Whole Grain vs Grain by-products

The whole grain is natures ideal way of packaging nutrients for storage. The natural oils, vitamins, and other nutrients inside a kernel of grain are protected from molds, pathogens, and oxidizing agents that would otherwise destroy these important nutrients.  Most animal feeds contain added grain (or grain by-products) because of the starch (energy) it provides without any concern over these smaller but very important elements protected inside the whole kernel.  Rabbit food is particularly subject to the problems associated with not using whole grains because they seem to be eating from “the bottom of the barrel” with the consistent dumping of these grain by-products into their food formulations.  Sherwood Forest Rabbit Food uses only cleaned whole oats as one of our ingredients (and we use way less grain than most other rabbit food brands!).

To clarify and dispel fears about the use of grain in rabbit food I am disclosing some information that will correct false ideas through a better understanding of facts. Regarding the use of ANY grain in rabbit food, the real concerns we growers should have can be summed up in two aspects:  QUALITY and QUANTITY.

Quality: Animal grade feed grain may have higher levels of toxins present because of mold and other contaminants.

Toxin contaminated feed can cause reproductive and developmental problems.

• As a remedy most feed mills are currently adding “binders” to feed recipes that simply make the toxins “inert” or inactive.
• Another method that has been researched is the use ammonia gas or other methods to “deactivate” the toxins in the stored grain.

However there is a more natural method.

• This requires the extra step of cleaning the grain by mechanically removing the dust and separating out the broken kernels.
• This works because mold only grows on the surface of particles (large or small) unless, in the case of broken kernels, the surface of the grain is compromised allowing the mold to grow into the soft part.
• Broken kernels and grain dust have been shown to be the “carriers” of these toxins which can easily be mechanically separated from whole grains.
• This extra step incurs more cost in two ways: 1. extra equipment and labor is required to clean the grain. 2. there is a loss in the actual weight of the grain used which needs to be accounted for.
• The cleaning process has been shown to reduce the amount of toxin contamination by over 90%.
• Using this process ensures that the grain used to manufacture the food your rabbits consume came from whole kernels and not broken kernels and grain dust possibly carrying mycotoxins.

Quantity: The percentage that the diet is comprised of grain is important … whether it is a single grain or a mixture of various grains and grain by-products.

• The reasoning is thus: a large amount of grain in the diet of a rabbit increases the risk that some of it won’t be digested and absorbed before it gets to the caecum.
• Starch from grain in the caecum acts like candy for bad bacteria and their resultant growth will change the pH and cause digestive problems.
• An obvious sign the of this is an increased incidence of diarrhea and bloating.

Younger rabbits are more prone to suffer from this problem because their digestive system hasn’t fully matured yet. They lack the capacity to make enough of the digestive enzymes needed to breakdown and absorb the excess starch before it gets to the caecum (baby rabbits perform better with a higher fat diet). WE SHOULD HAVE THE SAME CONCERNS FOR THE EXCESSIVE ADDITION OF PROTEIN SUPPLEMENTS LIKE SOYBEAN MEAL commonly used to increase the crude protein content of rabbit food!

Every grain has unique characteristics that may or may not be important when incorporating it into the diet of any animal. Many feed formulations add grain to increase the energy content without considering these other important aspects of the grain. It is true that some grains are more easily digested in some animals but in rabbits the actual functional differences are so small that I chose oats for some of its unique characteristics that complemented the style of a natural feed for rabbits.