Rabbits raised on "forage?"

[triplepurpose]

Wild rabbits are more browsers than grazers. They eat a lot of twigs, buds, and leaves; while they do graze, they are also exposed when they do it, and they prefer to have cover nearby. The proper diet for a rabbit is high in fiber, and low in carbohydrates. While rabbits like sweet things like fruit, you have to be very, very careful when giving anything like that to a rabbit, because too much sugar upsets their digestive system and can lead to diarrhea. The odd strawberry or slice of apple won't do any harm, but you can't feed a steady diet of that sort of thing. Cruciferous vegetables contain an enzyme that inhibits the absorption of iodine, so you need to limit intake from that family, or your rabbits can develop goiter due to an iodine deficiency. Cabbage and its relatives are also known to produce gas, so you will need to keep an eye out for bloat.

How to feed a rabbit is a hotly debated topic even among those who aren't trying for self-sufficiency. A lot of pelleted feeds are alfalfa based, some will insist that alfalfa is poison and a pellet should be grass hay based. Some act like all pellets are evil, and go for a hay/fresh veg diet. They say that if you ask 4 horsemen about something horse related, you'll get 5 opinions; I think rabbit people may be twice as bad!

Thanks, very informative. That's the sort of tips I'm looking for to get me headed in the right direction...

Thanks everybody else, too, for your help! I'll keep researching, and talking to folks. This project has been on the back shelf of my mind for a while now, and I won't get to it for at least a couple of months anyway since I'll be travelling, but it's still a one-day dream of mine...

 

[dainerra]

my vet actually recommends against feeding more than a small amount of pellets to rabbits. The majority of their diet should come from hay, greens, and other vegetation.

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

Thanks!

In practice, I'm not opposed feeding a little bit of pellets, if it helps, but I want it to be a minor component, even if that means not using a "meat breed." Which I suspect it will! In THEORY it makes no sense to me to buy feed for animals--livestock should eat off the land by foraging or grazing, or consume scraps, otherwise they aren't really ideal for the situation. Examples: cows where there is rich grass, goats where there is scrub and brambles, chickens where there are leaf litter, manure piles, and food scraps, and pigs where there are plenty of slops and dairy byproducts.

I have a lot of vegetable gardens and orchards in yearround production so I have plenty of lettuce, greens, fruit, as well as the space to grow special fodder like cowpeas or something. I'd love to know specifics, in a basic sense--ratios of green matter to fruits, how much carbohydrates to protein to fiber, that sort of thing. In other words, what is a rabbit's "natural" diet?

I'll check out that blog for sure, Blessed, thanks!

Just because you want a forage-based feeding program doesn't mean you have to rule out meat type rabbits. The Giant Chinchilla is a meat breed developed in the U.S. solely for meat production. They are supposed to be incredibly feed efficient and do very well on hay with minimal amounts of pellets compared to other meat breeds. Here is the website for the breed: http://www.giantchinchillarabbit.com/