Help with getting 5 week old Californians to gain weight and size fast?

[etx_lindsey]

This may be a hard topic, but I need answers. I have 4, 5 week old Californians, they are a meat pen. They have to be a minimum of 3 pounds for show, but not over 5. They were born January 17th 2022 but everyone else was born about 6 days earlier, their points are coming in but they're coming in slow and they're so much smaller than the rest of the other rabbits. Im feeding LoneStar, its what the breeder feed them, but the other rabbits are being fed Petrus. I have 5 weeks till show, how can I help them become physically bigger and gain more weight to match up with the others?

 

[SableSteel]

Youve still got a while before the show. For meat pens I would supplement with about a tsp of calf manna, a tsp of oats and 2 tsps of black oil sunflower seeds on top of their pellets each night, and free feed pellets. The point color doesnt matter.

 

[JBun]

Maybe there's an issue with the Lonestar feed. You could try transitioning them onto the Petrus feed since the other rabbits seem to be doing well on it. From the ingredient lists, Petrus does seem to be a better quality feed than Lonestar. When the ingredient list just gives a generic and not an exact description of ingredients, that's a pretty good indicator of it being a lesser quality feed.

 

[majorv]

We used Petrus when we had meat pens. I have a breeder friend who raises Cals and that’s all she uses.

I also agree with @SableSteel. For the oats just make sure they’re rolled oats, the old fashioned kind…you can get them at the grocery store.