Growing Rabbit food

Hello, I am collecting and providing a Rare heritage breed of White and Blue Beveren Rabbits for myself and the surrounding community of interest.  I am also a failed small farmer in a small pond full of big fishfarmers who i now work for, so next year I am devoting my energy to growing and educating others on self subsistence food staples, and would like to focus some on growing food for my rabbits too!

If you have plant recommendations or recipes for complete Rabbit nutrition, I'd love to hear.
I keep my rabbits in tractors tht I have perfected to the point that a Rat got in once and couldnt get out.

Thank you permies, see you in Portland on the 15th
Russell

Hello Russell,
Would you mind sharing info on your rabbit tractor system? I raise rabbits as well. I feed them a wide variety of fresh plants along with pellets for the time being. My goal is to get them off of pellets completely.
Sue

I have been supplementing my rabbits diet with the lambsquarter that comes up everywhere in my yard. I also feed them lots of the bermuda grass that is trying to take over my garden beds. There are weeds for feed and feeding rabbits naturally threads on the Homesteading Today Rabbit forum. Hope this helps.

I would also like to know more about your rabbit tractors. The only one I have been around resulted in wild New Zealand White rabbits.

Also see this thread https://permies.com/permaculture-forums/9966_0/critter-care/home-grown-rabbit-feed
There are some great links there.

yea Ruso! I would love to see more info on your tractors as well. could we convince you to share pictures or video?

I am also trying to learn more about how to move away from pellets. The knowledge is out there! i know it is. I just haven't been able to find it. So as you can see in the other thread, i'm trying to get my rabbits to tell me. We'll see how it goes

It seems to me that 0-40% fresh greens is pretty safe no matter what (non-poisonous) greens you feed them because you have the pellets to back you up. as we really start to ween off the pellets (and save money/increase sustainability) the rabbits health is depending more and more on our ability to choose a balanced diet for them. I am yet to have an unintentional mortality. I'd be pretty upset with myself if a doe gave a stillborn litter because i fed them poorly.

These are some must see's for pellet free rabit feeding: The garden tower project .com in Austin Tx, Moringa tree's are amazing, Duckweed, I personally grow their food in my aquaponic system, grass/weeds, but when bread I buy extra organic pellets, whole oats, and alfalfa.

After learning about Teff and Millet on this forum I will try that as well

cheers

Everything that has been mentioned so far is good. I'd suggest reading up on hydro fodder and/or sprouts. It is basically taking grain and turning it into a much better feed with a bit of work. It is also very conservative on space. I can raise enough fodder for 12 adult rabbits in 2 square feet of space.

Rabbittalk.com is a good place to get information, a lot of people feed naturally over there.

The food pyramid for rabbits has 3 levels. The bottom level is high fiber hay, free choice, all the time. The next level is fresh greens, high in vitamins and protein. The top level are snacks, like grains, roots, and other high energy carbs.

Here is an article I found recently about feeding fodder to rabbits: http://hydroponics.com.au/free-articles/issue114-rabbits-rabbits-everywhere-rabbits/