Chinchilla-Scientia-Forum.de

General
In Europe winter is the season, when it is difficult to collect fresh plants. This is due to the cold temperatures and when temperatures drop below 0 deg Celsius water becomes hardly available for the plants. Thus most of plants produce seeds and die off (annuals), hibernate below ground as roots or bulbs (geophytes), loose their leaves (trees and shrubs) or at least slow or stop their growing. As decomposting of died-off plant material is slower in winter as well, it can still be used as food as long as the quality is not too bad. Also the hibernating and resting plants can be used as food. Some plants Even deal quite well with cold temperatures and grow even during some warm winter days when the temperature raises for a short while.

Early winter
When temperatures drop in November and December many animal owners stop collecting. However even the first snow mostly do not reduce significantly the diversity of available fodder plants and with some luck and a mild December with hardly snow it might even be possible to have quite an accurate diversitiy untlil January. In other cases however heavy snow fall in end November or December can curb the available plants much earlier, but usually in many parts of Europe it is possible to find quite a good variety of greens even until December.

Late winter
The late winter from January to February and often also early March is the most difficult period to find fresh greens.

Since I am living in an English speaking country, I hope you don't mind me showing off a little David

This shows what I managed to collect this month. So far my degus are still on a fully fresh diet collected in Edinburgh (plus seeds of course).

2 December, about one half

Cow parsley, dandelion, pot marigold, sowthistle, tufted vetch, wood vetch, yarrow.


4 December, about one third

Alsike clover, cleavers, common chickweed, corn marigold, cow parsley, red clover, sowthistle, sweet alison, tufted vetch, yarrow.


8 December, about one half

Bramble, cow parsley, dandelion, grass, pot marigold, sowtistle, tufted vetch, wood vetch.


10 December, about one third

Brambles, cleavers, common chickweed, corn marigold, cow parsley, dandelion, hedge bindweed, edge mustard, hogweed, rose sowthistle, tufted vetch, willowherb, yarrow.


13 December, about one half

Brambles, common chickweed, cow parsley, dandelion, hogweed, pot marigold, ribwort plantain, shepherd's purse, sowthistle.

Hello Fred,

Thank you for this helpful pictures.
It looks like you have mild climate during the winter. In Switzerland the frost and also often early snow reduce our diversity.