Missy, salad connoisseur extraordinaire
The bunnies eat a lot of greens around here – twice a day in heaping amounts. Each bunny seems to have a favorite, but everybunny enjoys the little bits of carrot and fruit that each salad is laced with as a *treat*. Most people who breed rabbits don’t believe in feeding greens (or hay, for that matter), but housebunny people do. Fresh food is healthy for bunnies, as is hay, but it takes a bit more work than just feeding pellets.
Salad-making is part of my routine and I prepare the next day’s salads the night before so that I don
‘t have to be chopping lettuce in a daze when I first get up for work in the morning. I prepare a portion for each bunny (or pair of bunnies for Boomer and Cricket) according to their appetite and preferences. I like to feed a nice variety of greens, but our daily staples are Romaine and green-leaf lettuce, parsley and cilantro. I also include at least one *dark green*, high-vitamin item like dandelion, kale, turnip or mustard greens, or collard greens each day. Some have to be careful with these because of their high calcium content (which may lead to bladder stone/sludge issues), but I don’t feed that much to have to worry about it. Occasional additions are dill (a favorite, and usually on the menu), red-leaf lettuce, arugula, mint, frisee, anise fennel, chicory, swiss chard, etc. – I buy what is nice and fresh from the market. I also like to feed some extras, in season, like berries, or broccoli, or Brussles sprouts, or tomatoes. Yes, my bunnies are spoiled!
The last few years I’ve been growing some extras that aren’t available in the market and herbs that are easy to grow in pots. (I have a lovely photo that Blogger suddenly won’t let me upload – darn!) Parsley, cilantro, and fennel are easy to grow (and loved by some butterflies for laying eggs) so I grow them in pots or in the veggie garden and use the *extra* to supplement what I buy at the market for the bunnies. Yesterday (imagine another lovely photo that Blogger won’t let me upload) the bunnies’ salads were adorned with red, yellow, and orange nasturtium flowers and leaves, which have a pleasant, peppery taste.
I’m off to fix salads for tomorrow and vent my Blogger frustrations on the cutting board. Check back later for the rest of what I intended to write.
The bunnies eat very well!
Those bunnies sound very spoiled indeed! (-:
I can’t grow parsley to save my life! And I got some huge dill plants since we can’t buy it fresh here at either grocery store I frequent, but even though it says full sun, it has blossomed and promptly died. I do have a huge barrel of basil which all my guys love (again, can’t get fresh at either store – grrrr, I miss Kroger in WI where these items were readily available in huge bundles just like the parsley). I did grow lettuce once – just green leaf, and no bun would touch it. It’s romaine or nuthin around here. I think they like the *crunch*.
A friend of DH’s stopped by one morning as I was making salads and said to Doug – Dang, your bunnies eat better than you do, I think your wifie needs to make ME lunch! LOL.
Missy is so cute.
I’m coming to live with you!
Michelle: I think I’m lucky that the greens are usually nice in the supermarket.
One spring/summer I went to a u-pick farm every other week and bought gorgeous stuff for the bunnies and it was cheap!!
Funny that yours are so spoiled they won’t eat home grown stuff!
Orlando Bun: come on over!