I am raising rabbits for meat in my vertical rabbit farm. Now I want to make the pellet feed totally free by going out into nature (and growing my own) and gathering tons of grass, drying it, making it into powder and from powder to then pellets. If possible I also want to add some estradiol or other growth promoters to the feed to increase weight gain in my rabbits
Why not just feed the rabbits the grasses and weeds I find outside? I have already been doing this but it is horribly inefficient because rabbits are very selective eaters. They eat their own poop but not grass that has fallen on the ground
I have tried blending dried grass in a normal blender but it just doesn't work right, only small amounts of grass like 50 grams at most can be blended at one time, and it takes time and is incredibly noisy and hard on the blender motor. Wet grass is totally impossible to blend with a normal blender
So now I am thinking I need a food processor to make dried grass into powder, and from there I would need to figure out a way to make pellets out of the powder
Any tips?
That's a big bunny
do they really get that big? holy fuicking hell. imagine if they decided to takeover the world.
also. they would make a pretty hefty fleshlight. just sayin'
shopped from reddit
$1000 for a pellet mill
Also need a grinder
Then gather and shred vegetation
then add hormones
then see if the bunnies will eat it.
Do you go through several thousand dollars a year on rabbit feed?
>shopped from reddit
well that sucks. if they did get that big, I would have a date every night. there goes my hopes and dreams
best post.
Incorrect
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish_Giant_rabbit
It's a particular breed. Not actually a meat rabbit.
Eating their own poop is part of their digestive system.
Your bunnies won't like your pellets any more than the grass if it's the same stuff.
Alfalfa hay, oat grass, and timothy hay is their favorite flavor profile. Maybe you can bulk up some Alfalfa hay with your random grass combo.
Alfalfa is too high in calcium and can cause illness if there's too much of it.
You could also just let them free roam on your grass if predators and other animals aren't that much of a concern, and you don't live in Australia.
Not OP, but as someone who has had rabbits, grass/hay is absolutely not the same as pellets.
You can leave pellets in a bowl for days and they'll still eat it.
Leave some hay out, and they'll have walked all over it and want fresh stuff the next day.
For you
Im also interested in doing this, for my geese. Im not sure about the drying/macerating part. Once you find a good recipe through trial and error, you'll most likely want to purchase something like picrel, a pellet extruder machine
Available for under $1k and capable of 100kg/hr
for a an inexpensive, although dangerous method for blending the grass, you might want to look into buying an old lawnmower on craigslist, turn it upside down, and build an encloser around it.
The engine won't run upside down goober
If you plug it in upstairs, gravity will help the electrons flow. Duh, do I have to think of everything?
Pelletization of fodder/silage was developed mostly to address storage and spoilage issues related to big piles of it that would go bad, dry at uneven rates, etc. A secondary benefit was being able to make formulated feed that could be accurately measured and dispensed easily in large scale operations like feed lots or for transport and retail sale (like dog kibble).
If you are doing it on a small scale and not storing/shipping large amounts of harvested crops the pellet aspect of it adds complications that might not be worth the effort.
IOW if homogenized bits is the goal you could make batches in sheets like crackers and break them up and measure them out by weight if needed.
t. grandfather was a pioneer in scientific feed formulation who owned some of the earliest patents on the equipment and processes
In winter they usually eat soft hay, crops and dried branches with leaves of trees well. Also you can add some vegetables.
In summer they eat grass.
I've never heard of grass pellets. I doubt that they'll eat it.
Have you thought about growing grass for them?
Why not just press the dried grass into pellets? That's how I buy my rabbit food. Also, this
Why not just give them grass?
>Making my own pellet feed for rabbits
>Any tips?
didn't read
buy a pelletizer/pellet mill if that's what you're project is.
be sure to follow the instructions
that's it
>want to add some estradiol or other growth promoters to the feed to increase weight gain in my rabbits
why are you trying to turn them into trannies? give them tren instead
Hammer mill for grinding, pellet mill for pelleting. A good set up is going to run you a minimum of $5k usd. As for producing your own feed I've found pumpkins to be incredibly easy to grow and everything ive ever fed them to loves them. Trying mangels and sugar beets this year and so far am impressed. Have not fed to rabbits yet past a leaf occasionally but chickens devour them. If they survive the winter to seed out next year I will be adding them to the mix of shit I grow to save on feed. Otherwise I've found corn, pumpkins, and buckwheat to be very easy calories to grow.
>vertical rabbit farm
pics? that's c(r)ool bruther
They need more than just grass