Raising Rabbits

[Treetop]

i wrote this last night. I was drinking a bit which I rarely do... so it might not be put together to well... feel free to ask questions...

Ive been working with rabbits, I thought I would talk about them a bit...

first I HIGHLY recommend rabbits. specifically if you dont own a larger pasture where the inefficiency of a cow or goat doesnt matter. I say inefficiency because rabbits need a small fraction of the food for to get the same amount of meat. although you do of course have a higher number of animals to deal with, but honestly i see this as a bonus...

why is having a bunch of rabbits ideal over a single cow for meat? Well doe one I can harvest them at a size there is no need or little need for left overs. I dont need to store a large amount of meat as you would with a larger animal. I can also breed them very fast when food is available. I could easily grow a cows worth of meat in a year if I had enough forage for them. OR conversely if food is tight in the winter perhaps... I could save one male and two females (although Id personally find a way to make sure I had atleast 2 males, just in case) and easily still produce enough babies in spring when food is plentiful to have a large amount of meat for the year....

the fur is also potentially useful. Although i havent saved any of mine yet except for in the garden. you can not only make little furs or leather pieces to patch together.. but you can also comb out some breeds hair and make yarn as if it was wool of a sort. i might actually try that.

chickens are for eggs, there are only a handful of breeds that grow well enough to raise them for meat. raising rabbits for meat is MUCH easier to feed them then it is chickens, if your providing all the foods. So imo chickens arent a small homestead meat animal (besides culls of course) the rabbit fills that role, the chicken is for the eggs... If you get new zealand meat rabbits or californians, they both grow very fast and are easy to source... Its true chickens can be free ranged, although with a fence so could rabbits actually... Most of us dont live in areas free ranging rabbits would be to easy. If I did it, id need some type of net or something to keep various birds from eating my chickens.

so... on to raising them...

[Treetop]

dang I cant find the link i wanted to post... I will get it posted when i do...

anyway, feeding rabbits can be done very basic. depends on your goals and means.

so a basic diet if you were growing it yourself is atleast half grasses. Preferably a mix. Trust me there are choices native or easy to establish for ALL of us.. even where i am with little water Ive found about 15 different grasses that will grow here for me to trial that are known forage grasses.

you also want about a cup of fresh "greens" daily. you can keep it this simple if you want. but fruits and other veggie scraps can be used as well. the greens for a rabbit is a broad topic.. dandelions, docks, purslane, sprouts of just about anything, chicory, etc etc etc... the potentials are endless...

oh yeah.. you also want to give them cuttings from trees. they chew on the buds and bark. Its good for their teeth.

i will post more on the diet here soon. It doesnt HAVE to be terribly complicated though. the rabbit was what peasants in europe raised, because the foods for it were so easy to come by for anyone... It does well in third world areas...

now for the fastest growth you need higher protein then a basic diet provides, but you cant rely on alfalfa alone. alfalfa will bloat them as it does many other animals, but its worse with rabbits... they can eat some of it though of course... sainfoin is another good nitrogen fixing high protein plant that can be used instead of alfalfa. Even though they wont grow AS fast on a diet more like they evolved on, (and easy to produce) if you have the right meat breeds they will still grow very fast, and more importantly be very healthy. youll have to feed them another week or two to get them to the regular harvest period, its really not a big deal at all.. you could of course use grains or a legume to boost protein alsoo...

[Treetop]

So a bit more on grasses... if your setting up a pasture youll be wise to pic some "cool" season grasses, and warm season. the cool season ones grow best in the cooler parts of the year, spring and fall, and the warm season ones grow in summer. In this way you ensure you always have fresh grasses to pasture the animals on. Many will use different grasses in different pastures for the types of animals this is relevant. some types can also be harvested over winter.... presuming its not snow covered...

i like this because since im a small set up here, storing tons of grasses is not terribly easy. So rather I will go around and harvest the grasses as needed. most that work as forage in my area are bunch grasses. Im going to use various methods to maximize the water they get as well, and focus mainly on perennial grasses. im collecting seed for the best picks for my area from a few sources so I can breed them some as well...

then you have the alfalfa and sainfoin Ive mentioned. Your nitrogen fixing high protein picks...

For their greens, I couldnt list everything you can do here... Ive actually got a large selection of "wild" greens im trialing for myself, likely many more of them will be better for the rabbits then myself. It doesnt have to get complicated here either, but a good range is best... most people likely have many easy to grow "weeds" right on their property that will be fine.

it will take time for me to establish all this... plying around with all these grasses wont be easy... so there are a few things Im going to do the first season or two until Im up and running...

one is to throw down lots of amaranth seed and water it well... this is a good green for them, and it grows fast... lots of biomass, little need to put much effort in it, or even grow it on imprved soil, although yields are lower on rougher ground...

couple that with some beds of wheat and rye and barley planted just for the grass part... It grows fast, by fall I will have a large patch of both of these (the amaranth and grain grasses) and it will be real easy to manage...

that will be to round out the summer and hopefully a bit into fall or winter...

for fastest production I will be planting beds of mixed seeds. there will be grains like wheats and barleys and the like, and beans and peas and lentils, and sunflowers, and amaranths, corn, etc.... all fast growing and sprouting items. this will be HEAVILY over seeded. If you ever heavily over seeded an area with these, you saw your plants sprout, and grow a few leaves and stop.... Or with the grasses grow to a few inches and stop... THAT is the point im after...

So i will plant one of these type of beds daily. Of a size i expect is enough for that days food for the rabbits... once i harvest the first bed in probably about 3 weeks after its planted, I might not need to add more of these beds if I made them large enough. Perhaps if i under estimated i might need to add a few more. this will be a GREAT mix for the rabbits. It will grow fast, and only 3 weeks into the season and the whole rest of it i will have food ready... done right I should only have my breeding stock to over winter, with the plan to breed them out the next spring..... so I will need much less food over the winter... This will come from grasses I dried and other plants I dried, theres a few others you can winter harvest Im playing with as well. Its a big topic, im just giving a little bit of an over view...

[Treetop]

housing...

you can take this a few ways. most build hutches with metal floors off the ground. this works well, rabbits do well in winter outside, its the summer heat you need to protect them from. Usually each rabbit get its own hutch, with larger hutches to grow the babies with their mommas a bit....

I keep my females in one large enclosure... they seem WAY happier like this... lots of little places for them to hide, I put 5 gallon buckets in there with nests in them... they love it.

you DO need to keep the males from the females and eachother though. they will get them pregnant in minutes any time of the year if you let them. so my males i do have in cages.

Over the summer im going to build them a better set up... for the males a raised hutch with a ramp to get into it. with a fair amount of space for him to run around and stretch his legs. they do NOT need this to do well, but i want them to be happy. the females I will move their enclosure, and make 2-3 more to keep them separate if need be.

some people have them in hutches and also put them in mobile things like a chicken tractor... so they can kinda freerange them. some folks rotate them between enclosures so they dont work to much for their foods...

Most people of course just have them in hutches eating prepared pellets, but that isnt what I want to do for likely obvious reasons for those here...

you can build all this out of nearly anything... lots of plans out there, but those are the basic types of housing most use. It depends on your situation. I got my rabbits from a city prepper who has 6 or so hutches on his 1/4 acre in the city... he sells the babies and keeps them just in case... He feeds all pellets..

anyway... Im giving a basic outline here... But I should be able to answer questions if anyone has any.... just thought a few here might be contemplating rabbits, so it would be good to have a bit of an idea of what they entail and how you could get set up to produce their foods and raise them. if they have food and water they are happy.

[Treetop]

So for a prepper, you could get the grasses and other foods established for the rabbits, but buy them the pellets. Keep atleast one male and two females of the new zealand or californian breeds. these grow the fastest by a large margin... teo males are better in case one dies... more females means you could have much larger populations faster, but then of course this is more mouths to feed when for a prepper this might only be a pet for now... you WILL want to breed each of the females though, you can sell or eat those babies... this ensures you have healthy animals and that their female parts function correctly... also if they get TO old before you breed them once, they wont make good mothers....

feel free to ask any questions... i should be able to answer them.... this is just a basic outline for anyone considering raising rabbits to save money or to ensure any potential food shortages dont come to YOUR house...

[Mossy]

This group is one of the best sources of information I've found on the net for our purposes:

http://www.echonet.org/

Side note on rabbits: From what I've read on the rabbit breeding sites, the females lose fertility if they are not bred fairly young. Keep this possibility in mind.

[Double3]

Got a question for ya from a friend who lives in Florida...

Is clover a decent food source for bunnies? relatively high in protein and its a nitrogen fixing legume. Not sure what species it is, but there is a wild clover that grows like crazy around here.

[Treetop]

yeah clover is great... you still want half or more a mix of grasses as the core of the diet... but yeah clover is great!

[texcollex]

Enjoying your posts on rabbits. I've long thought of raising some and am just now coming into a situation where I will be able to soon.

Have you looked into sprouting various grains and seed for them? This is something that I've just stumbled upon lately. You can sprout and grow the seeds in trays in just a few days and have tons of protein rich greenery for animals to eat. As you mentioned about alfalfa, you would want to check the facts to see which greens would bloat them. Some of the things I was thinking of sprouting are sunflower seeds, oat, wheat and such. You could probably do the alfalfa the same way, just feed it in limited quantities. I wonder about drying the sprouted alfalfa? Usually hay is less bloating than the greenery.

Side note on rabbits: From what I've read on the rabbit breeding sites, the females lose fertility if they are not bred fairly young. Keep this possibility in mind.

From what I understand that is correct. The buildup of fat around the ovaries and fallopian tubes causes them to be infertile when they are older.

[texcollex]

On another note, Rabbit dung is one of the best fertilizers there is. It is high in nitrogen but does not burn plants like other high nitrogen fertilizers. Earth worms love it and along with some shredded newspaper will convert it into some of the world's best soil nutrition.

[knibloe]

My grandfather raised rabbits for show. He loved his hobby.

When I was a boy, we always had between 30-50 rabbits that we raised for meat. The only thing that I didn't like about it was the butchering.

I love shake and bake rabbit.

[Treetop]

Enjoying your posts on rabbits. I've long thought of raising some and am just now coming into a situation where I will be able to soon.

Have you looked into sprouting various grains and seed for them? This is something that I've just stumbled upon lately. You can sprout and grow the seeds in trays in just a few days and have tons of protein rich greenery for animals to eat. As you mentioned about alfalfa, you would want to check the facts to see which greens would bloat them. Some of the things I was thinking of sprouting are sunflower seeds, oat, wheat and such. You could probably do the alfalfa the same way, just feed it in limited quantities. I wonder about drying the sprouted alfalfa? Usually hay is less bloating than the greenery.

yeah I know about the sprouts... i plan to use that as well, except I will let them grow a bit longer...

for fastest production I will be planting beds of mixed seeds. there will be grains like wheats and barleys and the like, and beans and peas and lentils, and sunflowers, and amaranths, corn, etc.... all fast growing and sprouting items. this will be HEAVILY over seeded. If you ever heavily over seeded an area with these, you saw your plants sprout, and grow a few leaves and stop.... Or with the grasses grow to a few inches and stop... THAT is the point im after...

they are probably a bit healthier per weight younger rather then older, but it will still be pretty good, and I want to get into the cycle of producing their foods fast. the pellets arent cheap with 10 rabbits!!! this list isnt even close to all you can include... I will pull back up the thread as i find what works the best.

Ultimately I will have a pasture with a range of grasses, and a range of perennial and self seeding weedy greens the rabbits like. Its dry here so I will have to water some of it for best results (although Im finding the best non irrigated stuff to) but it really shouldnt be hard to manage at all.

People with better/wetter land wouldnt have to do to much beyond making sure the right things grow if they focused on wild stuff.... finding seeds for the best forage grasses for your area and a wider range of easy to grow greens would help but for many areas of the country, just collecting what you can find would do just fine.... Heck rabbits live everywhere from alaska to the sahara... It really is an easy animal to feed.

[Treetop]

On another note, Rabbit dung is one of the best fertilizers there is. It is high in nitrogen but does not burn plants like other high nitrogen fertilizers. Earth worms love it and along with some shredded newspaper will convert it into some of the world's best soil nutrition.

yep. its great for gardens... you can use it directly as your saying... this isnt wise with most types of manures...

Actually, since my wild grasses and greens will be grown under and around my orchards I will be concentrating the fertility in my annual beds as i add the rabbit manure to them... i wont be changing the quality of the soil for my trees to much because trees have much deeper roots then the grasses and such...