Meat rabbits!

If you grow for meat, rabbits are definitely the way to go. If only they layed eggs as well!

We have some lovely friends who dove head first into rabbits. It only took a few visits before I was hooked on the idea of raising bunnies for ourselves.

I grew up eating wild rabbit and loved it, as did my husband. We took an ill thought out chicken tractor (it was one of our first prototypes) and retrofitted it for rabbits. The next day we brought home two little female bunnies, just 5 weeks old, and enjoyed the joys of raising little bunnies.

This time around, you really do learn a think or two about animal husbandry after 12 years of chickens, we did things right. The baby bunnies had a perfectly serviceable tractor to live in while we set up an unused green house as a proper bunny hutch.

I have found that most structures can be made quite sturdy, if less attractive, with random bits of materials laying around. I am a firm believer in animal fencing and zip ties. I spent a day zip tying every random scrap of fencing and hardware mesh to the greenhouse frame. Once done my handy husband built a door and a frame for the rabbit cages to be suspended from. We used cement mixing trays from home depot underneath to catch urine and feces and suspended plastic roofing under the cages to direct it down.

We purchased cages from Bass Equipment, as well as J feeders, resting mats and a watering system. By using tubing, nipples and a 5 gallon bucket we only need to water the rabbits occasionally which makes daily maintenance very minimal. I can only stress the importance of a simply system no matter what you endeavor. Nothing kills enthusiasm like hauling water and feed in a cold, miserable rain.

After a few weeks we added a male to the pair of females and moved them into their separate cages in the rabbit hutch. When they reached maturity we began rotating their breeding schedule. Rosie was bred first and gave us our lovely first litter experience. 7 live babies. They have now grown to butchering size.

Ruby, our second breeding female, was bred 2 months after Rosie. She has kindled and her babies have moved into their own cages to grown up a bit before they are moved into the larger tractor where the kits are raised to full size.

We feed our rabbits a mix of pellets, sunflower seeds, timothy hay and barley fodder (to be further discussed in the next post).