Adele said:
I think that we sometimes rely too much upon modern convenience foods(For rabbits and Humans alike :lol: ) and that the old fashionned feeding methods perhaps saw bunnies in a better healthy condition...would you agree with this Sue, or did the early feeding regimes have their drawbacks on bunny health too??
They did have many health problems then, but also didn't have the veterinary knwledge available that we do now. So, diseases which are treatable nowadays, such as coccidiosis, bloat and mucoid enteritis, claimed many lives.
However, without being too graphic, primitive "survival of the fittest" was at play, and only the healthiest survived, and those which adapted best to the wartime diet. But when this basic diet is examined, it's clear it was probably very healthy and as close to the natural diet as you can imagine.
Back in wartime, Portsmouth was a "Fanciers City" and still there are a few people here who breed & show rabbits, poultry, ducks, cage birds, pigeons etc. kept in their back gardens. I get a very clear historical view in this place, and can imagine that many back yards in wartime were filled with chickens, ducks, rabbits, perhaps even pigs!
Without wishing to sound odd, when I moved into this flat with my horde of rats, started doing up the old brick shed outside, and welcomed the Floyds home, I got the distinct feeling this house was happy to have the animals here. A previous tenant kept a buzzard for falconry & ferrets for hunting, which I had no inkling of until I spoke to the neighbours, but I imagine he was just one in a line of occupants since the place was built, that kept animals here.
And when I began going round the shorelines & wild places to gather wild greens for the rabbits, mere walking distance away, I saw how the wartime rabbit keepers here managed so well, as there is an over-abundance of free, nourishing wild greenfood.
There's one great rabbit book which do snap up if you ever find it... First published in 1957, "The Domestic Rabbit" by J. C. Sandford is
still in print. I have the 1974 edition but there have been reprints since, updated too. It will tell you more than you need to know about nutrition, alternative feeding methods, history, and how to calculate nutritive values in what you feed.... other parts are very much outdated but it stands as a true classic, from which to learn and then absorb modern thinking. There's just one chapter on the usual meat/skins/nasties etc, but it would be easy to glue the pages together if you really didn't wish to look!
http://www.abebooks.co.uk or Ebay are both very good places to buy old rabbit books - when I have a little more spare cash I want to add to my collection, as I have quite a few rabbit books I collected in the 1970's & 1980's, some very old, some in French, some in German, and a couple I bought in Holland! My prize must be a book from France published in 1897, about breeding rabbits & pigeons for meat - so old, it has no photographs, and I can't understand much of it, but it was given to me about 20 years ago by an English man who had moved to the South of France, and found it in the attic when doing the old house up!