Breeding rabbits at home, even for beginners, can be a good small business. Let him not bring big money right away, but the income will become constant. Rabbits are valued for their skin and meat, and breeding them is quite simple. The main thing when raising animals is their diet. It depends on the quality of the meat and the appearance of a healthy appearance of fur. Feeding rabbits at home includes basic recommendations and tips. In the future, you yourself will be able to learn how to combine certain diet options.
So what should a rabbit eat? How to feed him properly, and what should be included in his diet? The following tips will help novice breeders avoid critical breeding rabbits. You need to start with vegetable feed, grain, hay and other common combinations.
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Features of the rabbit
[sc name = "info-dashed" text = "Choosing food for rabbits follows from the characteristics of their digestive system. These animals have rather weak muscles of the stomach. But at the same time, they need to constantly fill it with water and food in sufficient quantities. Then it enters the small intestine, where the cleavage process takes place. Only then do important amino acids and sugar enter the bloodstream and spread throughout the animal’s body. ”]
This structure of the gastrointestinal tract requires constant feeding. Animals may require up to 60 meals per day.
Therefore, it is important to ensure that rabbitry always has enough food for a healthy diet and that there is always fresh water. Otherwise, the animals will starve and stop receiving the necessary substances in the required amount, which will lead to their illness. In feeding rabbits at home, beginners should consider this aspect!
Another, though not entirely pleasant, feature of the eared is that they can eat their own waste. This property is called - coprophagy.
Eating their waste, rabbits get vitamin B. Animals can get this substance only from their litter. This is due to the fact that due to the rapid digestion of food, not all nutrients have time to enter the body, but leave along with the bowel movements. Most of all is rich in vitamins of night litter.
If rabbits are deprived of the opportunity to eat them, then the beast will begin to hurt, lag behind in development. It should be remembered that overfeeding is also unacceptable. In this case, the rabbits will eat up so that they lose interest in the litter, and this will also affect their health badly.
- For those who also keep chickens, it will be interesting what to do if chickens carry small eggs.
Video about feeding rabbits:
What foods to choose for rabbits
In fact, feeding rabbits at home for beginners is not a difficult task. The presented animals are unpretentious, although very often sick. With a properly designed diet, this negative factor can be eliminated. Choosing food for animals follows from the current season.
In warm time, the best option for feeding will be green food:
- fresh grass, wild;
- young tree shoots;
- fresh green leaves.
Such food is useful for the body of rabbits, in addition, feeding becomes less costly. When choosing grass for a diet, it is worth paying attention to wild-growing varieties. It can be clover and wormwood, yarrow or nettle.You can also add Ivan tea, a shepherd’s bag or plantain to the diet. Rabbits will not refuse horse sorrel and burdock. These herbs can easily be collected independently without spending money on food.
[sc name = "info-attention" text = "In small quantities, you can add bean herbs to the diet, as well as vegetable tops, such as beets or rhubarb. You should not add a lot of cabbage leaves to your diet, remembering the features of the digestive system. ”]
Individual characteristics
Each rabbit has its own preferences. Some may like dandelions more, while others may love colza. But this does not mean that their food should be monotonous.
It is important to feed animals with different types of herbs daily, despite their priorities. Only in this way the rabbit body will receive all the necessary substances for health and proper development. You can conduct separate nutrition, that is, alternate herbs or make mixtures of several species simultaneously in equal proportions.
At home, hay is often used as feed. It is important to choose only high-quality raw materials, hay should be soft and leafy. It contains minerals and vitamins necessary for rabbits.
Incredibly many manuals have been written on how to feed rabbits at home for beginners, and what are the best diet variations to use. Animals are very demanding on the quality of feed. Some foreign additives can adversely affect the condition of pets. What else can be added to rabbits in food:
- Animals are very fond of juicy food: peels from watermelon or melon, zucchini, carrots and beets. These products can be safely added to food.
- Rabbits will like fish or meat meal as small treats.
- Cake, bran and mixed feed can also be added in small quantities to the diet.
- Feed animals with cereals and legumes should be rare and very small.
In the diet of rabbits, you can safely introduce mixed feeds, especially in the winter, when it becomes stressful with fresh herbs. Poultry feed should be categorically excluded from the diet. From acceptable feed for consumption, animals receive in sufficient quantities the necessary protein and other useful minerals.
[sc name = "info-hand" text = "Do not give animals sweet. Simple carbohydrates found in sweets or other sweets can seriously harm your health. Not many farmers offer their pets the categories of products with a high content of sweets, this applies primarily to sugar beets. ”]
Features of feeding by season
Video tutorials on how to feed rabbits at home for beginners are designed specifically as visual aids. With their help, you can create a suitable diet for your animals. By strictly following the recommendations, it will be possible to develop an individual type of food for pets.
With the change of seasons, the diet also changes:
- Spring is the main diet of green food.
- Summer - herbs and fresh vegetables, as well as tops.
- Autumn - the remaining vegetables and the introduction of animal feed. You can feed rabbits in the fall at home not only with vegetables, but also add compound feeds so that they do not lose strength in the cold.
- Winter - roughage: straw and hay, grains of cereal crops harvested from summer, mixed fodders.
It is important to know for beginners! In winter, it is especially important to monitor the healthy nutrition of rabbits. It is better during this period to make mixers from various types of food.
And in order for animals to receive the necessary nutrients in winter, occasionally fresh branches of conifers can be added to the diet.
Important Tips for Beginners
To grow healthy rabbits, you should remember professional advice for feeding them. Professionals professionally involved in animal breeding at home offer newcomers in this business to buy only a few individuals. As you familiarize yourself with the nutrition and care of rabbits, you can expand your livestock.
If you feed animals with a mash or vegetables, you must ensure that the feeders remain clean. If half an hour after serving the food, the rabbits left food, then it should be thrown out and the feeders washed. For the next feeding, you can give a portion of a smaller volume. Thus, the required amount of food for animals is determined, which will help them get enough, but there will not be excess.
It is important to follow the rabbit feeding schedule. In this case, the animals will get used to the time of feeding. They will not pounce on food, which will allow the feed to be better absorbed. The gastrointestinal tract in these animals is rather weak and very often becomes the cause of the development of diseases - it is important for beginners to know this.
In fact, rabbits among all domestic animals have the largest list of diseases.
Any new type of nutrition should be introduced gradually, monitoring the reaction of animals. Beginner farmers who do not know how to feed decorative rabbits at home are advised to purchase ready-made feeds, vegetables and fruits. This will be the optimal diet.
Fattening animals
About how to feed little rabbits at home, a lot of information was given for beginners. Further, we will talk about large animals that you are preparing for slaughter. There are several secrets that will allow you to achieve maximum mass. You can feed animals for meat at any age, starting from three months. For fattening rabbits at home, 1 month is enough, with proper nutrition.
Proper fattening takes place according to the following principle:
- Food in the first 10 days after the start of fattening consists of 50% of concentrated feed.
- After 10 days of feeding, nutritious foods are introduced into the diet: oats and bran, peas or corn. These foods allow animals to store fat.
- It is important to minimize the amount of hay and completely eliminate root crops from food.
[sc name = "info" text = "The maximum influx of food is left for the last 10 days of the feeding period. Here, any products other than hay, as well as succulent and roughage, are suitable. On the Internet you can find a video on the topic of feeding rabbits at home for beginners, where you can study everything in detail. ”]
When feeding rabbits at home, it is best to put the rabbits in solitary cages. At this time, rabbitry should be darkened. This step is due to the fact that these animals prefer nocturnal food over daytime. Therefore, daylight hours for the period of feeding can be artificially reduced to 7-8 hours. For a month of such nutrition, rabbits become sedentary and well-fed. Their skin acquires the necessary gloss and softness.
Rabbit breeding video:
