I know. same here. I tend to give more branches to strip, and my rabbits eat more hay. I try to sprout some radishes in a dish every now and then. Lettuce I buy when it looks fresh. The truth is my rabbits have a different diet during the winter.

Yeah I’m having a tough time too. Walmart went to having a lot of lettuce to hardly any. They have a good supply of Green Leaf Lettuce which always holds up well. They have parsley but I have to use it up before it goes bad. To bad we can’t really freeze lettuce, or my basement freezer would be stocked up!

I have a window bunny garden. I have a couple of parsley and basil pots growing in my window sill. Mix it in with some celery whatever else I can find that looks good and he’s fine for the winter.

Since we have such a large immigrant population here the stores ALWAYS have fresh and nice looking cilantro. That’s about all they have right now that looks like anything edible. I know it’s way expensive but I keep looking for bagged lettuce on sale. At least that’s mostly always nice looking. Two weeks ago I bought a beautiful head of romaine for $1 and this week they had tiny little wilted sad things for $2. I simply had to tell Freya sorry, but I’m not spending basically 4 times as much on something she probably wouldn’t eat anyway. We’re probably just looking at more limited veggies through the winter if the stores don’t start selling produce worth buying.

Our local grocery store- Meijer- seems to get in a decent variety of fresh veggies year round.  They have a large produce dept with good prices.  I am usually able to find Romaine hearts at a decent price year round and then just see what else is fresh- whether it is the herbs, other leafy greens or other lettuces.  They also sell snow pea pods by the pound- so I usually buy a handfull for the bunnies and give them a couple a day.

The other grocery stores in the area- either do not have the variety, quality or affordable greens/veggies.

Posted By hooty22 on 11/17/2009 08:54 AM
I have a window bunny garden. I have a couple of parsley and basil pots growing in my window sill. Mix it in with some celery whatever else I can find that looks good and he’s fine for the winter.

Hooty, how do you do this? I’d like to try it. I have lots os sunny window sills in my basement. What pots and what earth do I need? I have seeds, but no pods.

I can get my parsley to last about two weeks or so by putting the stems in a small glass of water, then covering with a ziplock bag.
I find that kale, escarole, spinach are always in season.
How do you guys do carrots? Regular carrots peeled? Can you use baby carrots?

My husband wanted fresh carrot juice, so he brought home a pound of carrots and we put them through the juicer. We took the mush that was left and gave a bit of that to Freya. I also treated her one day to about 2 tablespoons of the juice. She was SO happy. If we give her pieces of carrot we just use regular carrots and cut a piece off for her. The skin is perfectly edible. Baby carrots would be fine too, they’re the same as regular ones only smaller.

I had a huge wake up call about what many of you have to go through when it comes to produce/greens this time of year. I recently came back from Tennessee and granted, I was in a small town, but the options for fresh produce/greens were so limited!! Very small wiltish portions for big bucks! I am so used to having a large variety of fresh crisp large portion greens all year round that I have been blinded! I am very interested in this thread to find out what solutions you do find this time of year so i can put that in my memory bank for future reference  for those of you do have more challenges this time of year. (I’ve been spoiled!)

My bunnies primarily get celery, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and bean sprouts now. Especially cabbage is good this time of year. Parsnip is good as well.

I find that peppers are accesesible (can’t spell it and can’t bother to look it up ) all year around as well.

Posted By Denise12 on 11/17/2009 02:43 PM
 
How do you guys do carrots? Regular carrots peeled? Can you use baby carrots?

There’s a food section on our local news and one time the guy said to save carrots you can put them in water.  I know when I buy the bags of carrots there’s to many and I tried it and lasted longer than usual.  I think the last couple ones were a little soft so I threw those out but for the most part they saved better.

Thanks, but for the carrots can I just give her whole baby ones? Do you need to cut up the carrots at all?
Thank you!

You can just give her the whole baby carrot. If you get the ones with tops on she can eat those as well (many rabbits love the carrot tops).

Posted By Adalaide on 11/17/2009 09:35 PM
My husband wanted fresh carrot juice, so he brought home a pound of carrots and we put them through the juicer. We took the mush that was left and gave a bit of that to Freya. I also treated her one day to about 2 tablespoons of the juice. She was SO happy. If we give her pieces of carrot we just use regular carrots and cut a piece off for her. The skin is perfectly edible. Baby carrots would be fine too, they’re the same as regular ones only smaller.

This is a great idea, to feed just the pulp left after juicing. Higher fiber and less sugar. I do the same with oranges and grapefruit. My rabbits love the white pulpy left after I squeezed out the juice.

Baby carrots are immature carrots, or sometimes, they are “baby cut” carrots where a regular carrot has been peeled down to just the core. Both these types of carrots have less fiber than regular carrots. I try to give my rabbits primarily the hard end pieces of large regular carrots where the tops grow out of because this section is more “woodsy”.

That’s interesting Petzy! I didn’t know that about the fiber. I’ve checked too and carrots are not really high in sugar and the House Rabbit Society does recommend them as part of their diet.

PETZY

I just use a really good quality organic potting soil. It usually has some mulchy type pieces in it. Parsley grows like MAD and really easy to sprout. I use this long and thin rectangle plastic pots. They are like 5 inches wide and 12 inches long.

To start the seeds I just filled the pot with some gravel and then soil on top then I sprinked a LOT of seeds all over the top and gentle pressed. Water it very well and covered the top with plastic wrap (don’t put the wrap directly on the soil, just like covering a bowl of salad). I kept it in a warm place (on top of my gas stove) then used a CFL bulb in a desk lamp to keep it warm. They start to germinate within a couple days. Keep the light on them until they really start to grow and then put them in a sunny windowsill. Make sure you rotate the pot every other day and when you trim use scissors.

I had a full fledge potted veggie garden on my porch this summer. I live in the city so I don’t have a yard. I had pepper plants and tomatoes growing in hanging baskets.

Also, I do the basil the same way, only I try to space out the seeds a bit since they really need a little more room to grow (in my experience) than the parsley does.

Thanks hooty! My mother always said I would have to learn basic gardening eventually.

I was given a list of veggies that would be acceptable to feed my bunny, but it seems to be rather limited. I have tried a few, like brussel sprouts, and he doesn’t seen to care for them(me neither). I tried cutting them into little pieces, but he still turned away from them. He seem to like romaine hearts, dandelion greens, carrots(baby and with tops), but I find that the dandelion greens just don’t hold up to long before they get wilty. Can someone give me some more idea for veggies/herbs that are good to try.

Have you tried parsley? Curley or flat leaf.

Also cilantro (although sometimes this does not hold up particularly well).

Mine also like basil, mint, and dill.

Although I LOVE brussel sprouts (and I stand firm that people that don’t like them haven’t had them prepared properly), Felony hates them. We have a food list on the site that is rather large…

https://binkybunny.com/Default.aspx?tabid=144

My rabbits are so picky about what veggies they will eat! I find myself just buying less and going to the store more often so that they hold up better. The problem here is that the grocery stores offer pretty limited fresh greens as far as herbs and things. The only way to buy them is in tiny amounts in plastic containers for a lot of money. I’d like to give them more variety but it’s slim pickins! They do love Romaine, cellery, cilantro, parsley and mint so that’s the mix up they get usually. They refused asparagus, brussel sprouts, kale, broccoli, a few others…I like the idea of having a garden! perhaps once I move!