Tree hay—dried?

I had an overladen apple tree branch break. Bad orchard mom for not preventing it!

However, I’m obviously, not going to let that go to waste! I stripped off all the green apples to make pectin with, and the main branch will get chipped up to smoke meat later this year. The smaller branches, though, are a favorite with my rabbits. For those of you that feed “tree hay”, do you dry them with leaves and all, and feed that? Or do you do green small branches and leaves only? If it’s the latter, I’ll probably strip the leaves, use those as mulch somewhere, and then just feed the branch parts later in the year as chew sticks.

Had you thought of propping the branch up with a bit of wood?

We were gone for a week when it happened. I have since propped all the other branches! We are going to have a great apple crop this year.

Personally, I would chop the branch into small chunks and quick-dry the whole lot, leaves and all. A hot car in the sun is a fabulous dehydrator. Let your bunnies decide what they want to eat. Animals are smart.

A possible source of wood for a smoker.

i use both dry and green, sometimes they seem to prefer one fresh to dry or vice versa, just the same way that sometimes they eat a certain plant and later turn up their noses (lately, pigeon peas, though I've seen them eat that foliage before). But I don't have a winter that I need dry hay for, or space to store dry forage, so I tend to just feed most things green.