Sherwood Forest Rabbit Food

[Tauntz]

Just thought I would pass this info along:

You can now order your Sherwood Forest Pellets through Drs Foster & Smith. Maintenance & Show Formula: 4.5 pounds - $10.99 & 12 pounds - $24.99 That's the same price on the 4.5 pound bags as when I purchased it directly (well 4 cents more if you want to get technical). So if you are placing an order with Drs Foster & Smith with the required amount of $49 you get it shipped to you free. Anyway, I thought this might be helpful for anyone interested & I do hope this is okay to post. If not, my apology, my only intention was to be helpful to our forum members.

 

[Imbrium]

there's never anything wrong with passing along info about good deals, hehe. do they just sell the M/S or do they also sell the new formula that's not marketed as a "complete" diet with the instructions to not feed anything else (like veggies and hay)? I can't wait until I finish up this last batch of M/S so I can switch to the new concentrated pellets.

 

[Azerane]

there's never anything wrong with passing along info about good deals, hehe. do they just sell the M/S or do they also sell the new formula that's not marketed as a "complete" diet with the instructions to not feed anything else (like veggies and hay)? I can't wait until I finish up this last batch of M/S so I can switch to the new concentrated pellets.

They can't be serious? What's a rabbit going to munch on all day? I mean, I guess if it has all the necessary nutrition that's fine, but rabbits constantly eat (at least Bandit does), I wouldn't have him eating pellets all day. That's so weird.

 

[Tauntz]

Drs Foster & Smith doesn't have the new formula to my knowledge, at least I didn't see it. Going from memory here it is Lactating & M/S formulas. They have a new order catalog, think it is small pets catalog & its listed as a new product.

Sherwood Forest's new pellet as I understand it, is supposed to provide additional nutrients to adult rabbits eating primarily a hay diet, isn't it? Not to be fed alone or did I misunderstand the purpose of the new pellet? I'm a newbie with bunnies but I am a die-hard believer that bunnies need hay 24/7! I can accept a supplemental pellet but not a pellet only diet. Definitely need to research bunny diet & the Sherwood Forest new pellets.

Disclaimer: Any information written above is written by a very rushed, tired & sleep deprived individual relying on memory. So please forgive any mistakes or misunderstanding on the part of the above poster, who really wishes she could go back to bed & is now trying to avoid doing the things that have her tired & sleep deprived! lol

 

[Imbrium]

it's because if you only feed pellets, you buy more pellets and that's good for the pellet company. a primarily pellet diet actually does seem to be quite commonplace in the breeding and show worlds and apparently works well for those rabbits or else very knowledgeable and educated breeders/showers wouldn't still be feeding that way... but house rabbits have different dietary needs.

I'm pretty impressed that they decided to make an additional formula that fits the way house bunnies (specifically) usually are and *should* be fed instead of just sticking with what they hope will sell more pellets. I know they've visited RO multiple times in the past to add to/comment on a thread about their brand of food and honestly, they *have* always given off the vibe that they actually give a **** about the health of our rabbits... so it's quite possible they realized that, despite their feeding instructions about it being a "complete" diet, the vast majority of their customers still insisted on feeding it the way they would any other pellet - in very strictly limited quantities as a supplement to a diet consisting primarily of hay, leafy green veggies, and more hay.

we knew all along that it wasn't ideally balanced for the way we were feeding it... but we also all knew too much about the importance of hay and veggies to cut them from our rabbits' diets, so we defied the feeding instructions. apparently the sherwood forest folks caught onto that fact, and instead of trying in vain to get customers' feeding habits in line with how their food was designed to be fed, they designed a food to be fed the way their customers were already feeding it. gotta love companies that are actually responsive like that.

 

[JBun]

I agree that this co. seems to want to offer a good quality pellet to us. I don't believe that they market the pellets as designed to be free fed without hay, because they want you to have to buy more of their product. I switched all of my rabbits over to the m/s food last year. I didn't pay much attention to the free feed directions. Like everyone else here, I'm used to feeding limited pellets and unlimited hay, so that's just what I kept doing. Several months after switching them over, I noticed two of my rabbits were chewing fur on certain spots on their body. I did a little research and felt like the answer was a nutritional deficiency. So I gradually increased their pellet amount to almost free fed, but not completely, as I still wanted to at least give them a tiny bit of hay. Both rabbits stopped chewing their fur and it grew back. So that was proof to me that this pellet was truly designed to be free fed. And not all of my rabbits had problems on the limited pellets. Just those two. I think how the pellets are, is that the timothy hay needed by rabbits, is included as part of the pellet ingredients. The new concentrated pellets don't have the timothy hay in them, so are meant to be fed with the timothy(grass) hay separately.

So when I switched to free fed and the fur chewing stopped, I had another problem. One of those rabbits started her molt, and because she wasn't getting much fresh hay in her diet anymore, she started having problems with the injested hair from her molt, slowing down her GI track. One day a noticed some tiny tiny poops, strung together. The fact that they were strung together didn't worry me much, as that is pretty normal to have a little bit of that during a molt. But what worried me is that the poops were so small, as that indicates the start of stasis, and can lead to a blockage. So I stopped free feeding the pellets and reduced them, and started feeding more hay. I'm feeding slightly more than when I was feeding limited pellets the first time, so that I could hopefully avoid the nutrient deficiency problem again. I kind of wasn't sure what to do at this point. Because I was having so many problems with the sherwood pellet, I decided to just switch over to a store bought pellet, with the soy and molasses products in it. I didn't want to cause I liked the quality of the sherwood and the fact that my rabbits urine seemes not to stink as bad, but feeding it had become such a problem. So I started to transition my rabbits over to this new pellet. I didn't even get halfway transitioned before I started having some problems. Main one, my rabbit room started to STINK to high heaven. The ammonia smell was awful, and I wasn't even halfway switched over. Then two of my rabbits with sensitive digestive systems, started getting soft poop, and I was transitioning WAY slow. Like it had been two weeks and I wasn't halfway transitioned over. So I knew that the soft poop didn't come from transitioning too quickly. My rabbits just couldn't tolerate the extra carbs and sugars in this rabbit food. So I reversed the transition and put my rabbits back on the sherwood food. The stink went away, and the soft poop stopped.

Wasn't sure what to do, so I was pretty happy to find out about the new concentrated pellet. So I bought some and have started switching my rabbits over to it. I'm not quite sure how it's going to work out, but I'm hopeful. I do like that I'll be able to feed a little less pellets, and can feed more hay. Only thing that I don't like about it is that it is made only with alfalfa hay and no timothy, and so the calcium content is high. But sherwood seems to be the only pellet that is well tolerated by all of my rabbits, and I don't want to deal with the ammonia smell from feeding soy based pellets again. So I'm sticking with the sherwood, and hoping the concentrated pellets work out better for me and the buns.

 

[Blue eyes]

Jenny, thanks so much for that long explanation of your experiences with Sherwood Forest. That was so informative.

I can certainly see also that our rabbits are all unique in how they tolerate/don't tolerate certain foods/ingredients. Since you have more rabbits, you are seeing a broader range of potential reactions to SF. I especially like the idea of the less potent urine smell!

I would love to hear a follow up of how the buns do on the newer concentrated pellet. They do sound like a more attractive product to me now (especially with keeping up normal hay eating).