Local Feeds For Rabbit You Can Easily Get in Nigeria

      

Local Feeds For Rabbit You Can Easily Get in Nigeria

There are so many awesome reasons why people keep rabbit at home, I have domesticate rabbit at home for almost 5years, and it was a total awesome experience for me, one of the interesting part of the farming experience of home based rabbit is that they feed on wide varieties of feeds, both concentrate processed feeds, crops and cereals, tubers, kitchen waste and green vegetables.

Rabbit been a monogastric animal can eat anything that will benefits its body system and that will not affect the make-up of its body system and most especially its digestive system.

Bunny Eating Popcorn

Rabbit Eating Raspberry

 

Rabbit can be very good at breeding and resistance to disease but their whole live is based on the quality of what they eat; so you are to feed them based on the purpose why you have kept them.

In Nigeria today, people basically keep rabbit at home for the purpose of – Pets, Raising for breeding, commercial, laboratory use, and atheistic purposes.

Another interesting part of rabbit farming is that you as a farmer or a breeder as the case maybe; you don’t have to worry and struggle yourself on their feeding since their feed can easily be gotten around you, have been raising rabbit since my early days in the secondary school and the experience has been awesome, even when I have them in 20 and above, feeding was never a problem so in view of this I have choosen to list some of the local but healthy feeds you will easily get for your rabbit in Nigeria.

Actually, there are maintenance and production ration, that will be determine by you and your motive of raising them.

Lists of Local Feeds You can Easily Get For Your Rabbit in Nigeria

1. Green Vegetables; there are so many vegetable and leafy plants that rabbit feeds on and you can get them at your home garden, farm fields or in the close vegetation, some of them are Tridax Procumbens, Water leaf, guinea grass, elephant grass, potato leaf, the human edible vegetables,  



2. Tubers : Almost all human edible tubers are also Consumable for rabbits, talk about yam, cassava, cocoyam, potatoes and as many as you can eat yourself, yeah you might not want to give them the tuber but those that have been peeled can be administer to them, not always but periodically, they love eating it and it thus, help their growth.

3. Cereals : This is the best kind of production ration diet for growing rabbit and for the ones you want to fatten cereals, enhance rabbit growth and grant them speed in their development, since it contains quality fibre and nutrient like carbohydrates and some protein like wheat, actually continuous feeding of cereal to rabbit can cause an in-built of fat which might not be too good especially for those females and does that are pregnant, but its okay to feed them to the small ones that are still growing up, it quickening their growth,some other farmers that doesn't have access to he original rabbit pellet (rabbit concentrate feeds are processed into pellet form to make it easy for the animal to pick and eat), uses poultry feeds like broiler and layers concentrate, but make sure you mix it with a little water to moisture the feed in order to avoid dust entrance to the nostril of the rabbit which can lead to come nasal disorder.


3. Fruits and Vegetables : Even an average home kid knows that rabbit loves carrot, however carrot is not the only fruits that rabbit love,

      

 there are so many of them like - water melon, raspberry, lettuces, timothy grass, cucumber, amongst others, feeding rabbit with vegetable is okay but fruits are not to be fed to them often as they can develop an high sugar level and it will affect their system and health, rabbit survival largely depends on their diet and feeds.

4. Hay and Grasses : Research made us to understand that this is the major and best feed for rabbit, due to their kind of stomach compartment, rabbit under what we coprophagy and this is the act whereby after eating a particular feed, the stomach can not digest it fully, so it comes out as feaces and the animal re-consume it, this is like regurgitation in ruminant, however it comes out in this case and the animal consumes it again, and then it is fully digested and nutrient is absolved, this is important in the feeding system of a rabbit so that the stomach compartment and organs can function well, when you feed them with too much soft and non fibre feeds, this reaction will not occur and it might cause some deficiency in the animal system, some times in 2012, while i was running a corn farm, after harvesting the corn, i do give my rabbits the chaff and husk, they eat it well and they are always big and healthy.
Most of the high fibre feeds are good for them like Corn bran, wheat bran, rice bran,

5. Kitchen Wastes :  I must stress the fact that; not every kitchen waste is consumeable by rabbit; don't go and feed them with junks that will predispose them to hazards like sicknesses and disease, when i  use the word "kitchen waste" in this context, i mean foods like rice, beans, yam, and some other edible food that you as a human consume just the leftover can be given to your rabbit, they eat it and it makes them do well, so pretty well. 
I believe you have learnt some new ideas on feeding your rabbit easily in Nigeria?
Please share with friends anad add your own by using the comment space below.