Babies exploring, and food transition.

Today's post is going to be a little shorter than normal due to the scramble of getting the Lady of the House out on her way to Otacon where she's selling this weekend. The unfortunate part is with me taking the photos there aren't the good quality photos of the babies first wanderings outside of their nest we'd usually have.

But as you can see, Dawn's kits and the Sister's kits are out and about exploring much to the annoyance of their mothers. I'm always a bit nervous when they're first out and about because of worries about their feet getting caught in the wire because they're still small enough for that to be a real concern. Before leaving this morning I put them all back in their respective nests since Dawn, Halley, and Comet were all upset about the development and actively fleeing their youngsters who were attempting to acquire nourishment by any means, usually flying sprawls where they try to leap, flop upside down, and burrow under mom all in one motion to latch on and get milk. It's usually a fairly unsuccessful process since mom counters by kicking the baby the length of the hutch. Fortunately A: the moms do it at fairly low velocity and B: babies bounce fairly well. I'm a little surprised Twilight's babies weren't out exploring, but I guess they don't really have any need to with how much they're clearly getting fed!

I mentioned food changes, on Tuesday was the first day of changed over food for the rabbits, and we're starting to look in to changing food over for the chickens as they become adults. In general it is not good to do crash transitions on food for any animal because it can lead to gut upset, and with animals with delicate guts like rabbits that's a particular concern. Unfortunately the reason for the shift with rabbits is that our feed store stopped being able to get the brand of food we've been using necessitating a sudden change. On the up side, the change is fairly minor between the brands, and because of how much hay and greens we already give our rabbits the impact is ameliorated.   I'm going to look at the Guaranteed Analysis of the two feeds to discuss why there's so little difference between the two for purposes of feed safety. My major concern with Poulin is I haven't been able to find the ingredients online. I believe they're on the bag but of course I don't have that with me.


Blue Seal Bunny 16                                                Poulin Maintenance 16

Crude Protein, Min. ................... 16.0 %               Crude Protein (Min.) ................ 16.00%
Crude Fat, Min. ......................... 2.5 %                 Crude Fat (Min.) ......................... 2.75%
Crude Fiber, Min. ..................... 14.0 %                Crude Fiber (Min.) ................... 14.00%
Max. ........................................ 18.0 %                Crude Fiber (Max.) .................. 19.00%
Calcium, Min. ........................... 0.75 %                Calcium (Min.)............................ 0.95%
Max. ........................................ 1.05 %               Calcium (Max.) ........................... 1.20%
Phosphorus, Min. ...................... 0.60 %               Phosphorus (Min.) ...................... 0.55%
Salt, Min. .................................. 0.25                   Salt (Min.) .................................... 0.40%
 % Max. ................................... 0.75 %               Salt (Max.) ................................... 0.75%
Vitamin A, Min. ......................... 5,000 IU/lb       Vitamin A (Min.) ............ 4,000 IU/LB

As you can see the guaranteed analysis of the two brands is virtually identical. I'm happy with the higher max crude fiber in Poulin since rabbits need quite a lot of it. I think a lot of the similarity comes from, at base rabbit food is just pelleted hay. The reason we don't use just hay and greens is there is no guarantee of protein level, which leads to slower growing, smaller kits. As much as we try to be good to our animals and hay is long term healthier, pellets have a significantly higher growth rate for kits and it's much easier to keep healthy weight on the does.

Looking at our weight charts we're seeing very little variation in weight gains with the babies, which indicates that there isn't much difference between the pellets and that no one's taken poorly to them so far. We haven't seen any significant difference in poop which is also an important indicator. That's one thing you don't really think about before starting this, how much time you're going to spend looking at poop.

Well, that's all for today! I'll hopefully have more fun photos for you Tuesday!