Making Grass Biscuits
Scamp has almost finished his last batch of treats, and the one thing the soggy weather has been good for is growing grass – so I thought: how about some grass based treats.
Ingredients
I wrote the quantities down as I made it, but then misplaced the piece of paper, but I think it was about 400g of grass, three bananas and a handful of oats. As I was making it up as I went along, I don’t think it matters if you get creative with the quantities. My mix made two A4 sized trays.
Directions
Step 1: Finely chop some grass (as demonstrated by my mum), we used scissors, but I guess if you can do super-speed chief style chopping you could use a knife.
Step 2: Add other ingredients. We added oats for biscuitness and banana to bind it together. Top tip – mash the banana and then put it in. It’s tricky trying to mash in with the grass.
Step 3: Mix it all together, like so…
Step 4: Dodge rabbit skidding around kitchen floor in paper bag (aka grass collection device)
Step 5: Press mixture into tray; it needs to be quite thin (5mm) as grass contains a lot of moisture that needs to dry out. I also tried scoring it but it didn’t really help when it came to breaking it into pieces later.
Step 6: Bake on low heat for several hours – it took about 3hrs at 130 degrees
Step 7: Prise out of tray (yep, not the prettiest of treats to look at)
Step 8: Conduct a taste test, verdict: very yummy thanks!
Step 9 : Do the washing up!
Licking the bowl is the best bit of cooking!
They aren’t quite so pretty as the Fenugreek & Banana rabbit treats but should be very healthy as they are mainly grass. Scamp is a good hay/grass eater anyway but I wonder if a bunny that’s not so keen might enjoy these as a sneaky way to increase their hay intake. I imagine you could use hay instead of grass and they’d cook quicker. Perhaps next time we’ll try a cross between these and the previous treats.
If you give it ago let me know what your bunny thinks…
Tags: diet-grass, homemade-treats, Scamp
Oooooooh, I will definitely have to give this one a try when I get a chance–it’s got all Mick’s favorite ingredients.
Thanks much for the suggestion of blackberry leaves–I will have to see if I can find any around. I’ll ask my mom if she can get her hands on any (she works as a gardener).
Grass coated n banana must be the bunny version of chocolate cake lol
If you can’t find blackberry leaves, raspberry has very similar properties and might be easier to find if you or your mom know anyone that grows their own fruit/veggies.
These look fantastic Tamsin! I wish we had access to clean, nontoxic grass :-/
I’d pack you up some but I don’t think it would travel well 🙁
ha ha Tamsin I laughed out loud so much to see darling Scamp licking the bowl (tray!) – so funny!!
those treats look great!
I made treats for Wes using part of your recipe from before and another one I found, and he loves the things I produced from inside the oven! he goes crazy for them.
I shall send your little mister a couple before they are all eaten, and I have 2 tunnels here (about 70cm long, 2 different diameters) that perhaps Scamp would like to have to run around in?
just let me know (i’m sending their ‘other halves’ off to Wes’ old rescue in Rugby)
The homemade treats are definitely Scamp’s new favourite thing, he knows he gets one in the evenings when he running about and he gets soo excited when you want in the room you have to be careful not to trip over him as he dodges around you feet.
Scamp would love to test your treats thank you 🙂 He could do with a new tunnel for napping in. Someone (mentioning no names) excavated the floor on his, so it’s more of an arch and then the same someone keeps trying to sit on top of it! Let me know and I will send you postage 🙂
Thanks!
These look great! I’ll have a go, as I have a bit of a fussy bun who doesn’t eat so much hay, but he LOVES banana!
How long did these keep for?
Make sure they are really thoroughly dry (crunchy not chewy) and they should store for several weeks at least. I can’t give you an upper limit as they don’t hang around much longer than that 😉
Hi – I just wanted to let you know that I’ve added your post to our blog hop on Bunny’s Blog!
wow! just made these they turned out amazingly well! i hope my funny bunnies like them though. Blossom will eat anything and Patch is a fussy little bunny.
thx for the recipe, lucy
I’m afraid that whee are terrible at lurking and have broken cover after reading through these posts. As guinea pigs whee were wondering if whee could get our Mummy to make us these, or something similar, or if they are only good for rabbits to eat?
Whee really like your blog though!
Nibbles, Nutty, Bingo & Buddy
xxxx
Well I’m not a guinea pig expert but as far as I know all the ingredients would be just as safe/tasty for you as for a bunny. I’d demand your mummy makes some so you can test them out!
Do I bake the treats at 130 degrees F or C? I just want to make sure before I try them and they either don’t come out at all or burn. My rabbits would probably forgive the former but not the latter. LOL
Centigrade 🙂 basically you want to cook them at a low heat for awhile, that way they’ll dry out instead of burning. It doesn’t have to be 130 exactly, just a low setting and check them now and again to see if they have gone crispy. I hope you bunnies enjoy!
Hey, I would love to try your biscuit out sometime, but just one question, my rabbits are six and four months old, am I suppose to grab some fresh lawn grass in my yard or can I also make them with hays or some packaged grass.
You could use fresh grass from your lawn or hay/dried grass. When you put the fresh grass in the oven on a low heat to dry out – you’re making something similar to the dried grasses you can buy packaged in pet shops – sometimes they are sold as ‘kiln dried grass’.
It would be fine to introduce fresh grass to your two bunnies if you’ve got easy access, just feed a little a day and built up the amount very gradually. It’s a great treat even just fed as is without turning into treats.
i did this without cooking it and it turned out fine and i rolled it into the ball
Did you just leave it out to dry then? I might try that next time then and save on the electric bill – it seems to quite awhile to ‘cook’.
These look great but sadly me and my bunny live in a flat and so don’t have a garden with lots of grass available (don’t worry he always has unlimited hay available!) but thought I’d ask if you think a recipe with hay instead of grass would work?
I think it would work fine with hay instead of grass… it would probably ‘cook’ faster too as the moisture in the grass seemed to make it take ages to dry out. Do cut the hay quite short as it’s tricky to break it into pieces with the strands holding it together – or make individual balls on the tray instead of trying to slice it.
I expect you could also substitute fresh herbs for the grass 🙂
[…] a variation on this recipe from The Rabbit House Blog. I also made her snowflake treats for Christmas. Hopefully, I get a […]
Wow! These look like such a good recipe! I might try with Hay and make them into a circular shape to make hay cookies! 😀
Let me know how it works out 🙂 I keep meaning to try it with hay. I imagine they would dry out much quicker, as hay has a much lower water content than grass, so ‘cook’ faster.
I highly suggest not making them unless you use carrot. vets are against giving rabbit bananas because they cause kidney problems in rabbits
Hi T – that’s the first I’ve heard of it and I can’t find a mention of it anywhere on the web. Banana is often used to hide medicine for rabbits too. Do you have a link to some evidence on this a study/paper perhaps?
Banana is generally considered a safe food for rabbits to eat, the only warning is that it is high in sugar, but as long as you are not feeding lots of treats a day the actual amount of banana ingested isn’t very big.
Just wondering if adding lavender into biscuits may be an option on a different type of treat, mine absolutely adore eating fresh lavender
I think that would probably work really well, might smell nicer when cooking too!
Hiya, this is all pretty cool, i’m just trying to make a couple of cookies with what I have available, because my bun is quite young i’ve only but a tiny bit of banana, just enough to bind, mixture of different hays (as i just got the hay expert sample pack), crushed pellets, alfalfa and some readigrass. Added a drop of water so it doesnt burn too! just concerned it won’t come out crunchy really 🙁
Hiya, I hope they turned out well. It sounds like a good mix and the dry ingredients should help with the crunchiness. Sometimes mine come out a bit soft so I leave them on a baking rack overnight and that seems to finish them up 🙂
Hi,
This looks great, how do you store it and how long will it store for?
Thanks
Kirsty x
cooking now pebble and noddle will love them
I just made these for my young rabbit, using alfalfa hay, some of which was too dusty to feed her as it was.
I’ve never seen her enjoy anything so much. So much so, that she took two bites, then snatched it away and ran with it to hide in a corner to finish it off.
Hi Liz,
I’m really glad to hear your bunny is enjoying her treats – it’s always nice when they appreciate your efforts! That’s a good way to use up the dusty bits at the end of a bag of hay.
Tamsin
Hello! Congratulations, it looks yummy and healthy! I wonder if they preserve well, about how long? In the frigde or countertop? Could you make them in big batches in advance when there is lots of fresh grass available and maybe refrigerate, even freeze them for rainy days? Thank you! 🙂
Once they are dry through, I put them in an air tight container and they stored for a month fine. I’m not sure about longer. I think if you froze them they might go soggy once defrosted. The key is to make sure they are dry.
If you’ve got lots of fresh grass, I would turn it into hay, and then use the hay to replace grass in the ingredients. Hay stores for months (all the way through winter). After all you are basically drying out the grass into hay as part of the process.
I have instructions for hay making here: http://www.therabbithouse.com/blog/2011/07/01/making-hay/
I love this idea, new to bunny raising so reading everything in site. My question is would it work to make these into serving size patties and dry in the dehydrator? It does not heat up the house like the oven. Thanks for any help.
I don’t see why not. Baking them in the oven is to dry them out, rather than cook them, so it should work the same. You could also dry the grass first, then make them to speed up the drying.
Good luck with the experiment!
Would it still work out OK if I added some apple to them as my bun’s love apple?
Hi Alice,
You could replace the banana with finely grated or pureed apple – that should do the same job or being a bit sticky and hold everything together.
Tamsin
Thanks for your reply!
Will this work with normal Timothy hay as I can’t collect fresh grass as I have plastic glass in my backyard, my rabbits are indoors.
Yes, you can use hay instead of grass – I think I may even have an example if you go back through the blog. Just use it the same way – chop it up and mix it in 🙂 I hope they enjoy them!