Confused About Pellets!

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BINKYBUNNY FORUMS

This topic has 6sd replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 2 months ago by LBJ10.

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- 12/19/2011 at 1:03 PM
  KytKattin
  Participant
  1195 posts
  Nova has been on an okay diet of hay/greens/pellets since I have been gone, but she also did get kind of fat. I am slowly reigning back in her diet so it is mostly hay, then greens, then pellets, then treats (in that order!). Not the “all you can eat buffet” she had available! So now that she will have a much smaller pellet quota, I was thinking about switching her to the Oxbow Organics. I looked at the ingredients, and the Organics have only a few ingredients, while the regular have a ton more. Normally I would be like “great! That must mean they are healthier!”. But the Organics doesn’t have the added minerals and such that the regular pellets have. Of course I understand that many of those minerals might still be present in the wholesome ingredients found in the Organic pellet. I mean, it seems as though the Organic actually has higher amounts of the trace elements.
  
  Is the regular kind of like what happens when white bread (flour) is milled for humans so that it has nutition like Iron, B vitamins, micronutrients, etc, removed so that they have to be added back in, and the organic is left unprocessed (or at least less processed), more like wheat bread? I know those aren’t the best examples, but that was the best I could think of.
  
  So basically, is it okay to feed just the Organic pellet (that is, as the only pellet in addition to hay/veggies), or should I mix the two in order to make sure there is complete nutrition?
  
  Also, because I am a worrier like this: what sort of controls does Oxbow do to make sure that the grasses and other ingredients are full of the nutrition that they say is on the bag?
- 12/19/2011 at 1:17 PM
  Sarita
  Participant
  18851 posts
  I cannot answer your question about the controls that Oxbow uses but I can tell you I feed the Organic pellets straight up for my older rabbit Toffee and I’ll be honest, I have never looked that closely or compared it to the regular ones which I feed Bobby. I feel okay about just feeding the one as I think that is what they intended, one or the other. Just looking at their ingredients on-line though, they seem to have the added minerals and vitamins listed on the website…although I am not an expert on what they have listed.
- 12/19/2011 at 3:43 PM
  KytKattin
  Participant
  1195 posts
  Hmm. I wish I was more of a scientist so I could do my own tests on this stuff. I know someone who is great with fish that does their own tests, and that has really helped bring my fish keeping to the next level!
  
  Anyways, I will have to go over to the main website then. I was looking at the BB store, so maybe Oxbow has more in depth data.
  
  On that note, is there any bunny vitamin? I have vitamins I give to my fish that do more for them than anything I have ever seen! I personally take a few vitamins as well, though I know that getting good nutrition from food is better. Our bunnies on their hay/greens/pellet diet probably are better off than fish, who are typically limited to 2-3 food choices.
- 12/20/2011 at 10:20 AM
  Sam and Lady's Human
  Participant
  2001 posts
  I give my buns a oxbow papaya enzyme treat a day for aided digestion I use it as a treat, they really like it
- 12/20/2011 at 11:07 AM
  Stickerbunny
  Participant
  4128 posts
  You may be able to get a vitamin from your vet, but I don’t really think it is needed for buns – just a wide variety of greens and other veggies probably does more for them than a vitamin would.
- 12/21/2011 at 8:27 PM
  KytKattin
  Participant
  1195 posts
  Yeah, Nova gets lots of papaya tablets. Probably way more than she should… lol. She is trained to come when I rattle the bottle.
  
  It is probably different since they are the second step in the food chain, not the third like we are (approx). So long as the grass (& greens) they eat is grown in soil with lots of nutrients, they get those nutrients. Whereas as predators if we don’t eat the whole animal (which we rarely do), so nutrients in the parts we don’t eat are going to be missing from out diets. Idk, something like that…
- 12/21/2011 at 9:12 PM
  LBJ10
  Moderator
  17225 posts
  There is always more energy in the lower trophic levels than the higher ones. Other things like minerals and toxins, however, accumulate and become more concentrated in the higher trophic levels and are more dilute in the lower ones.
  
  Bunnies need to eat more of something to get the nutrition they need. Many argue that organic stuff has higher levels of nutrients than non-organics. So I suppose that would mean less would be required to get the same nutrition (but not necessarily energy).
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