It's Forage Friday!

We all know that a rabbit's diet should be around 85% fibre, 5% pellets (not museli) and 10% greens, but perhaps not many of us are brave enough to try to find natural and free sources of food for our rabbits. Grass and dandelions are the obvious things that we would go for, and they are an excellent addition to the diet, but over the next few weeks we are going to look at other goodies that we might find for our bunnies to enjoy. Starting with Plantain

For more information on this, and photos too, please see our blog http://rabbitwelfare.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/forage-friday.html

It's Forage Friday again, and since we're having such lovely warm weather after all that rain, everything's growing like....weeds! This week we want to tell you about clover.

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Clover is a member of the pea family and the whole of the plant is safe to be fed to rabbits. It is a good source of protein and very nourishing, and is believed to be a good tonic and useful for feeding during a moult. Rabbits love it, and it's often in hay; clover hay is thought of as one of the richest types of 'albuminoids' .

There's plenty around just now, so now's the time to plan for winter when none of this scrummy, nutritious foraging will be around. Take small bunches and tie them together with string then hang them upside down somewhere that has a good air-flow and isn't damp. They won't take long to dry out, and when they're nice and crispy, you can store them in paper (not plastic) bags to keep them fresh. You can also try this (carefully!) with nettles, which rabbits will not eat when fresh, but love when dried out.

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If you would like to read up on more wild plants and green foods, why not try this book? It's only £7.45 (including postage) from the RWAF shop.

http://www.rabbitwelfare.co.uk/catalog/product_info.phpproducts_id=207

If you can't find any wild forage, try Galen's Garden:

http://www.galensgarden.co.uk/

They stock a wonderful array of seeds for all the wild plants you might need.

There's one family of plants your rabbits will love, though gathering some of them can be quite a task. Those are apple, rose, blackberry and raspberry.

Rabbits will love to chew on apple twigs, so if you have a tree, keep any prunings for them. Ask other apple tree owners to pass their prunings on to you too. The fruit is very sweet as we know, so that must be limited to tiny pieces given as treats.

Roses of all sorts are edible - the leaves, flowers, twigs (yes, those spiky twigs!) and the hips (berries) but again the hips are very rich in sugar, so must be limited. Be very careful when foraging from rose bushes. Rabbits are happy to munch down those thorns, but you'd be well advised to wear thick gardening gloves.

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Blackberries and raspberries are so similar it's hard to tell them apart until the fruit appears. Both are spiky all overthe stems and leaves, so again, good, strong gardening gloves are needed, but those spikes won't bother your rabbits at all. The leaves are very soothing to bunny tummies too. Once again, the fruit is too sugary to be given as more than just the occasional treat.

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Only feed your rabbits from plants that you know have not been sprayed with chemicals - pesticides, fungicides and herbicides can all be dangerous, as can some artificial fertilisers.

All these and many more can be found in Medirabbit, a great online resource
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Food/Food_main.htm

This week we are featuring two very common plants that are great for feeding to your rabbits and are all over the place at present. Again, these can be dried and kept for the winter when tasty natural foods are hard to find.

The first is Cleavers. It has several names - Goosegrass, Sticky Weed, Claggy Maggie..perhaps you call it something equally fitting where you live.

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This plant needs no introduction as we have all found it stuck to our clothes after a walk at some point, no doubt! It is an exceedingly common plant, and it is safe to use. It is thought to be diuretic, and to have tonic properties, but it may take some rabbits a few goes to get used to the taste.

The second plant is Common Hogweed, also known as Cow Parsnip.

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This plant is a member of the carrot family and can grow up to 3 metres tall! It can be found on grassy verges and open woodland and has very large leaves. Only the leaves and stalks should be fed, not the flowers. It is regarded by some as one of the most valuable wild plants for rabbits and has no harmful properties, as long as the flowers are not used.

Please don't confuse this with the imported Giant Hogweed, which is far bigger and very caustic to even touch. Common Hogweed is a native species and perfectly safe both to touch and for your rabbits to eat. Giant Hogweed generally grows along watercourses and can grow to over 5 metres tall. You can read about it here http://www.ceh.ac.uk/sci_programmes/documents/GiantHogweed.pdf

Make sure you can identify hogweed and do not confuse it with other similar looking but harmful plants like fool's parsley. These are covered in more detail in the following books (please remember prices include postage)

http://www.rabbitwelfare.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=207

http://www.rabbitwelfare.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=982
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This is fab! How haveI missed this? A really helpful post, thank you

Today we're featuring two very common plants that you should be able to find in flower at this time of year.

The first is chickweed.

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It has tiny white flowers and it's leaves are egg shaped and in pairs all along the slender stem. It has a hairy line that runs up one side of the stem. When this reaches a pair of the leaves, it swaps to the other side of the stem, and so on till it reaches the top.

It spreads very quickly once it has established itself and some gardeners consider it a nuisance!


Although chickweed can't be called a valuable green food because it has no special properties, it is a good source of minerals and vitamins, it is safe to feed it, and a small amount makes a welcome change when other greens are hard to find. It's an annual and can be found in flower throughout most of the year.

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The second plant is the sow thistle, which is also known as milk thistle , because when the stem is snapped it exudes a milky substance. This is a very good and very popular food for small furries, who can eat both the smooth and prickly variety. It's an erect, branched plant and can grow as tall as 4ft (120cm)


We know that some of our readers have adopted rabbits who are pregnant and they should know that this is a great plant to feed to nursing mother rabbits, and also that it's entirely safe to feed to rabbits of all ages. Not to be confused with the common thistle which has no feed value for rabbits.

Sow thistle is easy to distinguish from the common thistle because of its bright yellow flowers, which are similar in shape and colour to dandelion flowers. They appear in clusters at the extreme top and branches of the plant. All varieties of this plant are equally useful. Some have very smooth, tender leaves, and others are slightly prickly, but not so much that they are painful to gather, and nor will they cause problems for your rabbits.


They're best fed when the stalks are tender and juicy, because when they're fully grown, the bottom half of the centre stalk can become hard and woody, so for this reason it is at its best and most palatable when it's a foot or two high.

This is an annual plant and it flowers from June to September. Collect seeds to grow some next year, or else you can buy these seeds and many more from both Galens Garden and Rabbit Nutrition websites.

To find which plants commonly grow in your area, so you know which seeds to buy, enter your postcode here http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/plants-fungi/postcode-plants/

Burdock is safe to feed in a balanced mix of plants, and in moderation. It's normally found in hedges or on open ground and commonly on waste ground. It has a two year life cycle. In the first year the plant is close to the ground and in the second it flowers and forms seed heads. It can grow to approximately 1.5m tall with large leaves reminiscent of rhubarb, and slightly furry. Our photo shows how one of the lower leaves of this plant dwarfs what is quite a big mobile phone. The root is edible too. The flowerstalk becomes quite woody, so the plant is best harvested in its first year. This is the plant that is included in dandelion and burdock.

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Our second edible plant is coltsfoot. Its yellow (dandelion like) flowers appear early in the year before the leaves appear. Flower stalks spring direct from the root and have an unusual stalk, looking as if there are buds all the way along it.

The leaves appear after the flowers have withered and again are reminiscent of rhubarb but are very dull-looking, with a silvery and downy back and often silvery lines tracing across the top surface.

It's a common plant, found in many gardens and on arable and waste land. It's hard to eradicate once it's established itself. The roots grow deep and shoot out in all directions. The leaves can grow to a very large size.

It's a safe plant to feed, as with others, in moderation, and very popular with rabbits, both fresh and dried.

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Details of these and more are kept on our Blog http://rabbitwelfare.blogspot.co.uk/

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Common mallow, in its early flowering stage, is perhaps the prettiest of our wild plants and it's reckoned to be entirely without any harmful qualities, so ideal for our small furries (and us! And tortoises, if you have those!) to eat.

It's entirely missing in winter and spring, but in early summer can be seen growing on roadsides, lanes, wasteground, banksides and meadows. The leaves are up to 4 inches across at their widest, very bright green and shiny. They vary slightly in shape from kidney-shaped to 5-lobed but those lobes are always connected at the base into a single leaf. The centre where they meet the stalk is dark, sometimes puplish, and the stalks grow up from the plant base.

Flowers come later in the summer and are striking. They're rather reniniscent of many varieties of cranesbill flowers and always have 5 petals, though it may be hard to see the separation between those petals in some specimens. They vary in colour from pinkish to a deeper purple with darker stripes on each petal radiating from the centre to the edges of the petals, fading as the reach the edge.

By the end of the season, the plant becomes unattrative, with a rather tough stalk and very few leaves, which are dull and of poor quality, with perhaps one or two flowers. However, throughout, they remain totally edible.

Try the plant yourself! It's glutinous, and so great for thickening soups and stews.

As always, be certain you have the plant you think you have, and wash before feeding to your pets (or yourself!)

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This plant flourishes in the summer and flowers from July onwards, in a variety of colours, most often white, but various shades of pink too. The leaves are reminiscent of fern and in better nourished soil, it can grow up to almost 4ft high. It is also known as Milfoil. It's a common roadside plant, with very tough, angular stems, and in poorer soils, it rarely grows higher than a foot. It will die back in autumn and be all but undetectable over the winter.

The flowers grow in clusters and it's only when you look more closely that you can see the individual flowers and how pretty they actually are.

If the plant is bruised, every part of it emits an aromatic odour. The leaflets are much cut,ressembling hair-like segments.

The plant can be found in most pastures. It's believed to contain tonic properties and is often deliberately sown in permanent pasture alongside grass.
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We are very pleased with the response to this series of messages on wild plant foraging and glad that we've been able to help your rabbits have a more varied diet of natural foods.

Like all good things, though, it has to come to an end...but not quite. The next issue of Rabbiting On (free to all RWA members) will contain an article on foraging wild plants for rabbits. Remember too the two books we sell in our online shop, Greenfoods for Rabbits and Cavies by FR Bell and Rabbit Nutrition by Virginia Richardson. http://www.rabbitwelfare.co.uk/catalog/index.php?cPath=38 and also the Postcode Plants Database, so you know what is likely to grow wild in your area http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/plants-fungi/postcode-plants/ Many of the plants we have brought to you can be grown in your garden from seed. Contact Galens Garden orRabbit Nutrition for seeds.

We also want to remind you about our 2012 conference, Rabbit Interactive which will happen on 1st September. Watch this space for more details