Lawn grass,lawn seeds and rabbits

[Jaciena]

My friend is trying to turn a bare yard into a outdoor play space for her rabbit when she gets her. Currently only have white clover seedlings here and there in the yard plus tried some dandelion seeds . The yard is roughly 8ft long by 4 to 5 ft wide. The problem is we want to put down lawn grass for her to be able to play and eat a bit. From what we understand from online research is tall fescue is fine and safe for rabbits. Then we saw that red fescue is dangerous. We then saw that st. Augustine grass is safe so we got two 1ft by 1ft sod mats. But that will be too expensive to do for the entire yard. The two sod mats costed $20. We would need 20 +. I saw numerous warnings about fertalizer and treated seeds being dangerous to rabbits but the plants from the seeds are safe. The average information found said to bury the seeds a bit so when the grass is rabbit safe the rabbit wont get to the seeds. So what do we do since everywhere we looked said General lawn grass is what to use but the fertalizer is dangerous. So what canwe do to ensure the "lawn" is safe for the rabbit? What grass types are safe and which are dangerous to rabbits? I saw something about rye grass being bad. Is thermal kentucky bluegrass safe for rabbits? Any help with this is much appreciated !

 

[Preitler]

Hm, here I can get seed mixtures for pasture from our equivalent of tractor supply, and there are dedicated bunny pasture seed mixes on Ebay (well, here, don't know about the US, but I guess there should be some). Sorry don't know the english search terms for those.
White clover, narrowleaf pantain, yarrow, dandelion, etc... are all good weeds.

It might be constant work to regrow the good stuff, I'm fighting an invasion of ground ivy since everything else gets eaten...

Imho red fescue isn't in itself unsafe, but there is a kind of fungus that can make it toxic if the climate is right. Doesn't seem to be a big problem here.
Anyway, there isn't much that can kick a rabbit out if its boots, if there is a lot of variety they should be fine.

There is such a thing as reading too much on the internet, if you search for "*anything* toxic or unsafe" you'll find someone who claims it is, everyone who can post or make a homepage is an expert nowadays. Like that apple seed scare.

 

[Jaciena]

We looked at specific plants for their safety or toxic effect on rabbits. We want to know what grass is safe to plant and what we can do if the seeds are treated such as bury them deeper so the plant is the only available part to the rabbit.