Rabbits are an excellent animal to add to the homestead, but as you may already know, these adorable little critters can really much their way through the hay.
With a large adult rabbit capable of eating 1/4 to 1/2 lb of food per day, you can expect to go through a large 70 lb square bale of hay in 14 days or less with 10 rabbits.
Therefore, it’s important to have sufficient storage for hay when you have homestead rabbits; especially since rabbits should never have molded hay.
How to Store Hay for Rabbits
Hay, like any other harvest, requires a proper environment to protect its nutritional value and safety as a food source for your rabbits.
Hay should be kept dry and in an environment that promotes cleanliness to prevent contamination.
You should never store hay on soil; instead, store hay in a wooden loft, or on a heavily graveled or concrete surface.
If hay is allowed to contact the soil, it can wick up moisture causing mold.
If your hay barn or shed has a bird or rodent problem, elevate the bales off of the ground and cover them with a tarp.
Feces or urine from rodents or birds can cause your animals to become ill, so always try to prevent hay contamination.
Obtaining Quality Rabbit Hay
In order to store hay properly, you need to have high quality rabbit hay. Otherwise, the hay itself may already be prone to spoilage, which could also spoil the rest of your bales. High quality rabbit hay is not:
- Full of sticks and weeds
- Moldy
- Wet
- Green
- Aged/from a previous growing year
- Loose
- Incredibly dusty
- Stinky
The hay should smell fragrant and pleasant, and should not send up smoke signals when you break a flake off. If you are searching for hay locally, look for horse hay.
“Never wet” hay is a term commonly used when describing horse hay. It simply means that it was cut, dried, and baled before rain could get to it; virtually eliminating the risk of mold.
Horse hay is the quality of hay that rabbits require.
Keeping Hay Out of the Rain
Never allow your bales to get rained on, or they will mold.
All it takes is one rain shower to cause a bale to mold, so avoid buying hay that has been rained on and never leave bales out in the weather.
If a bale does get rained on, immediately disassemble the bale and fluff it to increase air circulation. Leave it in a dry, well ventilated building; this may help to prevent mold, but this should only be done in an emergency situation.
If you have nothing else to feed the rabbits (such as in a remote location during a bad winter) this method will reduce the risk of mold contamination.
Great Places to Store Rabbit Hay
Depending on the amount of hay that you need to store and the amount of time that you need to store it for, we have a few good suggestions:
- For small bales of hay for a handful of rabbits, a large plastic tote with some ventilation holes is perfect.
- If you have to store up to 5 bales at a time, your garage is a great place for storage. Just be sure to elevate the bales away from mice and rats.
- For more than 5 bales, such as 10 to 20, you will need a hay barn or a shed. Again, ensure that the building has ventilation and that birds and mice cannot soil it.
- If you do not have a building for storage, I recommend building a platform outdoors with pallets, fallen trees, or cinder blocks; then, stack your hay bales on top and cover them with a waterproof tarp.
Regardless of the resources that you have available to you, hay requires two main storage variables: a dry environment with no pests. As long as you can provide these two conditions, your rabbits’ hay should store throughout the winter season.