Monday, October 26, 2009

Growing Your Own Fresh Greens

"Does growing your own vegetables save you money?" Some of the up front costs may offset any savings you get from growing your vegetables for your rabbits. However, I personally like knowing where my vegetables come from and what goes into growing them. Just like it's nice to see a foster rabbit blossom to trust humans and expose their real personalities, it's nice to grow something from a seed or a small plant.

So what plants are easy to grow? Lettuce, basil, and parsley. These are very hardy plants, can withstand a late season frost, and rabbits love them!

Lettuce:
I started 24 lettuce plants half way through July in these,
Once they got large enough (4 weeks) to withstand transplanting we put 6 in a large pot and 4 out in the garden. The 6 in the large pot exploded and produced well. The 4 out in the garden did well at first. They did best in large pots. I am poor at protecting them in our garden with a fence. I had 4 lettuce plants get chewed to nubs out in the garden because of my fence. Turns out wild rabbits and deer find the taste of lettuce irresistible. Next year we will grow them closer to the house and properly protected.
6 good lettuce plants helped curb some of the costs, but they didn't feed 3 rabbits every day. We still had to buy some lettuce. Next season we are hoping to have 12-16 lettuce plants in two plantings. One in the early spring, and one mid-summer. I think this number should be able to feed 2-3 rabbits.

Parsley:
We planted 5 parsley plants this season. 1 was started as a seed and 4 were plants when I bought them. The plants I put in the garden were eaten by wild animals. 2 of the potted plants are still going strong indoors now. Parsley is easy to grow. Our rabbits love parsley. Next year we are going to plant a few more plants for the rabbits. 5 parsley plus lettuce and basil will be sufficient.
Basil:
We bought 3 basil plants this year. To say these plants did well is an understatement. The plants were 3 feet tall and we did everything we could to feed the rabbits a lot of basil to keep up with how fast they grew. Wild animals didn't eat the basil. The perfect plant!
It was nice to have a rabbit with less discriminating tastes. Our foster rabbit Buddy is not picky about his food, so any small parts of these plants that were dying or falling off, he ate. This made pruning the plants easy. I don't put any weed killer on my lawn either so I get a lot of dandelions and he loved those as well.

Friday, October 23, 2009

What is a "binky?"

The Definition of the "Bunny 500"

Food!

Some rabbits love food more than others. Rescued rabbits tend to devour food quickly if they were poorly treated prior to relinquishment. This is our foster rabbit Buddy. He loves food!

Thrifty Rabbit Toys

Taking my heritage into account, I try to find toys that are cheap. I also enjoy finding toys rabbits like to play with and use frequently. In the short time I have had rabbits I have learned that the easiest way to keep them interested is to rotate their toys. Here are some of the toys I have found that rabbits LOVE!
Rabbits love paper towel tubesPut a treat in these and rabbits will throw it around trying to get to them!


These tubes can be found at most home improvement stores for $5-6 and depending on how you house a rabbit they will use it every time to go into a room.Oatmeal containers are great to put a quarter of an apple in and stuff with newspaper. It occupies a rabbit for 15 minutes.
Binkybunny.com sells a "Maze Haven" that rabbits love! It is safe for them to chew on and a good place to hide when the vacuum is turned on. :) They can be found here,