Food, fruit and vegetables for the rabbits
FOOD AND TIDBITS
You can find very good pellets of different kinds. If you buy a good quality, you normally donīt need giving your rabbit extra vitamins. If you give your rabbit salad or cabbage, it has to be a small quantity. You never must give it grass, which is sprayed with chemicals, or grass harvested along roads, where the cars pollute.Salt - and mineral stones might be something that the rabbits like, but it is not necessary.
 Normaly rabbitpills / rabbitfeed |
Pellets of good quality are the most important of the rabbitīs food. It is very different what the pellets cost. Maybe you can enter into an agreement with a breeder to by pellets from her/him. It might be cheaper.
The pellets have to be kept at a cool and dry place, so that they do not get moist and mouldy. It is good to have them in a metal container with cover, so that mice and rats cant go into it. Young rabbits up to 3 - 4 month, pregnant rabbits and rabbits with young can have pellets the whole time. It is just necessary to give grown up rabbits pellets once a day. If you feed your rabbit in the evening, it must have eaten up till next morning, or you have given it too much. You have to feel your way. If you can se, that your rabbit is going to be fat, you must give it less. Donīt give your rabbit a lot of food just to be nice to it. Suddenly you have a fat rabbit, which donīt want to move. It is difficult to get it down in weight again.
If you have to change the kind of pellets, that you use, you can do it by mixing a little of the new into the old and then for each day put a little more of the new into the food. If you change quicker, your rabbit might get problems with its stomach.
You also can buy rabbit goodies. It might be a mix with pellets, dried peas, nuts, carrots, carobs and much more. It is something that might make your rabbit fat, so just give it goodies once a week, maybe the same day as you have your sweet day.
TIDBITS:
If your rabbit still is very young, just give it few and small tidbits. For example you can give it a little slice of carrots or a little piece of apple or little hay. Wait and see if it can stand it. If you give your rabbit vegetables or fruit, it is a good thing to peel it, if you donīt know if they are sprayed with chemicals. Let the tidbits have room temperature before the rabbit gets it, or it might get stomach ache.
Remember that it is tidbits and not something it needs to get every day.
If you choose to give your rabbit much fruit and vegetables every day, you must give it less pellets, so that it doesnīt get fat.
HAY:
It is good for the rabbit to get little hay every day. Take care of how to store the hay. The hay has to smell fresh. Donīt store it in a plastic bag. Then it might be mouldy, and mouldy hay can kill your rabbit. You can keep it in a paper bag.
BREAD:
If you have a rest of bread, you can give it to your rabbit. It must absolutely NOT be mouldy. You must dry it in an oven or upon a radiator. White bread or crusty rolls are the best. Never give it cake or something like this.
WATER:
Look after that your rabbit has fresh, clean water the whole time. It is best to give your rabbit cold water, but not ice cold. If your rabbit is standing outside the whole year, you can give it lukewarm water and change it so often, that it doesnīt freeze to ice. You can give your rabbit water in a container. You also can give it a bottle, it can suck, when you just are sure it can find out how to do. Remember to clean the container or the bottle at least once a week. In the summer time it might be necessary to do it more often. The rabbit might now and then have food in its mouth, when it drinks of the container. If it loses it into the container, it might be a bit dirty in the bottom, and it is best to clean it as soon as you see it. Water and food container are placed a little from each other.
FREE FOOD
There are many things in the nature and in the garden, which your rabbit can get, but you have to think of, that they have to be harvested at places, which are free from pollution. Just collect plants, which have been gathered long away from trafficked roads.In the garden you can grow:
- Curly kale: The rabbit have the pleasure of curly kale from the garden the whole summer and the whole winter. Just give the rabbit one leaf every day.
- Parsley: The most rabbits are very fond of parsley, and there is a rather big vitamin contents in the plant, so it is good to have it in the garden.
- Jerusalem artichoke:: We have a lot of Jerusalem artichokes in our garden ourselves. They we put into our garden at a time, when our garden hedge was a little thin. The Jerusalem artichokes grow up very fine and cover for curious looks, but they are also splendid plants for the rabbits. We cut the plants about 40 cm over the earth gradually as we feed the rabbit with them. The rabbits are very fond of the plants. The rest of the plants send out leaves again. Also the tubers under the earth can be eaten of the rabbits. (Remember to wash the tubers) You can also eat the tuber yourself. Look for recipes in a cooking book.
- Sunflowers:: Rabbits can eat both the stems and, the leaves, the flower and the seed, and then they are decorative in the garden till they are harvested.
Marigolds - Carrots:: I am sure you know, that rabbit are very fond of carrots, so it is worth growing carrots in your garden. Carrots can be stored for the winter. We have had luck by storing both carrots and sugar beet in our green house. We put them on straw and then we put big plastic bags with straw over. Then they are covered well for frost and easy to find.
- Sugar beets:: We have sugar beets in our garden too, and during the winter, when the rabbits do not come much out in their fence, they get a piece of beet every day.
- Lucerne:: You can grow this in your garden too. Donīt give your rabbit much of this.
- Other things:: If you have dandelions, which you anyway are going to take away, the rabbits are happy to get it. The rabbits can get used to eat marigolds too. Ours are very fond of them. The rabbits can have a lot of pleasure out of household rubbish as well as garden refuse. When the fruit trees have got trimmed, the rabbits can get the branches as well, and they like to gnaw in them. They like ripe windfalls from both apple and pear, but start carefully with a little piece, and give them more the next day. They can have branches from beech, birch, hazel, willow, oak and other deciduous trees, but leave the elder. Spruce and pine can be used too, but keep away from yew; it is very poisonous. Carrot tops and pea shells they like too.
REMEMBER: IT MUST NOT BE MOULDY. It is best to dry it first. Put it on the radiator for drying, on a wire netting in the sun or in an oven.
They can also get little pieces of tomato, cucumber or melon.
FROM THE NATURE
 Ditte picks the blackcurrant when they are ripen. |
REMEMBER: Just gather the plants where there is not sprayed or polluted.
