# Rabbits eating coconut and dried cotton leaves?



## sarmour (Aug 29, 2013)

Okay, I know this is WAY outside most growers experience here....but since I don't fit the "norm" either...here it goes:

I read a scientific study from India on feeding NZ rabbits fresh ground-up coconut and pressed, dried cotton leaves as primary feed. Apparently they did well and growth rates were almost equal to regular pellet feed.

Does anyone have further info or experience with this? 

We have lots of coconuts going to waste (price is not worth serious harvesting) and can easily get dried, pressed cotton leaves used for cattle/sheep feed here. A quick calculation showed that it would cost me less than half to do things that way...if it works.

Anyone have comments or contacts info?


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## redneckswife (May 2, 2013)

Interesting...posting so I can view the responses in my replies.

I've never heard of this.


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## homstdr74 (Jul 4, 2011)

sarmour said:


> Okay, I know this is WAY outside most growers experience here....but since I don't fit the "norm" either...here it goes:
> 
> I read a scientific study from India on feeding NZ rabbits fresh ground-up coconut and pressed, dried cotton leaves as primary feed. Apparently they did well and growth rates were almost equal to regular pellet feed.
> 
> ...


 
I'd check to see if they sprayed the cotton plants and if so with what before I fed it to any livestock.


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

If they're feeding cotton leaves to sheep and cattle it would probably be safe for rabbits. 

I've never heard of that diet either but then not a lot of coconuts growing in Ohio.

I will have to keep the cotton leaves in mind though. I found a source for cotton seeds and was going to plant some next year.


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## Tinga (Jul 24, 2011)

I think I saw some data in Rabbit Production about feeding rabbits in different countries.

Lemme see if this copies over correctly:

Table 21.1. Composition of selected tropical feedstuffs (wet weight or âas fedâ basis1)
Feedstuff Dry Matter (%) Crude Protein (%) Crude Fiber (%)
Arachis hypogaea (peanut)
-fresh forage 37 4.4 8.6
-hay 91 10.6 23.7
-seeds with shells 93 22.0 19.6
-seeds without shells 95 28.4 2.8
Artocarpus heterophyllus (jack fruit)
-fresh leaves 16 2.0 3.2
Brachiaria decumbens 17 1.8 6.0
Cajanus cajan (pigeon pea)
-fresh forage 23 5.0 6.5
-seeds 86 18.9 7.6
Cenchrus ciliaris (buffel grass) 20 2.2 6.4
Centrosema pubescens
(butterfly pea)
-fresh forage 20 4.6 6.2
Chloris gayana (Rhodes grass) 20 2.0 6.4
Coconut meal (copra) 88 22.7 12.3
Desmodium intortum (tick clover) 17 2.8 5.0
Digitaria decumbens
Dolichos lablab
Gliricidia sepium
Ipomoea batatas (sweet potato) 18 2.0 5.8
-tubers 19 4.9 4.9
-foliage 25 6.4 3.3
Leucaena leucocephala
Manihot spp. (cassava)
-tubers 31 1.7 1.3
-foliage 22 2.8 5.9
Melinus minutiflora (molasses grass) 29 6.5 4.2
-fresh forage
Musa spp. (banana)
-fresh fruit 35 1.6 1.3
-skins (peelings) 26 5.2 5.5
-leaves 33 1.4 12.9
24 1.1 0.5
Oryza sativa (rice)
-rice bran 16 1.0 1.6
-rice hulls 16 1.0 3.8
Panicum maximum (guinea grass) 86 11.9 10.0
Pennisetum purpureum (napier
grass, elephant grass)
86 3.3 37.2
Pueraria phaseoloides
(tropical kudzu)
24 2.1 8.0
Saccharum officinarum
(sugarcane)
Sesbania grandiflora 17 4.3 3.0
Setaria sphacelata 20 1.9 6.3
Stylosanthes guianesis 24 3.7 7.5
Tripsacum laxum (Guatemala grass) 27 1.7 8.9


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## SherryB (Oct 10, 2012)

I live in cotton country and there are two mills in neighboring States that make rabbit pellets. I am told that cotton seed hulls are used as a roughage ingedient. So I am not surprised that cotton leaves are a possible food source.


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## KSALguy (Feb 14, 2006)

in other countries where Pellets are not the norm then all kinds of natural food is used, I think its a great idea and when I had my colony going I kept the majority of their diet as natural as possible, they did get some grain and poultry crumble as they were in with the chickens but the BULK of their diet was fresh cut grass, weeds, Kudzu and what ever else I found growing that was safe to eat. 

in the Tropics I would also use Banana leaves and some of the Palm leaves too. there is green foliage in the Tropics all year long so there should be PLEANTY of free forage to use.


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## sarmour (Aug 29, 2013)

Thanks for the responses so far. We have bananas too, but my bunnies are not real keen on banana stuff so far. Maybe they're just not hungry enough, but...

As homstdr74 mentioned, I'm just concerned about any and all the toxins the cotton might contain. Feeding it to animals here might not mean it isn't loaded with toxic junk! Does anyone know of the types of stuff normally used on cotton to keep the bugs away?

BTW, I did break up some coconut in the husks and tossed the pieces into most of the cages during the day to see what happened. Though a few chewed on it then, most left it for "night entertainment" and almost all was gone by the next morning. Definitely a good sign!

Also, we mixed a bit with some oats I had been reserving for nursing does and it was like giving cake and icecream to a kid! Next is to mix it with regular pellets and see what's left over.

I need to borrow a few kilo's of the cotton instead of buying a huge bag of it just for a test, so should have something more to report in a day or two. In the meantime, I'll look for the link to that article from India to post here.


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## sarmour (Aug 29, 2013)

Here's a bit of info from this link: http://www.feedipedia.org/node/46

It's not from the scientific pub I read before though:

Rabbits

Copra meal and coconut fibre are used in rabbit diets (Ravindran et al., 1986b; Hosein et al., 2010). Both products provide high level of fibre which is valuable for rabbits (Haponik et al., 2009). While the level and quality of protein in copra meal protein are lower than those of soybean meal, copra meal may be a valuable and economical protein source for rabbits in areas where soybean meal is expensive (Haponik et al., 2009). Copra meal is also a good source of energy for rabbits and its gross energy crude protein and oil are quite digestible (Souza et al., 2009). Copra meal can have a positive effect on rabbit meat quality: at 25% inclusion, copra meal lowers the palmitic acid content of rabbit meat without significantly affecting other fatty acids and may thus have an hypocholesterolaemic effect in humans (Souza et al., 2009).​
Just to clarify things, this coconut is fresh, scrapped out from mature nuts, so is not rancid or dried. The cotton leaves are heat dried and pressed into "cakes" so we have to grind it all up to use it. Since I have a chopper for cane and elephant grass and for grinding up whole grain corn and other things, the whole mess couild be fairly easily done every couple of days. Hardest part is husking the coconuts...but I have a worker that does that very fast!


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## homstdr74 (Jul 4, 2011)

sarmour said:


> Thanks for the responses so far. We have bananas too, but my bunnies are not real keen on banana stuff so far. Maybe they're just not hungry enough, but...
> 
> As homstdr74 mentioned, I'm just concerned about any and all the toxins the cotton might contain. Feeding it to animals here might not mean it isn't loaded with toxic junk! *Does anyone know of the types of stuff normally used on cotton to keep the bugs away?*
> 
> ...


In years past I was around the agricultural industry enough to know that they defoliate cotton in order to use mechanical pickers; at least that's the case in the U.S. They use something on the order of Agent Orange (2,4,5-T or D) for that. Of course defoliation means that the leaves have fallen from the plant, so how likely is it that they have done that and then somehow raked up the leaves to sell? If the plants are hand-picked, there's no real reason to defoliate them unless it would be that it is easier for the pickers to find the boll. 

As for bugs, if I remember correctly it was mostly Malathion that was used for spray, although they might have occasionally used Parathion if the insect infestation had become too severe. Both of those are nerve gas agents (Parathion being a derivative of the gas used in WWII Death Camps). This was all a long time ago, though; however, none of that stuff, including the "new stuff" is any good for living tissue. 

I'd still check with the producers to find out what they are using, because it's a sure bet they are using something.


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## sarmour (Aug 29, 2013)

Here's a long article with a long list of good feed info from around the world (bottom of long page):

http://www.fao.org/docrep/t1690e/t1690e04.htm


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## sarmour (Aug 29, 2013)

homstdr74 said:


> In years past I was around the agricultural industry enough to know that they defoliate cotton in order to use mechanical pickers; at least that's the case in the U.S. They use something on the order of Agent Orange (2,4,5-T or D) for that. Of course defoliation means that the leaves have fallen from the plant, so how likely is it that they have done that and then somehow raked up the leaves to sell? If the plants are hand-picked, there's no real reason to defoliate them unless it would be that it is easier for the pickers to find the boll.
> 
> As for bugs, if I remember correctly it was mostly Malathion that was used for spray, although they might have occasionally used Parathion if the insect infestation had become too severe. Both of those are nerve gas agents (Parathion being a derivative of the gas used in WWII Death Camps). This was all a long time ago, though; however, none of that stuff, including the "new stuff" is any good for living tissue.
> 
> I'd still check with the producers to find out what they are using, because it's a sure bet they are using something.


Yikes! That info certainly feeds the kind of fears I have on using cotton byproducts! 

Hmmmm. I certainly will need to find out what they're using and how those "cottonleaf cake" materials are treated BEFORE processing.

Until I know more about that, it looks like the coconut is a safe-use feed when mixed with other safe things. That alone is useful info to us.

Thanks for the input.


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## SherryB (Oct 10, 2012)

Ksa, so you can feed kudzu to rabbits? My gosh there is tons of free feed for all of us to feed our rabbits.


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## KSALguy (Feb 14, 2006)

Kudzu is high in protein like Alfalfa, I would drive down the road and find a good clean easy patch and fill the back seat of my car lol, they would mob it when I put it into the colony, I have fed it to my Guinea Pigs too, apparently its pretty good lol, 

when I was in the Philippines we went to a Goat farm where all the goats were kept up in raised barns off the ground with floor grates to let the droppings through, they were fed green chopped sugar cane, I would think that the rabbits would eat it too, the green tops anyway, that would be good to feed, so would Elephant grass I think, there are LOTS of free green feed available you just have to collect it,


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

sarmour, thanks for that link. 

Last summer my garden was filled with amaranth (so was Mom's). Good to know it can be used for rabbit feed.


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