One note on weaning is that we found that gradual drying off of the doe was easier on the doe. We would take away about half of the babies, and leave a few to continue nursing. Lactation is about supply in response to demand, and by gradually taking away the babies over a week or so, the supply can gradually reduce.
By this time, the nest box can be removed and cleaned to ready for the next litter. A decent commercial doe, well managed, can produce 6 to 8 litters per year, consisting of nine or more kits. However, be aware that the stress of continual breeding to achieve more than six litters per year may shorten the life of your does.
The babies — now growing rabbits— can then be sold as pets or grown out. Feed them the same pellets free choice and make sure to keep the supply of clean water adequate. At this point, we separate the males from the females. Telling one from the other is tricky and is done by examination of the genitals. Even experienced owners have some difficulty with this, so expect some mistakes.
Rabbits may potentially begin breeding before three months of age. If you prefer to raise them for a larger carcass and do not separate them, you will undoubtedly find some surprise pregnancies, either at slaughter or with unexpected litters. We would routinely butcher by 12 weeks, getting about a 3 dressed rabbit. A fryer rabbit is up to five pounds live weight, while a roaster is between five and eight pounds.
Beyond this, a rabbit is considered a stewer. You can discern the type of cooking by their names! Butchering can be intimidating, and I will leave that for other posts. Again, a mentor can help you there or you may even hire someone experienced to harvest them for you. Only very rarely would there be any issues with allergies. Is rabbit meat flavorful? Yes, it tastes like chicken dark meat! It may be a cliche, but it's true. Rabbit meat has a very clean, mild taste.
It is highly prized by chefs, and excellent used in any recipes calling for chicken or pork. Rabbit meat has very little fat so takes a delicate touch not to overcook the delectable meat. It is a favorite meat of the French. Rabbits produce another product besides meat — rabbit droppings. I prefer to compost the manure a bit first, but the nitrogen levels are lower than other types of manure and will not burn plant roots.
The areas under the rabbit cages can be cleaned weekly to keep the rabbitry fresh. For ease of cleaning, build troughs from 55 gallon plastic barrels cut in half to hold both the droppings and urine, or you could use a shovel, rake and wheelbarrow to clean the floor under the cages.
Some people raise worms under rabbit cages, providing another source of income by selling worm castings. Eventually, the manure may be one of the most surprising benefits of your rabbitry. One very strange adaptation of rabbits has to do with their droppings.
Unlike ruminants, which chew their cud as part of processing their high fiber diets, rabbits utilize a process called caprophagy. Rabbits ingest the soft droppings, and in this way get the B vitamins and more of the protein that they need. A more detailed explanation can be found at Michigan State University Extension. This sounds gross, but is something need to understand if you want healthy rabbits!
It's okay and healthy for your rabbits to eat their droppings. What is a rabbit colony? A rabbit colony is where rabbits are raised in groups, sometimes on pasture, with all the rabbits, including the males, living together. Only one adult male should be in any particular colony to prevent aggression towards the offspring of the other male.
Some have had success with rabbit colonies. One of the reasons that wire cages are so common in rabbitries is because of a disease called coccidiosis. We clean it out once a week and keep plenty of straw on the floor and in the nest box a nail keg with a strip across it.
In winter, we water the rabbits night and morning, taking the water out before it freezes. In summer we keep the water trays always full. They drink a lot. Here is a recipe for the famous German way of preparing rabbit.
Cut up your rabbit meat and put it into a jar. Cover with vinegar or wine and water, equal parts. Add one sliced onion, salt, peppers, few cloves, bay leaves. Let this soak in a cool place for two days.
Then remove and wipe the meat dry and brown it thoroughly in a frying pan, in hot butter, turning it often. Gradually add the sauce or juice you pickled it in, and let simmer about half an hour, until tender.
Before serving, stir in one cupful of thick sour cream. There's a lot more you ought to know about raising rabbits before you go ahead. But I've tried to give you an idea of what's involved. There are one or two good books on rabbits that you'll find worth while reading. You ought to have more detailed information about hutch building, about dressing a rabbit, about keeping records, etc. All in all, the impression I'd like to leave is that rabbits are one of the first projects any one interested in home food production should investigate.
The space required by my rabbits is only 3 by 10 feet — and rabbits can be started any time of year. Easterners are behind the times in discovering how delicious rabbit tastes. In California, where rabbit is king, many prefer it to chicken, which it resembles. No other meat is easier, quicker, or as inexpensive for the homesteader to produce as rabbit.
A modern, self-cleaning hutch fitted with the new automatic watering, requires less than five minutes of attention a day. This article is dated and is therefore vastly outdated. Timothy hay is the best hay try to give to rabbits.
If your rabbits can't eat long strands of hay there's something wrong with their teeth and they ought to see a vet Rabbits should not eat bread, crusts, cakes or other "human food" Do not give vegetable peelings or vegetables that are almost past their best to rabbits. If you wouldn't eat it then don't feed it to the rabbit. Rabbit food should be a pellet rabbit food. Not a grain or muesli style mix Rabbits can eat carrots and fruit etc but it is best for them to have these as treats due to them having a sweet tooth.
Dark leafy greens like Kale are much better. Rabbits cannot safely eat all fruit and vegetables. There are several lists online including on the rabbit welfare fund website which detail safe foods and plants. Rabbits cannot stand a lot of cold.
Even with several companions they can still take cold and their water will freeze below 1C which is a welfare issue as no animal should ever be kept without the ability to drink.
Hutches should be protected or preferably the rabbits brought indoors in cold weather. They must be protected from rain, wind and hot sun. Modern rabbit welfare guidance for the raising of meat rabbits states that they should be allowed space to move, should not be kept on wire floors and should be provided with something to dig in and something to chew.
Further cheap toys can be provided by the use of safe fruit tree branches, toilet roll tubes, cardboard boxes etc. Please don't put your rabbits in a metal hutch. It will overheat, they will struggle to get a safe footing and it will not result in relaxed rabbits. Inbreeding does not do "no harm" in rabbits. I suggest you Google "changes in dog breeds in the last years" to see what inbreeding has done to dogs.
Also watch pedigree dogs exposed. Or ask yourself if you'd consider breeding your daughter to her father or grandfather? And then breeding their daughter to the same man assuming the father was used at first, it would be the 2nd Gen daughters father and grandfather that she'd be breeding with? And then breeding their daughter 3rd generation again to the same man? For your information, timothy is actually the best single hay to give a rabbit. Carrots and other root vegetables are VERY high in sugar and can give them diabetes very hard to put down in rabbits.
On the matter of breeding, most rabbits can actually take a litter of up to 10 and sometimes higher in certain in individuals. When you start raising, start with two junior 4 or less month old bucks and 1 senior over 4 moths old doe and another junior doe. As a meat rabbit, they can weigh between 10 and 12 pounds. Unfortunately, the Silver Fox rabbit breed is difficult to find.
The Satin rabbit breed is one of the larger and heavier breeds of rabbit weighing about 12 pounds fully grown. Satins are a cold, hardy meat rabbit.
They have a calm and docile temperament. Acting as a meat producer was not the initial intent during the development of this rabbit breed. However, with a mature weight of up to 11 pounds, the Cinnamon rabbit breed can provide a large quantity of meat, including commercially. Named for their red color, the Cinnamon rabbit breed is also valued for their fur and kept as pets.
However, Cinnamon rabbits are difficult to find. While on the smaller size for a meat rabbit at 8 to 10 pounds, the Standard Rex still produces a useful quantity of meat. Developed in France in , the Standard Rex is best known as a fur rabbit due to their coat having a velvety texture. Their docile temperaments also make for good pets. The Palomino rabbit breed is bred for meat both commercially and on the homestead. A popular choice as a meat rabbit for decades, the Palomino rabbit breed reaches a mature weight of eight to 11 pounds.
They offer a good meat ratio and tend to be a wonderful meat producer. While raising Palomino rabbits is relatively easy due to their good temperament, this rabbit breed requires patience, as they grow a bit slower than other meat rabbits. A post shared by halo the bunny halo. The perfect meat rabbit colony ratio is one buck to two females. Such a setup should most likely produce up to 50 kits baby rabbits on an annual basis.
A small colony of rabbits, regardless of the meat breed, can produce more than pounds of just female kits per year, creating a steady supply of future breeding does. A small rabbit colony, one that lives in only a humane 3-foot by 2-foot hutch, could ultimately produce around pounds worth of kits each year. It might sound shocking, but it does not take long to wind up with a rabbit colony with members if you purchase multiple does and a buck or two.
Here is a brief breakdown at the amount of work per week that is required to care for such a large colony while waiting for them to reach butcher weight:. As you can see, whether you are a smart prepper or a poor prepper, or both, you will be putting in a whole lot of time inside the rabbit pen if you attempt to keep a large colony.
There is a lot of benefit to keeping a large rabbit colony, but doing so while still learning husbandry techniques, including butchering and preserving, which was not factored into the above list, requires a substantial time commitment and can become very overwhelming. In spite of the time commitment, raising rabbits for meat is worth the effort. These meat rabbits are stocky and often grow to weigh about eight to twelve pounds.
They are a cross-breed between Chinchilla rabbits New Zealand Whites. This breed of meat rabbits is perhaps both the most common and the most popular. They routinely weight between nine to twelve pounds. It is not uncommon for kits to reach eight pounds when they are only about eight weeks old. Chefs around the globe tend to favor cooking and smoking this meat rabbit breed.
Mature Chinchilla meat rabbits weigh about nine pounds. Want to start a homestead but not sure how? It would be difficult to find a more cold hardy meat rabbit than the Satins. They boast a thick fur that is also heralded for its beauty.
These meat rabbits commonly weigh about telve pounds when fully mature. It may cost a little bit more to keep this meat rabbit breed due to the voracious appetite of the animals, but they do regularly weigh up to twenty pounds when butchered. These are among the largest breeds of rabbits and are also a heritage breed. They were created in France during the s and were only the second rabbit breed to ever stem from breeding cultivated by a woman.
Typically, Blanc de Hotot meat rabbits weigh about eleven pounds.
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