In a fundamentally purist sense, wouldn’t it be nice to provide yourself with everything you needed right on your very own back yard? To avoid having to go to the store 100%, and to completely renounce the shackles of co-dependent consumerism. At least when it came to food, that is?
Well, no, it would actually be a lot of work. We have lives, people and we intend to use them. We still import plenty of staple items, including whole-flour wheat, rice, beans. Also things we don’t have the setup for growing, like mushrooms.
We decided to keep rabbits not only because it provides us with excellent fertilizer and reduces our contribution to cruelty in the animal agriculture industry, we did it to save money. The one constant overhead is the rabbit pellets. It’s not really expensive, but its not really cheap either. And while we’ll never get away from buying pellets completely, we’ve found, through both growing in our own yard and foraging in the neighborhood, that we can cut the feed store bill down a hefty percentage.
This clover patch was sown from seed. We grew it especially for our rabbits.
Clover patch. Grown to feed bunnies.
Rabbits eating grape leaves.
Our rabbits also love grape leaves, blackberry bushes (thorns and all), rosebushes, willow leaves, bindweed, and grass. We usually just cut whatever’s available and throw it on their plate.
One bit of warning, you do have to make sure whatever you’re feeding them is safe for rabbits, because a lot of things can be poisonous or unhealthy. A simple internet search will provide much better sources than what I am listing here.
Bindweed. A weed that people pull and throw away. But we let it grow and harvest for rabbit consumption.
TIME INVESTMENT: 3 minutes, daily.
Every morning we go out with shears and cut what we need.
Happy farming.
–J
Suburban Sustainability 