Dear fellow animal lover! Who doesn’t want a healthy and happy animal friend? To maintain their well-beingness, the right and nutritious food is a must. Some even said that what you are feeding to your animal is what matter the most for their health. That is also the case for our favorite fluffy ball, rabbit. Knowing what is good and what is not for your rabbit feed is crucial. For example, most of us associating rabbit with carrot, but turns out carrot is not as good as we think it is for our beloved rabbit. Doesn’t mean that carrot is bad for rabbit, but you may want to use it only as a treat because it is—like any other fruits—high on sugar which can lead to a gastrointestinal problem as well as dental caries.
Hay and grass are the most commonly used for feeding the rabbit, also the most important one. They are basically the same; hay is dried grass. Your rabbit would love to have up to 80% of its diet made up of hay and grass. There are various types of grass, we suggest you to try each of them to see which one suits your bunny taste the best. Beside hay and grass, give your rabbit a smaller portion of greens, pellets, foraging materials (to make their hay more interesting), as well as some fruits for treats.
One of the greens to add in your rabbit’s diet is moringa leaf. While some of you may not quite familiar with this leaf, it has been commonly used in Asia and Africa. It is also known as the drumstick tree, horseradish tree, and ben oil tree or benzoil tree. All of the parts of this tree can be utilized for food, also industrial, medicinal and agricultural uses, including animal feeding. Well, maybe that’s why people call moringa tree as a “tree of life” or “miracle tree”.
So, what’s so special with this moringa leaves? Are there more benefits by feeding our cute rabbit this particular leaves than any other leaves? Well, without further ado, here we have some benefits of feeding your rabbit with moringa leaves.
While all of the parts of this plant is useful, the leaves are the most nutritious part of the moringa tree; high on vitamin B and C, provitamin A as beta-carotene, vitamin K, manganese, as well as protein, among other essential nutrients. There are a lot of researches conducted to see how moringa leaves’ affect the rabbit due to its high nutrition. Some of the results showed that moringa leaves support a normal blood profile, improve dry matter as well as crude protein digestibility, reduce inflammation, improve digestion, protect against arsenic toxicity, and many more.
Still talking about research about moringa leaves, some researchers said that including moringa leaves to the rabbit’s diet can improve the weight gain of domestic rabbits. This one benefit is surely important to the farmer who is raising rabbit for its meat. Yup, while we all can agree that a rabbit is lovely, people who also love it for the delicacy of its meat is not a few.
Giving your rabbit moringa leaves can reduce cholesterol level in blood and meat. Thus, making your rabbit healthier, also making better meat quality for human consumption. FYI, rabbit’s meat is highly valued because of its low fat, low cholesterol, and high-quality protein. Although, the taste is not quite different from chicken. Wanna try?
Soya bean meal and fish meal that is usually used as conventional protein sources for livestock considered expensive, as their price has been escalating continuously, but the availability is uncertain. Moreover, those two protein sources also consumed by humans, making it harder to obtain. Thus, there is a need to explore the non-conventional food sources with the same capacity to yield the same output as conventional feeds, and perhaps at a cheaper cost.
Moringa leaves happen to be one of the alternatives food sources for our beloved rabbits. Moringa itself is a fast-growing and drought-resistant perennial plant. One of its advantages is that moringa can be harvested several times in one growing. You can grow this moringa tree yourself if you live in a tropical or subtropical area, so you can provide plenty of moringa leaves for your rabbit from your own backyard.
- Increasing Baby Bunny Number
Rabbit is known as the prolific animal. It reaches sexual maturity at 3-8 months old and will have the rest of its 9 to 12 plus years to get it on. While the does don’t have an estrous or “heat” cycle, they more or less ready to mate all the time. The doe carries her baby for only 30 days, and depending on the breed, she will have litters between 4 and 12 babies (kits). After giving birth, the doe can mate and get pregnant again as soon as the next day.
While rabbit already reproduces quick enough, feeding your rabbit with moringa leaves can improve its productivity. The more moringa leaves your rabbit eats, the more baby it conceives. It is super beneficial information for those who want to start their own rabbit farm business, right?
All in all,
With these 5 benefits of feeding your rabbit with moringa leaves, you may want to consider to add it in your rabbit’s diet. But, remember as good as it is, feed your rabbit moringa leaves moderately. Well, excess of everything is bad, right? Some said that 20-40% level of inclusion is the recommended amount. You may want to discuss this further with your fellow farmer or rabbit owner, as well as your local vet. See what’s good and what’s not for your precious rabbit. We sincerely hope for your rabbits to be always happy and healthy. Happy animal, happy owner, right? 🙂 Good luck!