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Growing rabbits for meat or fur, their owners try to pick up the animals as much as possible a balanced nutritious diet, but when using natural "live" feeds do this quite difficult. Mixed fodder for rabbits, taking into account the age and breed characteristics of animals, helps to control consumption and ensures rapid productive growth.
Supporters of natural nutrition using fresh grass, hay, cereals and vegetables are many. But how to maintain such a diet in the cold season? As in the conditions of the infield, without a free grazing, to provide pets with everything necessary for good quality of wool and fast weight gain?
In this case, a ready-made or made-for-yourself compound feed for rabbits is the best solution!
Read how to properly prepare a rabbit at home!
Benefits of using mixed fodders for rabbits
Mixtures representing a complete, balanced diet include all the nutrients necessary for the growth and development of the animal. Among the ready-made compounds there are both universal, on which it is possible to build a menu of rabbits of all ages, and specialized, intended to meet the needs of animals in a certain period of life, for example, for the growth of young animals or for waiting offspring of females.
If necessary, mixed fodders for rabbits are changed or supplemented with vitamin and mineral supplements from the calculation of the required consumption, in parallel they give hay and juicy feed.
At the same time dry type of feeding has several weighty advantages. It not only helps to optimize the diet of animals for the content of proteins, fats, vitamins, fiber and other food components, but also:
- greatly simplifies the procedure of feeding;
- saves time on maintenance of livestock;
- helps to quickly calculate the daily rate when feeding rabbits with compound feed;
- allows to reduce the volumes of feeds stored and stored in the farm;
- provides fast fattening;
- reduces the risk of developing intestinal infections due to eating by animals of poor-quality stale or mold-affected fodder.
Although the price of mixed fodders for rabbits is higher than the cost of self-harvested fresh fodder, but with a large number of livestock, and Also off-season, when root crops and herbs in sufficient quantity are inaccessible, the combined mixtures will help even seriously save.
Composition of mixed fodders for rabbits
Today, trade offers a lot of options for ready-mixed feed mixtures with different composition, food and energy value. How to choose the best option? What is the best feed for rabbits?
In nature, the basis of the ration of animals is grass, cereals, roots and all sorts of fruits. Therefore, it is the vegetable raw materials that make up the basis of specialized mixed fodders for rabbits of meat and fur breeds grown in private households and farms.
Cereals, including corn, oats, wheat and barley, in crushed form make up 30 to 45% of the volume of the finished product. And the greatest need for this component of the feed is experienced by young, actively growing animals and the uterine livestock of females. In addition to grain, the composition of feed for rabbits includes rich in protein bran, oil cake and meal, meat-bone or fish meal, yeast. The volume of herbal flour, if the animals do not receive a sufficient amount of hay, vitamin-grass meal, can account for up to 50% of the total number of ingredients from which feed is prepared.
Do not forget about the mineral and vitamin composition of the product. Especially important is the rational intake of calcium, which is indispensable in the construction of the bone system, and phosphorus.
If rabbits on the farm get mixed fodder, it is extremely important to provide the animals with fresh and clean drinking water. Its deficit threatens to violate the water-salt balance, depletion, and the development of diseases of the digestive sphere and even the death of animals.
The composition of mixed fodders for rabbits, offered by industrial manufacturers, provides for the presence of all the most important components for the growth of animal components, as evidenced by the appropriate formulation. Selection of a concrete mixture is carried out taking into account the age of the animals, from the condition, the breed and the conditions of detention.
Granulated concentrates are easy to handle and can easily mix with the usual feed compositions based on grain, grass and hay. The food is fed into the feeders.
Fodder for rabbits
In order not to overpay for finished feed, owners of rabbit farms and farms can master the production of mixed fodders for rabbits with their own hands. This is cheaper, in addition, it allows you to more accurately choose the composition of the product to the taste and needs of furry pets.
For production oriented to large livestock, it will be necessary to stock up not only all components of the future mixed fodder, but also some equipment for harvesting, drying and grinding the grass, crushing grain, mixing and production of granules.
In the production of mixed fodders for rabbits, they adhere to the composition and proportions indicated in the recipe. In this case, all the ingredients of plant origin must be thoroughly cleaned from foreign inclusions and dried.
Vitamin-herb flour is made on the basis of wild grasses, tops of garden plants, foliage harvested from fruit bushes and deciduous trees. To give the fodder mixture the necessary elasticity and viscosity, warm water is introduced into the compound feed for rabbits. The feed mixed before the consistency of a thick dough is passed through a household meat grinder or special extruder, after which it is dried.
To store well-dried granules can be in a dry, ventilated room at room temperature, regularly checking the quality of the product.
The daily norm when feeding rabbits with compound feed
Contained on succulent fodder rabbits can up to 80 times a day to approach the trough. In mixed fodder, the nutritional value is dramatically higher, so the animals quickly saturate and grow well. How much feed is eaten by a rabbit per day?
The amount of feed necessary for the animal depends on the composition of the product, the age and size of the rabbit, and also on the sex and season of the year. During the cold period, during pregnancy, feeding and active growth, the daily norm when feeding rabbits with compound feed increases.
The adult feeders are replenished 2-3 times a day, and rabbits are fed fractions more often, up to 5-6 times a day.
If the rabbit breeder uses a mixed type of feeding, giving, in addition to the combined mixtures, hay and juicy feed, then in the morning the animals pour half the norm of mixed fodder, in the daytime the livestock receives natural products, and in the evening the second half gets into the feeders mixture.
