# Feeding straight alfalfa pellets?



## bluefish (Jan 27, 2006)

I would like to eventually get my rabbits on natural feed. I live in a spot where nothing grows at the moment, so it is going to take me a couple of years to get things going. However, I was wondering if you all thought rabbits might do ok on alfalfa pellets with a little grain supplementation. I buy alfalfa pellets by the ton for the goats and mix my own grains for the chickens so I just thought it would be nice to use those instead of buying one more type of feed. Thoughts?


----------



## Terry W (Mar 10, 2006)

balance, balance, balance!!!

I thought feeding hay alongside the commercial rabbit pellets would work-- and guess what-- it DOES throw the nutritional balances off just enough to really screw up weight gain and maintenance!!! In my area, one needs to supplement with selenium, especially if feeding 'home grown' food-- and a lack of selenium-- well, all kinds of issues with that!!!


----------



## MaggieJ (Feb 6, 2006)

Terry raises a good point... variety and balance are key. I don't think just alfalfa pellets and grain would be ideal as a total diet. 

Also, I think it does make a difference whether you are raising rabbits for your dinner table or purebreds for the show table and breeding stock sales. A number of backyard/homestead breeders, myself included, feed natural foods to our rabbits, either completely or as a supplement to manufactured foods. 

I'm coming up to a year without commercial feed early this spring... and I am pleased with the results, but know I still need to tweak the feeding program to improve fryer weight gain.

Are the pellets alfalfa and nothing else? If so, I see no reason why they could not be a part of your rabbit feed. I personally prefer to feed alfalfa hay for their alfalfa content... and lots of grass hay, fresh foods as available and moderate amounts of grain. You say your land produces nothing yet, but I'll bet it grows any number of nutritious weeds that you can use for your buns, if you wish to transition them to a natural diet.

As I mentioned, this may not be your best route if you are raising show or breeding stock. I mention this again because I see you have champagne d'argents. It may be difficult to get them into show condition without the commercial foods. Now for meat rabbits, I prefer to keep them a little leaner than that.

Terry, could you tell us more about the role of selenium in rabbit food?


----------



## bluefish (Jan 27, 2006)

The pellets are supposed to be alfalfa and nothing else. I also have grass hay. The only thing that grow on my land are russian thistle and kochia weed. The rabbits have never seemed very interested in either one. We live on an alkali flat and not much grows here. We are working on improving the soil and getting native grasses and plant to grow. Hopefully. I'm pretty up on plant ID and I meant it when I said nothing. 

The rabbits do get garden gleanings over the summer, but not enough to live off of. I raise my rabbits for meat for the family and dogs.

Selenium shouldn't be a problem around here! LOL. Copper and iron, maybe. I don't know much about the minerals, or lack of, in the area.

I don't want to short my rabbits, but I'm also interested in using what I have if possible.

Thanks for all the help!!


----------



## tmfinley (Feb 25, 2008)

I am starting to switch my rabbits over to alfalfa pellets (have to use pellets because the alfalfa hay around here is no good), and oats. I also supplement with grass hay and nice green weeds around the farm for yummy treats. I want to get away from the "rabbit chow" so I actually know what my animals and eventually I am eating. I use the alfalfa pellets, oats and grass hay to feed my goats and think it will work nice for the rabbits. I'm not showing them or anything, just for the table or food bowl. Any thoughts??

Tiffany


----------



## MaggieJ (Feb 6, 2006)

thermopkt said:


> The pellets are supposed to be alfalfa and nothing else. I also have grass hay. *The only thing that grow on my land are russian thistle and kochia weed.* The rabbits have never seemed very interested in either one. We live on an alkali flat and not much grows here. We are working on improving the soil and getting native grasses and plant to grow. Hopefully. I'm pretty up on plant ID and I meant it when I said nothing.
> 
> The rabbits do get garden gleanings over the summer, but not enough to live off of. I raise my rabbits for meat for the family and dogs.
> 
> ...


Sorry! Usually when people say that nothing is growing on their land they are overlooking the bountiful harvest of weeds. Obviously not the case for you! Your rabbits should be okay on that diet, especially since they are meat rabbits... but if they start to show any signs of deficiencies or if you are not getting decent growth rates from the fryers, you may need to think about supplements of one kind or another.


----------



## MaggieJ (Feb 6, 2006)

tmfinley said:


> I am starting to switch my rabbits over to alfalfa pellets (have to use pellets because the alfalfa hay around here is no good), and oats. I also supplement with grass hay and nice green weeds around the farm for yummy treats. I want to get away from the "rabbit chow" so I actually know what my animals and eventually I am eating. I use the alfalfa pellets, oats and grass hay to feed my goats and think it will work nice for the rabbits. I'm not showing them or anything, just for the table or food bowl. Any thoughts??
> 
> Tiffany


Tiffany, this is pretty much what I do with my rabbits too and so far it is working well. You may want to consider mixing in some wheat and barley if you can get it in small enough quantities... I am a great believer in providing variety, feeling it is good insurance against deficiencies. I found that the fryers even when fed greens, alfalfa and grass hay and mixed grains did not grow as quickly as on a "complete" rabbit pellet diet, so I did an bit of experimenting and found that by adding a small quantity of sunflower oil, blackstrap molasses and salt to their grain they seemed more satisfied and grew faster. I stress that this was my perception, unsupplemented by any facts and figures... but I certainly plan to do it with future fryers as well.


----------



## Terry W (Mar 10, 2006)

MaggieJ said:


> Terry, could you tell us more about the role of selenium in rabbit food?


Seleniumm is that all important mineral that large livestock people worry about because of 'white muscle disease' in newborn livestock. It is ALSO very importnant in maintaining mammalian fertility levels. Most areas of the country are pretty deficient-- here in Ohio, if there is no selenium in the processed feed, you can forget getting an animal pregnant or rebred as often as you would like. i don't have my physiology notes with me to tell me exactly all the little things selenium is important for-- but heck-- if they don't have emnough to go around-- carrying a pregnancy will be the last thing a body will use what it does have available for!

When I put my does and bucks together in December-- there was plenty of activity-- but no litters as a result. So now, with the copper uptake being bad on a couple, and the basically, total lack of reproduction, despite the attemps of the animals to breed (too much non commercial, local food?) my buns are getting minerals(salt) and as much of the natural light as I can manage-- iIstarted with "Harvest Salt" which had a very high Selenium level--( the block is grey) but the animals refused it. Moved on to a mineral block designed for cows-- the buns started nibbling on it. Yesterday, I picked up some Hiefer Shine- and that will go into a small, wired in cat food can for free choice. Heifer Shine is minerals/salt, DE, and Kelp.


----------



## minister man (Jan 14, 2007)

MaggieJ said:


> Tiffany, " so I did an bit of experimenting and found that by adding a small quantity of sunflower oil, blackstrap molasses and salt to their grain they seemed more satisfied and grew faster. I stress that this was my perception, unsupplemented by any facts and figures... but I certainly plan to do it with future fryers as well.


 What do you call small Quanities of Each? What type of Recipe did you come up with?

I hope it is OK to quote an author here. In " Rabbit Production" 6th edition
( Interstate publishing) pg 171 I think it was printed in 1982.

*" As competition between humans and animals for grains continues, alfalfa will become an increasingly important rabbit feed. Recent Studies at the OSU Rabbit Research Center have demonstrated good results with diets in which Alfalfa replaced all of the grain."*

That would sound to me like it might be possible. It also has three, formulas for mixing rations, but I don't know if it is alright to post them, where they are copy right.


----------



## MaggieJ (Feb 6, 2006)

minister man said:


> What do you call small Quanities of Each? What type of Recipe did you come up with?
> 
> I hope it is OK to quote an author here. In " Rabbit Production" 6th edition
> ( Interstate publishing) pg 171 I think it was printed in 1982.
> ...


My understanding is that it is okay to quote short passages as long as you give credit and as long as you are not making money off it. I believe it is referred to as "fair usage". But I am not a lawyer, so can't say for sure.

My recipe, such as it is, is to half-fill a five gallon bucket with mixed grains. Combine about 2-3 Tablespoons of sunflower oil, 2-3 Tablespoons of Blackstrap Molasses and 1 Tablespoon salt with a couple ounces of water in a cup and microwave for about 30 seconds, just until warm enough to mix easily. Stir well, then pour this over the grain and stir it in.

Please let me stress that this was an EXPERIMENT. It seemed to do the trick, but it was two litters only fed this way... and there are no statistics to provide backing for it. I did some reading about blackstrap and also about what vitamins and minerals rabbits need, but I think I can improve on this... hence all the "heavy reading" I posted about.


----------



## smwon (Aug 16, 2006)

This is an excellent thread... thanks y'all!


----------



## Terri (May 10, 2002)

MIL raised rabbits for many years, and she seemed very successful at it!

Her BREEDING stock and their unweaned babies got rabbit pellets.

Once they were weaned, she added grain and whatever. She knew the diet might not be perfect, but it was PRETTY good and those growing rabbits were intended for her table. 

She always gave rabbit pellets to her breeding stock, however. She wanted perfection for them, so they would live long and productive lives!


----------



## Bernadette (Jan 17, 2004)

The tag on my rabbit feed bag has a notation on it: This feed contains added selenium at 0.1 mg/kg. Same on the chickens, pigs, ducks. 

We live in areas where the soil is deficient in selenium - if it's not in the soil it won't/can't be in the grains you grow or the plants you feed. 

As Terry suggests, if you're not using a commercially prepared food that contains the required amount of selenium, a mineral supplement that contains it is about the only way to get selenium into the diet. The feed bags all also contain the warning that 'this feed should be used as the sole ration'. By providing too much other foods, you decrease the percentage of selenium consumed by your livestock.

When you read on other forums here when they are talking about giving shots of Bo-Se, or E-Sel, (or various other names for the same type of product) to youngsters that fail to thrive, the Se and Sel indicate selenium. In goats one of the symptoms of a selenium deficiency is very poor sucking ability - the tongue seems to be weak. (learned by experience after being given free baby goats from does that had not had their shot of E-Sel, and me learning about this problem/condition _after_ losing the baby goats).


----------



## white eagle (Feb 8, 2007)

All I'm saying I don't use just pellets here I use different grain mixture like what I feed my goats, calf manna, BOSS, give grass hay, add sometimes some goat loose minerals for my rabbits as a topper. Now the mixture you see here is for all of my does. 
Now on my bucks I feed them pellets, grass hay, sometimes very little BOSS. 

Good Luck on your rabbits.


----------

