped down from New England or the midwest or even Canada and is therefore pricier. Some horse folks around here like to feed Alfalfa as hay, but most of the feed stores don't carry it, so it has to be shipped in as a special order - which means $$$. The protein content of alfalfa can vary widely, depending on when it was harvested, some grass hays may actually be higher in protein than late-harvested alfalfa.