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Feeding can be a simple or complex task. It mostly depends on you. There are people that insist on feeding their rabbits a diet of cut hay and straw and grain and other tasty little treats. This can be very labor intensive and time consuming. Most modern people raising rabbits use the pelleted feed. It has all the nutritional requirements for the rabbit and comes in different protein percentages, depending on your needs. You do need to be careful and select a quality feed. I have heard of people losing huge herds from bad feed. We raise mostly meat rabbits. They are medium large in size. If you are raising Netherland Dwarfs, you would need to feed a lower protein feed than we do. Ours gets an 18% protein. If you are ordering in bulk of a ton or more, you can usually manipulate the formula. Ask, and work with their nutritionist to get what you want. You will also save a good deal on it overall if you can buy it that way. Now only do that if you can use it all up. I have heard people say that feed will last forever and others that say it goes bad in 30 days. The general rule of thumb is to not buy more feed than you can feed in 90 days. Keep it dry so as to resist mold and look for feed low in fines. Fines are the dust that you find in the feed bag. There will always be some, but you are paying for it and they cant eat it. The following is our basic feed schedule for our herd. Everyone has their own way of doing things, so you should look it over, and look over others and make up your own system. The most important thing to remember is what works for your rabbits. You can usually tell pretty quick if things are not going well. We feed once per day. They should clean up their feed pretty quick and be ready for more when you feed the next day, but not act like they are starving. 5- oz Pelleted feed daily Dry Does and Bucks Pregnant Does Free Feed Pelleted feed daily Junior stock. Free Feed. (keep the feeders full. This is their main growth stage. Pre-Junior. Rabbits from 6 weeks (weaned) to 3 months are also free fed. Lactating Does (milking young) Kits with Doe prior to weaning Some people like to increase the feed slowly when a Doe gives birth. We have not done this and had little problems. The thinking is that it will control the flow of milk and help prevent mastitis. We have had 3 does in 4 years get it and only one was after she gave birth. The others were when she dried up. We feed at around 4 in the afternoon and on many days when we go out to water at about 9 at night, Judy will give grain goodies on many days. Probably 4 times a week. It is a mix of several grains and she adds black sunflower seeds. Be careful in the summer with those as they add heat, but they do love it. Watering daily Many people water once per day. We find that there are some that drink a lot and they need to always have a good supply of fresh water available. They get none in their feed and without water will soon die. So, we fill their bottles twice a day. Early am and then between eight and ten at night. Some are on bottles, some are on an auto water system. This system needs to be monitored to make sure it is flowing freely. The rabbits will tell you if it is not (if you go out there). We use buckets rather than hooking it to the house system so we are forced to go out and fill and look. I am going to convert from the flex hose to a pvc piped system this year. I think there will be fewer problems with it. If you go to a show, take plenty of your own water, even if they have water. Rabbits are picky and they may not like the water where you go and then you have a problem! We have no chlorine in ours and our rabbits would die before drinking it. Clean the bottles. When they start turning color you need to bleach and clean them. The green moss that builds up is toxic to them. In the winter we use plastic crocks. At this time of year we usually give them water 3X daily as it is very cold here and the water freezes pretty fast. |
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