Spring Greens

For a couple of years now Mike and I have had our doubts about Spring Greens. They are sprayed to keep longer for the supermarket's and we have never been able to find out just what is in what they spray Spring greens with, but we have noticed more and more of our buns are getting tummy problems and dirty bottoms and we think it is down to the Spring greens being sprayed and today Mike had a word with our vet about what we think and she said she has thought this for years and that she is seeing more and more than ever rabbits with ileus and so Mike and I are thinking of taking our buns off Spring Greens.
I think it was the Spring greens that have made Parsley ill, even though they were fresh that day ( well they are not fresh are they, they are stored for a couple of days before you buy them )

I expect in rabbits that have sensitive tummies already that it could very well cause issues - it does seem likely.

My rabbits have spring greens all the time from all different supermarkets and they have never once had anything like that BUT they have never had bum/tummy issues full stop. I expect a bun prone to illness/tummy upsets would have an issue with sprayed veg. Be interesting to see what happens when you stop Maysie! x

i give my babies a little kale now and then don't know if its the same but always thoroughly wash all veg and fruit i give them but not had problems i also never give them tap water only bottled spring water as i don't like tap water so would not give it to them.
by the way how's mike today and hope you are feeling a little better.

Kenzo has a sensitive tummy but a lot of our buns haven't, Chudleigh Flint never ever use to be ill on Spring greens but now he seem's to have attacks of bloat, most of our buns in the last few months have had dirty bottoms and tummy aches with the Winter Spring greens and yet they are not as bad in the Summer when Spring greens are at their best. It's very strange!
We have thrown loads of Spring greens away just lately as they were brown round the edges or just discoloured and they had an unpleasant smell to them and they were bought the day before. Our buns have greens twice a day and Parsley usually doesn't have a problem and yet the cabbage which was bought the day before and in date I wasn't happy about but I used and most of our buns had dirty bottoms the next day and now Parsley is really ill, and I wished I had binned it now

fiver wrote:i give my babies a little kale now and then don't know if its the same but always thoroughly wash all veg and fruit i give them but not had problems i also never give them tap water only bottled spring water as i don't like tap water so would not give it to them.
by the way how's mike today and hope you are feeling a little better.

No it's the Spring Greens Rob that worry us, all our's have a little Kale and some Coriander and rocket with their tea sometimes.

We have to give our's tap water as it would work out to expensive with 23 buns on top of our big greens bill and never ending vet bills, we have paid £141 out last night for Parsley and that's without today's bill for more injections for Parsley and Koko's ear op but what can you do it has to be done.

Mike say's his headache is not as bad today but he can feel it's there lurking in the background and I'm ok I plod on like an old car, you have to don't you

Thank's for asking Rob

I think it depends on your source Maysie. My pair simply won't eat greens from one supermarket. I have moved towards feeding much less veg and more herbs instead. One of the benefits of this being that in the summer even with my small garden I can keep up with the animals' needs from the herb bed.

I keep wondering if that's causing the many stasis episodes we have here. I really need to find out what the problem is because it's exhausting frequently finding them in stasis. I managed to go 5 weeks without a belly ache bunny recently then had one after another over 2 weeks.

Do they definitely spray the greens? I know I've read it before but not being very knowledgeable about such things I would have thought just keeping the veg very cold would have been enough to preserve whole cabbages. It's not like you'd be willing to throw the outer leaves away as they are the best bit. I also have a very strict washing routine with spring greens but it's made no real difference to the many, many stasis episodes we have here. I think Pet Plan would quite like me to find the answer to it all as well

Edit to add: my bunnies, in winter at least, just get hay and spring greens and the odd bit of carrot, apple, broccoli and some have a few pellets, cutting greens out would be really drastic

This is really interesting. Not once in her almost 11 years did Thumper go into stasis. And she was a fussy bunny with vegetables When she was much younger she would eat cucumber and broccoli but she got fussier and fussier (and vet told me to cut out veggies) so for a huge chunk of her life, all she had veg wise was carrot and mange tout.

(I once thought the vet told me she had a blockage but I must have picked him up wrong because one quick trip to the vet and she was fine he must have been talking about something potentially causing a blockage!)

Maybe her fussiness did her a favour or she knew something I didn't!

I've never had any problems with Spring greens but I make sure they are 100% organically grown. I buy the organic Spring greens mixture that has been pre-washed(supposedly 3 times). They are cleaner than I could get them if I grew my own.

I've never had any problems with Spring greens but I make sure they are 100% organically grown. I buy the organic Spring greens mixture that has been pre-washed(supposedly 3 times). They are cleaner than I could get them if I grew my own.

Big Ears wrote:I keep wondering if that's causing the many stasis episodes we have here. I really need to find out what the problem is because it's exhausting frequently finding them in stasis. I managed to go 5 weeks without a belly ache bunny recently then had one after another over 2 weeks.

Do they definitely spray the greens? I know I've read it before but not being very knowledgeable about such things I would have thought just keeping the veg very cold would have been enough to preserve whole cabbages. It's not like you'd be willing to throw the outer leaves away as they are the best bit. I also have a very strict washing routine with spring greens but it's made no real difference to the many, many stasis episodes we have here. I think Pet Plan would quite like me to find the answer to it all as well

Edit to add: my bunnies, in winter at least, just get hay and spring greens and the odd bit of carrot, apple, broccoli and some have a few pellets, cutting greens out would be really drastic

Yes they do spray the greens I was told that a couple of years ago and our vet said today she has never seen so many buns with stasis and tummy upset's, I really wish I could find out what they spray the cabbages with .

cheryl'n'bruce'flo wrote:I think it depends on your source Maysie. My pair simply won't eat greens from one supermarket. I have moved towards feeding much less veg and more herbs instead. One of the benefits of this being that in the summer even with my small garden I can keep up with the animals' needs from the herb bed.

Well this is what we are doing at the moment feeding less veg and more herbs.

We get our fruit and veg from http://www.riverford.co.uk/ - in fact, today is veg box day here - and the buns love it! The food is so much nicer than from the supermarket, and I think the wabbits notice too.

Mine have never really had problems in the botty region though - cast iron constitutions here! The only problem we had was when they learned how to get into the food cupboard and gorged themselves on pellets!

Sue_pawz wrote:We get our fruit and veg from http://www.riverford.co.uk/ - in fact, today is veg box day here - and the buns love it! The food is so much nicer than from the supermarket, and I think the wabbits notice too.

Mine have never really had problems in the botty region though - cast iron constitutions here! The only problem we had was when they learned how to get into the food cupboard and gorged themselves on pellets!

Oh Thank You for this I will have a look and see how much it would be as we go through a lot of greens with all our buns and the boarding ones

I find that the nicest greens I can get are from Tesco. Morrisons go off far too quickly and the Sainsburys ones aren't always very nice.
I've started buying the 'baby greens' in the sealed packet from Tesco as the open bags seem to be quite horrid recently.

I've not had tummy problems caused by greens, (the two I've had I think have been caused by me being away and me being stressed), yet I've cut down slightly and increased coriander and parsley.

The past couple of weeks I've had small poos (not me, one of the buns ) Except there aren't a lot of them, it's just an odd two when all the rest are very plump and healthy. I found this strange, I didn't know if it was to do with the winter greens. They aren't hard small poos though, they break down nicely and are full of hay and as I said we only ever get 2 or 3 and some days we get none at all.

A friend of mine says Lidl are the best place to buy greens as they do not spray as much. However I am always torn between her statement and the whole origins thing - I don't trust Lidl not to be selling me non regulated lithuanian greens (or other similar country).