bread

[smalltimer]

is it ok to feed my kits after i have weened them a bit of bread or is this wrong

 

[hoodat]

Like so many other things in diet it depends. never feed fresh bread. It balls up in the intestines and isn't easily digested. Whole wheat (the real thing not the phoney baloney kind you get in most stores) is better than white. I bake my own whole wheat bread and always give the hard crusts to the rabbits. They love the crunch and it helps keep the teeth worn down. When they have enough they throw it around and make a toy out of it. I also sometimes bake "rabbit bread". Half whole wheat flour and the other half mixed whole wheat grains and barley. I slice and dry it and it comes out hard as a rock. My rabbits love it and it adds the essential grain to my mostly natural greens diet.
I would be cautious around newly weaned youngsters. It may take them awhile to build up the necessary intestinal bacteria to handle it. try only tiny amounts till you're sure they do OK on it.

 

[terri9630]

Like so many other things in diet it depends. never feed fresh bread. It balls up in the intestines and isn't easily digested. Whole wheat (the real thing not the phoney baloney kind you get in most stores) is better than white. I bake my own whole wheat bread and always give the hard crusts to the rabbits. They love the crunch and it helps keep the teeth worn down. When they have enough they throw it around and make a toy out of it. I also sometimes bake "rabbit bread". Half whole wheat flour and the other half mixed whole wheat grains and barley. I slice and dry it and it comes out hard as a rock. My rabbits love it and it adds the essential grain to my mostly natural greens diet.
I would be cautious around newly weaned youngsters. It may take them awhile to build up the necessary intestinal bacteria to handle it. try only tiny amounts till you're sure they do OK on it.

The bread would be dissolved by stomach acid before it ever hit the intestines, wouldn't it? It falls apart in water so I don't see how it could ball up unless the rabbit was dehydrated.

 

[hoodat]

Once again it depends on the bread. All breads are not equal. Some of the white breads when fresh can be rolled up into a dough that will make a hard ball. Hard bread won't ball up. A rabbits intestines don't work like most herbivores where the food goes through smoothly as a mass. The motion of rabbit intestines rolls all food into round balls. When you butcher you see that effect. The food in the intestines almost looks like a string of beads.