What food does nutria need?
Nutria are herbivores, so food for them should be exclusively of plant origin. You cannot feed marsh beavers with eggs or other animal protein. Ingredients of animal origin can only be used as vitamin supplements.
There are two main directions in nutria breeding: meat and fur. Depending on the direction in which nutria is kept, you need to create the correct feed base.
Food base for obtaining high-quality fur
To improve the quality of fur, nutria must be fed with compound feed. Special compound feed for nutria in retail sale is very rare. Therefore, it is replaced with compound feed for fur rabbits.
It is not profitable to use such a fodder base for breeding meat breeds of nutria. The cost of meat will be very high.
It is unprofitable to breed nutria to get fur because the cost of the skin is low. Therefore, it is better to breed nutria for meat and use cheaper feed. This will not affect the taste of the meat.
Fodder base for obtaining nutria meat
In order to get good nutria meat, you need to feed the animals often. In this case, the basis of the feed base should be a grain mixture, which includes:
- sunflower seeds;
- millet;
- wheat;
- oats;
- barley;
- millet;
- bran.
This assortment consists of grain waste and residues. They are mixed at elevators, and at wholesalers the grain mixture is sold at a low cost, which greatly reduces the cost of nutria meat.
Porridge is boiled from a grain mixture and given to animals. A large amount of vegetable protein contributes to rapid weight gain.
Since nutria are waterfowl, it is not advisable to put an open container of water in the aviary for drinking.
In order for nutria to drink clean water, use nipple drinkers. If you put an open container in the aviary, then every day you will need to change the water in it. An open container in the aviary is filled exclusively for bathing.
In winter, nutria can be given a steamed grain mixture. The amount of water and grain should be 1: 1. In summer, green food is added to the diet and the nutria are given more drinking water.
During pregnancy, females are deficient in vitamin A.
With an insufficient amount of vitamin A, females after giving birth can gnaw off the offspring. To compensate for this deficiency, add feed carrots or one tablespoon of fish oil per bucket of fish oil to the mix. Fish oil is added to the grain mixture cooled to room temperature.