Hares are able to exist only in natural conditions. Therefore, in terms of food, they have a much more difficult time than the same domestic rabbits. What hares eat depends on what food is available to them in the current season. And this feed is exclusively of vegetable origin.
Diet of a hare in summer and autumn
In a warm season, animals have the opportunity to eat a lot of juicy greens. Favorite hare treats are clover, yarrow, bedstraw, dandelion, tansy, and other herbs. Animals and berry plants are attracted, both their stems and leaves, and the fruits themselves. And if the hare finds moss, it will not refuse such food either.
Trees and bushes are also a source of valuable food for hares. In summer, animals feast on their lower leaves and nutritious shoots. Young trees are willingly eaten whole. In this regard, the hare often looks like a pest in the eyes of people, since rooted seedlings often become the mentioned trees.
In addition to eating the ground parts of plants, the animal can find food for itself in the soil layer, in the form of various roots. And sometimes, underground, the hare manages to find truffles - mushrooms with fleshy and fragrant fruit bodies, which he also gladly feeds on.
During the ripening period of the crop, the hare, having visited the potato field, can dig up and eat the tubers of the plants. The fruits of other crops also do not go unnoticed by the long-eared animal, which visited agricultural lands in late summer or autumn.
At the same time, ripe alder cones, as well as rowan and rose hips become tasty food for the animal. By the way, the hare is known as a seed distributor. They serve as food for the animal, but not all are digested in its stomach.
As the fall continues, more and more coarse food appears in the hare's diet. Now fresh greenery is replaced by dead grass, bare branches of shrubs and tree bark. And this feed will be the main one for a long time.
The diet of the hare in winter and spring
Whether the animal will survive in frosty time, to some extent depends on the amount of precipitation. Much of what hares eat in winter is hidden under the snow cover, and if the animals cannot get to the vegetation, they are very hungry and it becomes much more difficult for them to withstand low temperatures. All this often leads to the death of animals.
In order to facilitate its existence, a resourceful animal with the onset of severe cold weather moves closer to settlements and on a hill where there is less snow. Having noticed a haystack, the hare gets the opportunity to rest in it and get enough of dry grass.
In winter, animals look for surviving spikelets of grain in the fields. But the biggest luck for hares will be to attack winter crops. If such a place is visited by a whole detachment of animals, then a significant part of the work of people can be wasted, while the hares will be satisfied.
Frozen berries left on the bushes, as well as fruits that have fallen in the fall, which the hare diligently digs out from under the snow, also save the animals from hunger. Tree bark is necessarily present in the winter diet of these animals. Most often, the hare chooses soft breeds: birch, aspen and others.
In the spring, animals finally get the opportunity to eat the sprouts that make their way through the rapidly melting snow. Buds and blossoming foliage, fresh grass and young shoots - there is a lot of healthy and satisfying vegetation in the spring hare's diet.
But do not be surprised to notice how the scythe, along with juicy food, grabs the soil with small pebbles - it was not easy for the animal in winter, and so it replenishes its depleted body with nutrients.
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