A broad variety of herbs along with a few types of grass is the only feed that can genuinely be called a ‘complete diet.’ When there is a wide selection of herbs available (offered in unlimited amounts), no additional feed is required. Fresh meadow greens are an ideal food source for rabbits and should, if possible, be provided in generous amounts. After a slow introduction, it can be made available for free-choice feeding and does not need to be portioned.
How to get started…?
I’ve selected herbs that are especially easy for beginners to identify and that grow almost everywhere. You can recognize them from photos and practice identifying them.
For the Beginner’s Course on “Meadow Plants“
The Foraging Basics
Recommendation: Take a photo of one unfamiliar plant each day, pick it, and bring it home to identify it at your leisure. This way, you’ll gradually learn a new plant every day, eventually enabling you to identify the entire flora in your foraging area. Community centers often offer herb walks, where you can learn to identify many types of wild herbs.
- Collected plants should be offered as fresh as possible. Ideally, keep the container in the shade to maintain freshness for a day. If you’re gathering only every other day, wrap the portion for the next day in paper towels and store it in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator or a cool cellar. Never store green feed compressed; always spread it out to allow airflow!
- For longer-lasting herbs, gather in the fresh morning or evening (especially on hot days). Many herbs can be revived by placing them in a glass of water. Fresh greens should also be introduced gradually; for rabbits with a healthy digestion, start with a handful and increase to free-choice feeding over the course of a week.
- To avoid contamination from exhaust pollutants, gather plants away from roads. For herbivores like rabbits, grasses can serve as a good supplement, but they’re never suitable as the sole fresh food source.
- Be cautious with plants in the carrot family, as some are excellent forage plants while others are highly toxic—wild carrot or hemlock? If possible, allow your rabbits to roam on a meadow where they can choose their own food. Otherwise, fresh meadow greens in a dish are always welcome.
“The calcium content of green plants is an effective remedy against bone softening. Green forage has a dietary (health-promoting) effect when mixed with flavorful weeds that are partly aromatic, partly bitter, and medicinal, significantly stimulating appetite and digestion. The more high-quality green forage that can be provided, the more successful the rearing of young animals.”
— Dorn, 1989
Sources
Meadow herbs and grasses can be harvested from meadows and fields, field edges, fallow land, gravel pits, forest clearings, and other areas offered by nature. In cities, there are also places where you can forage: playgrounds, parks, old cemeteries or forest cemeteries, vacant lots, backyards, planted rooftops, construction sites, undeveloped plots, and fallow land along railway tracks (but not directly on the embankments, as they are sprayed!).
