This is the story of how we plan to kill three birds with one stone (Well, not really. We would never kill a bird!). This summer we hope to feed our herbivores, save money, and be more earth friendly with one (fairly) simple project.

We currently share our home with three herbivores: Peter- an 8 year old black and white rabbit, Flopsy- a young lop eared bunny that we recently rescued, and Sherman- a 70+ lb. Sulcata Tortoise (also a rescue). We also plan on adding chickens to the menagerie soon, but more on that later...

Peter


Flopsy


Sherman

Sherman’s only food source is our lawn, so in the dry California summers we have to water it, which is not very earth friendly and can be expensive. The rabbits eat only fresh organic greens, which is earth friendly, but also expensive. The drought this year has finally given us the motivation to come up with a new system.

We are planning to build several very shallow vegetable beds on long 30” legs. The beds will only be about 2”-3” deep, because we plan to grow mixed greens with very shallow root systems for the rabbits. The beds will be on the long legs for two reasons: One, we want Sherman to be able to walk under the beds instead of plowing over the top of them, and two (this is the earth friendly part), we are making the bottom of the beds out of mesh screen. As we water the greens, any excess water will drip down onto the lawn below, watering that as well. We also plan to put wheels on two of the bed’s legs, like a wheelbarrow, so that we can move it around to different areas of the yard throughout the summer.

We’ll post our plans, pictures of the project as it comes along, and let you know if this system actually meets all of our goals.

View the next posts in this series:

• The Herbivore Feeding Project Part 2: It’s sprouting!

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Tags: rabbit, tortoise, earth friendly, rabbit feeding, tortoise feeding, organic, herbivore