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Post by darthchinchi on Oct 30, 2017 14:04:55 GMT
I'm so annoyed I can't find the name of the dried mallow flower I have sometimes fed them. If I could just find that name i would go with that specific species
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Post by darthchinchi on Oct 30, 2017 14:14:19 GMT
Found this www.degupedia.de/board/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3160As far as I can tell it's mostly chinchilla people replying in this. Today when goigeling it looked like the malva sylvestris is the one to use. It's used as a herbal tea ingredient for humans, and by the looks of how the German community uses it for degus/chinchillas I thing I'm going to source these seeds and spread them out into the garden
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Post by moletteuk on Oct 30, 2017 14:23:33 GMT
I just checked Hansemann's and they don't specify which species of malva they sell. I also checked Degupedia Wiki and found they just say mallow is not poisonous and is suitable for feeding, they specifically mention M.moschata, M. neglecta & M.sylvestris. www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/MalvaI agree if you wanted to grow some that M.sylvestris would be a good one to try.
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Post by darthchinchi on Nov 8, 2017 20:04:49 GMT
We planted some bamboo as there's quite a big gap in our hedge, and I really wanted bamboo. Maybe we will be able to harvest a bit next year. We also planted a hazelnut on the other side of the garden where a part of the neighbours hedge has more or less died. Hazelnut shoots like crazy so when it starts to grow in we will be able to use it for the chinnies.
I'm not really doing fresh atm. Only dried I buy. Funny thing is, most of them only eat their pellets and hay when all the dried forage is gone. Some days they only get pellets and hay and especially one male gets so annoyed he's hanging in the bars making a lot or noice. It's so nice to see how they thrive on this varied diet. It is quite expensive though. I roughly spend about 120 pounds on pellets and hay a year. I spend between 350 and 475 a year on dried forage. I definitely understand why people with a larger number of animals would feel put off by this, and why it wouldn't be a good idea to start doing, if they couldn't offer a certain amount continously.
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Post by darthchinchi on Nov 11, 2017 11:30:03 GMT
Oh, and did I ever say I found some mallow flowers? Ended up trying to find the specific species that is used as a dries snack for chinchillas and other rodents. It's Malva sylvestris. Turns out it grows naturally in Denmark too (I do believe munks brought it here, but it's considered a part of the fauna). As there's a real problem with flying insects disappearing world wide, I get this warm bubbly feeling every time I find something that might help the insects and at the same time is edible for either us or the chinchillas. Next year I hope to get a couple of spots where I can plant a native meadow mix with grasses and cornflowers + redclower, mallow and maybe some coneflowers.
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Post by darthchinchi on Mar 31, 2018 8:51:49 GMT
I just looked at the seeds I want to plant this year. I didn't manage to find any red clover, but will be looking for them. I got coneflowers (different types), kornflowers (some white and red too, and the normal blue), sunflower (red to yellow and different sizes) and marigold. Not sure if they can have all types of marigold, and not entirely sure what species I got. The information on what type of marigold they can have varies, so as always I'm going to experiment a bit on my animals. Same with coneflowers actually. Looking forward to my mallow experiment. Not sure where to plant them thoug... Might go in with the roses as nature kind of does it's own thing there.
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Post by moletteuk on Mar 31, 2018 15:54:25 GMT
Sounds fun Regarding marigolds, calendula and tagetes are both safe.
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Post by darthchinchi on Jul 23, 2018 22:38:23 GMT
Update. It's so dry there's hardly anything growing this year, so they are not gering fresh weeds. I'm feeding a bit of carrottops and plantes some flowers for them, but as the insects are having a hard time too because of the lack of rain, I'm letting them keep the flowers, except for a couple of sunflowers. I purposley planted sunflowers with multipel flowers on each plant. It's so dry I can't even find dandelion for them. Every plant out there is occupied with some sort of struggeling animals or fungus. And I'm running way too low on the fun dried greens, but don't kow if its possible to but any because of the drought. Planted some bamboo in the fall, but lack of water again causes nothing to grow, even the bamboo. Did have to trim my hedge though, so they got some hazel. Happy animals ^^
So the project is on standby for the year.
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Post by darthchinchi on Aug 26, 2018 19:38:02 GMT
Wohoo. The rain makes everything come to life. So today they got some dandelion and marigold flowers. Very happy little buggers. Someone comments on not giving too much fresh marigold. Not sure why, kind of an odd comment. But I'm looking forward to an explanation as to what the person ment. You never know, I might learn something. Their dried flower mix contains marigold.
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Post by deguconvert on Aug 27, 2018 0:20:55 GMT
Looks AWESOME!!
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Post by moletteuk on Aug 27, 2018 10:17:10 GMT
They must look so cute eating the fresh flowers Alice is eating loads of fresh dandelion at the moment, also clover and smaller amounts of young (broad leaved) dock leaves, bush vetch, hogweed, cherry & blackberry leaves, and grass.
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Post by darthchinchi on Sept 2, 2018 14:53:43 GMT
It's funny how some of them go crazy for fresh food, others are quite selective and not that into new items, and those who just doesn't care for anything fresh
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Post by deguconvert on Sept 2, 2018 20:46:52 GMT
It's weird how so many different animals and species are picky isn't it? Our cat is SOOOO picky! If she has a much loved food item too often, she suddenly hates it and would rather starve than go near it. Recently, rabbit has become just such a thing. Which leaves x number of rabbit tins of cat food to gather dust in the back of the cupboard. Maybe in three or four months she'll love it again.
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Post by darthchinchi on Sept 11, 2018 17:03:19 GMT
The weirdly warm summer and lack of rain has caused a lot of flowering plants to think its time to bloom now, and some are showing their last flowers. This is a mix of sunflower, malva, rose, marigold and tagetes (not clear on the english name. It's the little yellow ones. We call them orangetagetes because of their flavor and smell) The animals love their fresh flower blendes, and this far I've grotten two question from people who are trying the fresh stuff out. One had given up on drying rose petals (I get why), so she might be trying out the fresh ones ^^ Not too active with my blogging atm, but doing a lot of minor updates on my fb page, and it looks like it's actually making a difference in the danish community - hooray
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Post by moletteuk on Sept 11, 2018 17:18:45 GMT
How beautiful Your garden must be lovely...or at least until you picked the flowers lol! I bet the chins look cute eating them too. It looks like Tagetes erecta are 'african marigolds' and Tagetes patula are 'french marigolds', but I'm not sure where that leaves Calendula marigolds, pot marigolds?, but I thought that was american? Great news that you are getting somewhere with chin info.
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Post by darthchinchi on Sept 11, 2018 18:33:42 GMT
Somwtimes I wish everyone would use the scienrific names haha. Having to learn everything in danish, then english, maybe German and the scientific. It's a lot of names to remember
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Post by darthchinchi on Nov 29, 2018 12:01:38 GMT
Tried feeding my snails chards recently... They didn't go down well. But the chinchillas loved them... Winter is coming, so no fresh greens left. We ended the fresh season last week (crazy year wheather wise) with the last marigold blossoms from the garden.
Been collecting a lot of seeds from the plants they can eat, that can't survive for more than one season.
Unfortunately they don't want my oregano... It's growing like a weed, and I've just tanken it in.
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Post by moletteuk on Nov 29, 2018 20:25:48 GMT
Mine never liked oregano either.
I'm still poking about in hedge bottoms picking fresh leaves for Alice, the rest of what she wants to eat is so poor that I really need her to carry on with the fresh forage as long as possible. I'm picking the fresh autumn growth of clover, dandelion, nipplewort, sow thistle, cleavers, dock and vetch and fresh grass.
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Post by deguconvert on Nov 29, 2018 22:28:00 GMT
WOW! Moletteuk! You are awesome! I'd never have thought there would still be stuff to pick . . . and there wouldn't be . . . HERE. LOL!
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Post by darthchinchi on Apr 25, 2022 15:46:17 GMT
It's that time og year again where they can have some small amounts of fresh plants If you are lucky you can spot two chinnies here. They love fresh wood clippings. Whis is hazelnut. Some of them want the leafs others the bark. One of my chinnies (the one on the next picture), actually did a few popcorn hops out of pure joy from getting one of these branches Next one eating dandelion and cleavers. I love seeing them eat cleavers. They like them but don't want to touch as they are sticky 😅 This guy is in the smaller side at around 600grams. He's is an andult, so he is in the smaller side. Wouldn't it be fun to breed "tea cup" chinnies. That would be chinchillas from 450-500/600 grams. That's a totally normal weight, but people generally want much larger animals
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