question about willow branches

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This topic has 6sd replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 16 years, 10 months ago by poopy.

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- 12/31/2007 at 11:34 AM
  poopy
  Participant
  684 posts
  question about willow branches (not the leaves)
  
  medusa eats alot of this in one day….which is effectively like eating WOOD. does anyone know if its nutritious? is it easy for them to digest? she hasn’t had any poopy problems i was just curious because its like eating wood…
- 12/31/2007 at 11:37 AM
  Beka27
  Participant
  16016 posts
  yes… i’m curious about this too. Meadow got willow stuff for xmas and i thought that she’d tear it apart and i would clean up the pieces… but the pieces were all gone! i think she ate a whole mini willow ball in the space of about a day and a half.
- 12/31/2007 at 11:46 AM
  osprey
  Participant
  2065 posts
  Mine eat most of the willow as well, as long as it starts out unpeeled. Peeled willow appears to have no attraction for them. They also eat whole apple tree twigs as well as twigs off of our Ash tree and stems of blackberry bushes. I know that rabbits and deer in the wild will eat bark off of trees in the winter, so I assume the bark must have some nutritional value. Green (freshly cut) twigs also have some nutrition from the tree still in them, but once they are dry, I assume that the wood is simply undigestible fiber. I know that in my compost pile, the willow acts the same as any other stick, and takes a long time to decomposing, indicating that it has little other than fiber in it.
- 12/31/2007 at 12:05 PM
  LittlePuffyTail
  Moderator
  18092 posts
  I spent a fortune on willow toys for Storm and Bindy for Christmas and they totally turned up their little sniffers at them. The spoiled brats…
- 12/31/2007 at 12:26 PM
  poopy
  Participant
  684 posts
  i cringe a little every time she eats too much, i just cant imagine eating wood
- 12/31/2007 at 1:26 PM
  BinkyBunny
  Moderator
  8776 posts
  Willow has a good fiber content. As far as I know it is lower than hay, but it’s a good fiber source none the less. The only thing I would watch for is if she fills herself up on that and eats less of her other foods which may make for imbalanced nutrition.
- 01/09/2008 at 11:15 AM
  poopy
  Participant
  684 posts
  is it ok if some of the branches are greenish? some of them in the bundles i got from you were still green. in the houserabbit handbook it was saying not to give branches until they don’t have anymore green. does this only apply to fruit branches?
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