One way to save money on pets is to not have any pets at all. I don’t want to preach, but proper care of rabbits is a very time-consuming job. They are the second most neglected pet in the UK, beaten only by the turtle. They require lots of time, free roaming, and preferably the company of another rabbit. I had to come up with some savings tips for rabbits because they have cost me a small fortune over the years, especially in vet bills.
Buy Your Sawdust (Wood Shavings) In Bulk
The word “Sawdust” is interchangeable with “Wood Shavings” in this article. Make sure it is shavings that are safe for rabbits and not actual saw dust from workshops because they will make your rabbit sick, which will cost you more in vet bills.
- Buy 20kg sawdust from Amazon or Ebay and it will last you a month or more depending on how many rabbits you have.
- Do the math and find the best prices. Work out how much you are getting per penny, and see if you can save money through buying in bulk.
- Keep a look out for discounts and deals so you can stock up. Sawdust doesn’t go off if you keep it dry, so stock up if you ever see discounts and deals.
- Weigh the bales of sawdust on your bathroom scales to check to see if you were cheated. I have had many bags delivered that were short on weight where I was able to complain and get the rest of it sent out in smaller bales.
Use A Ladle To Portion Out Your Sawdust Consistently
Remember that sawdust dries at the top and gets wet at the bottom. That is why you should not overfill your cages with sawdust because it looks nice on the surface, but is actually very wet underneath.
- Portioning out your rabbit sawdust will ensure you do not use too much or too little. It creates consistency so that you do not waste sawdust/shavings.
- Portion it out the same every time, and then the intervals between cleanings out may stay the same. The amounts we put in mean that we clean out our rabbits every four or five days.
- Remember that hay is good for your rabbit, but it does not absorb wetness. This means that in the cage it looks dry even after a few days, but under the dry hay it will be very wet at the bottom.
- Clean out your rabbits around two times per week. This will stop the types of mould forming that give your rabbits snuffles (Pasteurella multocida or Bordatella)
Buy Rabbit Food In Bulk
Make sure when you buy your rabbit food, make sure it is not the cheap food otherwise your rabbits won’t eat it. There are also a slew of problems that come with buying the cheap stuff, especially when it comes to teeth trouble and malnutrition.
- Buy Rabbit food that is either 20kg or a 10kg bag. I have rarely found smaller bags to offer the same value for money except one time when my local supermarket offered five bags for the price of three.
- When you buy rabbit food make sure you buy nuggets and not muesli. This will stop your bunnies from only eating what they like and wasting the rest. They especially hate the seeds when I buy muesli and always leave it.
- Follow the recommended portions on the side of the bag, with a little extra assuming the rabbits will spill it everywhere. Find a ladle, and work out how many scoops of your ladle you need per rabbit. We used to do it by hand without measuring, and we wasted a lot of rabbit food and made our rabbits.
- Make your hay last longer by putting it in a tub when you give it to the rabbits. For example, I use the Roses chocolates plastic tub, I put the hay in, and they eat it out of that. I used to put the hay in with them, but they would sit on it and not eat it, and I would have to throw it away when they were cleaned out.
Letting Rabbits Out Every Day Has Its Benefits
Even on rainy days, we let the rabbits out. There are plenty of shelters outside where they can hide. We do not leave their cages open so they can get back into them because they will fight over who goes where.
- Let your rabbits out in the garden every day. This will help keep your cages clean longer and they will be able to eat the grass that is available in your garden. Grass/hay is an important part of their diet.
- You won’t need to buy a lot of hay because they are getting the digestive fibre they need from the grass in your garden. We also see them eating our apples, chewing twigs, and eating leaves.
- Letting them out every day will also stop them from digging in their cages and kicking clean sawdust everywhere. It also lowers the amount they chew the bars. Rabbits on their own (no other rabbit companions) are the most likely to chew their cage bars.
Growing Your Own fruit And Vegetables
We have planted an apple tree in our garden. We had to fence off the trunk because they love the taste of apple tree bark. Thankfully, we do not have to worry about the apples being fit for human consumption because we let them fall off and the rabbits eat them whenever they fancy them.
- By planting your own apple trees in the garden, your rabbit will be able to eat them as they fall off the trees, this will keep your bunnies happy.
- Apples are brilliant for composting. They break down very quickly and help accelerate the process for whatever other material is in the compost heap.
- When you are cooking a Sunday roast or Christmas dinner, make sure you keep some of the vegetable peelings to feed to the rabbits later. This is a nice treat for your pets, and it means less food waste. Do not give them potato skins because they cannot eat them, and the smell attracts mice and rats.
- When giving your pets fruit and vegetables, make sure you research to see if they can eat it first. We even toasted some banana slices because we didn’t want to waste some bananas that had gone brown.
- Make a vegetable patch in your garden that way you can feed your rabbits fresh fruit and vegetables every year. If you make it a rabbit-only area, then you do not have to worry about the soil being imperfect as you would if you were eating the food. Also, when you have harvested, you can let your rabbits run loose on whatever foliage is left before seeding again.
Savings Tips For Rabbits When Buying Toys
Rabbit toys are probably the biggest money-wasters because they are either destroyed in seconds or are never played with. You can hang small boxes from the roof of the cage and fill them with something that makes a noise and it will cost you far less than whatever toys you buy on the Internet. I am not saying do not buy your rabbits toys, but try to stay clear of the ones the hay huts and wooden boxes because they are often destroyed in a matter of minutes. I wouldn’t mind the rabbits destroying them if it were not for how expensive they seem to be these days.
- Instead of buying cardboard tubes and toys, you can get a free boxes when you go shopping. Or, you can ask your friends or family to keep them for you whenever they come across them. Plus, you probably receive plenty of boxes each month from the food you eat and the Amazon parcels you receive.
- Slightly bigger boxes can keep your furry friends out of trouble by acting as a great hiding place when they are in their cage. If you have an indoor rabbit, the box may be used as a way for your rabbit to get out of the light.
- By using boxes in their cages, this will keep their teeth down/ gives them something to chew, this will stop you having to go to the vets to have their teeth cut. Also, collect a few sticks here and there and let them chew them. We have even collected scrap wood (untreated) and they have gnawed on that.
- Give your money bunnies some tree branches or sticks you find when you go walking. They love the taste of many different types of fruit tree. Giving them wood to chew will stop them being bored, and may stop them chewing the bars of their cages; which is what some rabbits do to gnaw down their teeth.
- Make sure if you wash the branches and check if there are any thorns on them before you give them to your rabbits. Washing the sticks is more important if you found them while out walking because you don’t know if a dog or cat has urinated on them.
Stocking Up On Bottles
Always buy a slightly bigger than required bottle for your rabbit. There is nothing worse than a rabbit going for water and not having any in there. Also, empty and refill the water every day or two depending upon drinking rates. Leave it longer, and your rabbit may not drink it because it tastes funny, which then leads to the owner not filling it because he/she thinks it is full, and before you know it you have a sickly rabbit.
- Buying bottles one at a time is the most expensive way to buy them. Try to find deals where they offer more than one. If one of the water bottles breaks, then you have others spare ready so that you won’t have to buy another bottle.
- Do buy a bottle cleaning brush rather than trying to bleach out the bottle. If you are super worried about germs after cleaning the green/nasty stuff from inside your bottle, then rinse it out with hot water. Rabbit bottles do not need to be sterilized with bleach or cleaning agents.
Set Up A Compost Pile For Your Sawdust
Set up a compost heap and throw your shavings on there. It takes about a year to decompose, but it generates some lovely material that you can use to fill the rabbit holes in your garden. This will save on filling your bins up and you are reusing the compost so nothing is wasted.
- Turn the compost now and again so that it decomposes more evenly. You will probably have to set up a few piles like with the image below. If you only have one pile, then you always be adding fresh material and you will never be able to use the compost.
- Do not use the compost until it has decomposed. For example, if you were to use it to fill a hole before it is fully decomposed, then nothing will grow in that hole for about a year.
- You cannot see it, but I have fenced off the compost with small metal fencing that the rabbits will not climb over. It is temporary fencing that I use to keep my rabbits away from my vegetable patch. If you do not stop your rabbits from getting to the compost, then they will get filthy digging it up.
- Be wary of putting your regular household food into the compost, especially leftover meat because it will attract flies and rodents. We do throw our old apples on the pile, but we cover the apples over with sawdust to keep the flies away.
Random Savings Tips For Rabbits
- Instead of buying cage covers, take a look on Gumtree or Facebook, or websites like Freecycle to see if anyone is giving plastic covers away that you could use. The stuff they cover building supplies in will do the job, and even old caravan covers can be cut up and used.
- If you don’t have a shed for your bunnies to live outside, and you don’t want to buy a shed, you can look online for free wooden doors and make a shed out of those. Cover the top with corrugated see-through plastic. It allows the light in and the light stops the flies from congregating within the shed. Leave a little airflow at the top too so that warm air rises and leaves because you have to beware of the greenhouse effect when you have a see-through roof.
- When you first get a rabbit make sure you research a vet that knows a lot about rabbits. Very few vets are experts with rabbits and most will know less than the over Bing or Google searcher.
- Get your bunny insured. It helps with their jabs and other vet bills you may have. Then again, it may depend upon how many rabbits you own. I had eleven at one point and couldn’t afford to insure them all. The problem was that they cost me a fortune when they became sick, but it would have also cost me a fortune to insure eleven rabbits, so I was screwed either way.
- If you have bread that is going off or has specs of mould, then scrape off the mould and toast the bread until it is brown. Wait for it to cool and allow your rabbits to eat it as a snack.
- Putting old newspaper down can help make the cleaning out process a little easier. You can use the newspapers if you run out of sawdust, just make sure you take all the staples out of them before you put them in the cage. Here is a post about how you may use your old junk mail, and one of the tips is to use it as temporary pet bedding.
The post Savings Tips For Rabbits And Rabbit Owners appeared first on Savings Tips.
