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Chickens eating Rabbits food

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Sc00ter4900

Sc00ter4900

Songster
11 Years
Jun 7, 2009
236
0
142
Massachusetts
Hi I was wondering if anyone else has chickens and rabbits? My rabbits are in hutches and my chickens free roam. My chicken are pecking under cages and eating the left over rabbit food and most likely the poop too. Is this bad? Will It effect the eggs? Will somebody get sick from this if they eat the eggs? Thanks Scotty
 
Most likely not, most chikens eat their own poop anyway. The rabbit food certainly won't hurt them.
 
Last edited:
No, our kids raised hundreds of rabbits and I've raised many thousands of chickens. The rabbit feed will not hurt the chickens, however be warned, chickens can spread diseases to your rabbits. It is best to keep them apart. At our county fair they used to keep rabbits and chickens side by side and that's not good so I finally got them to separate the two. Chickens are hardier than rabbits.
 
My rabbits and chickens share the same fenced in back yard where the chickens free range and have not had a problem other than the occasional egg laid in an empty open rabbit cage LOL. When I run low on chix feed and have plenty of rabbit I will occasionally toss out a bucket or two of rabbit feed to the chix... No problems so far, no chickens acting like rabbits, or rabbits laying eggs lol...
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Quote:
Just keep in mind that Rabbit pellets contain a lot more salt than chickens need and in a long period of time cold cause health problems.

Chris
 
Read up on Joel Salatin's setup....he's been keeping chickens under rabbits for many years now and describes the benefits in his book.

I used to have chickens under our rabbits and it is a win/win situation....and absolutely no illness resulted in this setup. The chickens benefit from the dropped feed and they mix the droppings into the bedding, keeping ammonia odors from the urine all dispersed into the same bedding. When you finally clean out this bedding, the chicken manure is cooled down by the rabbit droppings, making composting a little quicker....great for the garden!

If you really want to make a great combo, build a box under your cages into which the droppings can fall, place hardware wire over the box and keep earthworms in the bedding/feces. Then you can supply your chickens with the extra protein. A lot of people are diversifying their livestock in this manner and find the benefits to be wonderful.
 
Wow great info Thanks. I also noticed my yokes are more orange than yellow. Could this be from eating rabbit pellets? Most of the time the egg yokes are a bright yellow. Latly they have been getting more orange. They still taste Great LOL. Just wondering . Thanks Scotty
 
Yes, it could be. Well into winter, when the snows cover the ground, I will include alfalfa pellets in my feed mix to insure the girls are still getting some greens. The pleasant side affect of this is the nice, deep orange yolks.
 

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