The Economic Bunny

[kagerod]

Check out any organic markets for veggies. A lot of them will place any left-over veggies behind the store to get thrown out. If they aren't taken first- wink wink, nudge nudge! You can also ask them directly.

If anything is a good reason to eat healthy, it's your bunnies! A lot of times I'll eat more veggies and give the cut-offs to them. Win-win situation, right? (Plus, for your own personal cost-keeping, if you purchase vegetables according to what is in season and on sale, it tends to be cheaper than meat). I also ask my friends upstairs to save any cut-offs for them.

If you do buy vegetables, buy small amounts of the discounted/older stuff. Use it first before any fresher produce. In Canada, Superstore is a great place to get discounted veggies. Otherwise, buy bulk at Costco or the like. During spring, summer, and fall, pick dandilions and long grass for them to eat- being careful of any potential poisons, of course. My landlord is too cheap to use pesticide and he doesn't mow harder to reach places, so I actually have quite a bounty!

 

[Enh98]

I use equine pellet bedding from Tractor Supply for litter. $5 for a huge 40 lb bag and its available year round!

 

[Bunnylova4eva]

Plant some of your own Cilantro and Lettuce. Greens like this grow SO abundantly a lot of times I can't even keep up with how much has grown and it costs almost nothing!

As for bedding, wood stove pellets are really inexpensive. But, when I tried them with my buns, they ended up stopping using the litter box all together (except for peeing most of the time)-didn't work out well, so I went back to carefresh.

But with the carefresh, I still only use just enough to absorb the pee from a day. I put enough to cover the bottom of the box and scoop 1X daily.

Some people think differently on this one, but when I switched to a smaller litter box, it saved me so much litter. My bunnies peed and pooped all over the big box so I had to clean out a lot more litter every day (instead of them going a lot on one smaller area)

For hay, yes, I agree a big bale from a feed store is SO cheap. I did that for years until our feed store consistently only had moldy and wet hay. Now I feed oxbow until I find some other good feed store with quality hay.

 

[Channahs]

I have chickens as well so I'm making trips to the feed store and buying chicken feed pretty regularly. I take a plastic sack with me when I go and always ask for the spill from the horse hay. They always let me have it, and I usually leave with enough to last until my next trip.