Anyone raise meat rabbits

[redneck1]

Just like the title says , anyone here raise meat rabbits ?

Do you have a favourite breed or are you more of a any ole bunny will do person ?

I am not going to do any thing like breeding , but I do like a nice tender tasty rabbit every now and then .
So later in the spring I am going to find a half dozen or so yummy critters and raise them .

I'm not at all worried about cost , a local live stock auction runs rabbits threw all the time and after the easter pet rabbit thing is over they tend to be fairly reasonable if not out right cheap

[Half Dog]

I would like to know too. I shot a rabbit from south Texas once and it tasted like roast beef. I’m not sure what he ate to make him taste so good.

[Evoken]

Currently don't have any, but have raised them for a while. We like the medium breeds for ease and maximum meat output. The large breeds tend to be too much bone/guts.
The ones we liked the best were silver fox and American, beautiful coats and nice meat. We have also raised Californians, new zealands, and another breed that escapes me.

They are very easy to raise with minimal effort. I have a pump system that uses a pond pump and tubing to provide water and use the hopper feeders. Just a quick check once a day. Separate cages for the bucks and does. Little ones stay with momma until 4-6 weeks. You have to keep them seperated because well the breed like rabbits.....

Domestic rabbit is much different than cottontail. So much in fact that they cannot crossbreed. Domestic rabbits are actually hares. Meat is less stringy and more tender. We do fryers at 5-6 lbs and roaster at 7 and up. Easy to dress and clean. Rabbit liver is quite a delicacy! Cook a pound of bacon, remove. Coat liver in flour and pepper. Add a splash of lemon juice to bacon grease, fry liver. Crumble bacon back in and enjoy!

[GregLaROCHE]

One of the fastest meats to raise. No pun intended. Can be excellent quality if the right breed and raised correctly. Quality of meat is more important than size as far as breeds are concerned. Don’t wait too long to harvest them. Here’s one of the best tasting in my opinion.
https://www.omlet.us/breeds/rabbits/fauve_de_bourgogne

[gbrown]

I would, if I had the space. 2 bucks and 4 does, you could turn out some meat. As I recall, pregnancy is like 22 days. Let the little ones stay with mom for 4 weeks, put them on feed for 4 weeks, then slaughter. New Zealand and the California breeds are good meat rabbits, if I remember correctly. Nice, lean, mild meat, good stewed, fried, or ground. If you have enough, you add some fat and make sausage. I've raised a couple of rabbits in the past, but stopped, because of pressure from certain family members.

[gbrown]

Also, I will add, building the hutches is pretty simple. 2x2s, hardware cloth, and plywood. One of the pluses is the rabbits turn out a lot of poop, high in nitrogen, good fertilizer. If you make friends with your local guy in the produce section of the grocery, you can get a lot of free food. Supplement the rabbit pellets to cut down on costs.

[Beagle333]

Definitely New Zealand. I've raised hundreds upon hundreds. I sold little ones in college for snake food to buy books. You'd be surprised how many of these college kids have damn snakes. (LOTS!!!)
But I would process 15-20 every month for us to eat. Easy to raise if you follow the rules and very lean and tasty. Even though I raise only chickens and turkeys now, you'd give them up for rabbit if you were only after the meat. I had to switch because my current wife says NO to killing rabbits. lol

[redneck1]

I feed a cow , and do a pig every year . did a brain damaged suicidal lamb one year .
It pains me to say it , but a little variety every now and then is nice .
Except for fried chicken once or twice a year I'm not a poultry fan .

Rabbits on the other hand are mighty tasty. I've just never raised them before . I kinda figure get a half dozen in the spring , they are done and in the freezer fairly quickly so I won't have to take care of them threw the hot part of summer . and maybe do it again in the fall , avoiding the extra work of winter cold .

This is good info , thank you all .

[Beagle333]

Get a half dozen in the Spring and you'll have 35 before Summer. LOL

[Thundarstick]

I raised a bunch of them in my younger years! I recall the age of slaughter having about as much to do with the meat quality as the breed, but that may have been most where mixed breed rabbits! My memory is that the kitts don't like a draft, and I've lost whole litters to a late season cold north wind! They can drink more water than you would ever think possible and have very wet litter under a cage. The droppings are not particularly high nitrogen, but are quite balanced. Their droppings can be placed rite around growing plants with no worry of burning the plants, try that with chicken droppings and see what happens!
I'd have chickens and rabbits now, but I like to leave on trips and my wife isn't a farmer! [smilie=l:

Read everything you can, and have at it!

[gbrown]

Definitely New Zealand. I've raised hundreds upon hundreds. I sold little ones in college for snake food to buy books. You'd be surprised how many of these college kids have damn snakes. (LOTS!!!)
But I would process 15-20 every month for us to eat. Easy to raise if you follow the rules and very lean and tasty. Even though I raise only chickens and turkeys now, you'd give them up for rabbit if you were only after the meat. I had to switch because my current wife says NO to killing rabbits. lol

I can relate to your dilemma, my problem, also. LOL! Seems like that danged Easter Bunny is our downfall!

[.429&H110]

No, we didn't eat them.
My daughter visited the guy down the street, he was selling Easter bunnies. The stud bunny was going to be dinner so she bought him, named him Snowball. I found he would make his weight in poop every month. So we bought two more. I sythed perenial rye about as fast as they ate it, the poop fed a peony hedge. Bunny poop is amazing, will grow anything, pole beans, carrots, squash. Snowball finally died when the snow flattened his hutch after 17 years of poop. Bunnies bite. We handled them as puppies, but as adults, they would grab you with their claws and sink in their teeth. Their hutches were two feet up on posts, buried in a mound of rye.
We could not eat a pet, but bunnies make poor pets. What a pile of poop they made!

[jim147]

They never tasted right to me. Kinda like farm raised catfish. If you grow up on the wild it's just not the same.

[Scrounge]

Just like the title says , anyone here raise meat rabbits ?

Do you have a favourite breed or are you more of a any ole bunny will do person ?

I am not going to do any thing like breeding , but I do like a nice tender tasty rabbit every now and then .
So later in the spring I am going to find a half dozen or so yummy critters and raise them .

I'm not at all worried about cost , a local live stock auction runs rabbits threw all the time and after the easter pet rabbit thing is over they tend to be fairly reasonable if not out right cheap

Back when we were teens, my brother and I raised rabbits for meat. Mostly anybunny would do, but the New Zealand Giant is a big bunny with lots of meat. We were selling most of them to our grandma and some of her friends, and eating them, too. Bunny is yummy! Not real high in fat, if you need to cut back on fat, but you can get deficiency diseases if bunny is too much of your diet because of the low fat. Fry them in lard, and avoid the problem, and they taste good!

[GregLaROCHE]

Definitely New Zealand. I've raised hundreds upon hundreds. I sold little ones in college for snake food to buy books. You'd be surprised how many of these college kids have damn snakes. (LOTS!!!)
But I would process 15-20 every month for us to eat. Easy to raise if you follow the rules and very lean and tasty. Even though I raise only chickens and turkeys now, you'd give them up for rabbit if you were only after the meat. I had to switch because my current wife says NO to killing rabbits. lol

My wife made me stop too. I still buy them sometimes. My favorite way to cook them is on a rotisserie, wrapped in bacon and herbs, over a charcoal fire.

[GregLaROCHE]

They never tasted right to me. Kinda like farm raised catfish. If you grow up on the wild it's just not the same.

Today some raise them free range. They have a big pen with grass and PVC pipes buried.

[gunarea]

Here is the end all; Flemish giant. Large carcass, fast growth, easy keeper, docile. A doe and a buck on quality feed will supply enough meat to keep up with a family of four easily. Remember this, rabbits will not lose fat once it is put on. Do not overfeed! Small herd and large pens. Rabbit is not a primary meat for humans as it contains little fat and as such should be consumed more as a secondary proteins source. Good carcass can be cooked nearly any way and be delicious. Well hydrated bunnies can nearly be dressed without use of a knife. I know rabbit!
Roy

[Jeff Michel]

New Zealand whites are a good healthy breed, keep their cages clean and watch for ear mites and you shouldn't have any problems. After the doe kindles, take pains to keep cats and dogs out of the barn or shed where they live, they sometimes flip out and kill their young if they get scared. If you breed, always put the doe in the bucks cage, never the buck in the does cage, the females are very territorial and will whip the starch out of the buck. Process your rabbits at 6-8 weeks for best eating. At home we ate rabbit 3 times a week, limited selection in the grocery department. Unless forced into it, I'd never eat another rabbit. Still like to pet them though:mrgreen:

[memtb]

Many years ago, in the mid-60’s, my father did. He had 100 breeding does....New Zealand Whites! There was talk of developing a market for the meat. It never really came to be, and he eventually got out of it. New Zealand Whites were considered desirable, healthy, large birth numbers, and got to butchering weight quickly! memtb

[dale2242]

When I was a child, in the 40s and 50s, there was a number of large commercial rabbit farms in our area.
The were raised for the meat and pelts.

[waksupi]

Back when we were teens, my brother and I raised rabbits for meat. Mostly anybunny would do, but the New Zealand Giant is a big bunny with lots of meat. We were selling most of them to our grandma and some of her friends, and eating them, too. Bunny is yummy! Not real high in fat, if you need to cut back on fat, but you can get deficiency diseases if bunny is too much of your diet because of the low fat. Fry them in lard, and avoid the problem, and they taste good!

The Inuits were aware of this, it was called rabbit starvation, and a lot of cheechakos died of it. The trick was to always eat all the innards, to make up for the missing vitamins in the meat.

[redneck1]

I suppose a person could look at rabbit as a healthy alternative .
Just not the way I cook them .

My favourite way is to break them down into 6 pieces marinate em in buttermilk then. bread and fry em up . .. I like them fried so much I usually don't do any other way . its just good eatin .

And I like to do them on a spit , giving them a nearly constant baste with melted butter . and go easy on the salt n pepper .

[gwpercle]

When my kids got older and found out that the " chicken" they were eating several times a month wasn't chicken from the grocery store but Rabbit from the cages in the back yard ... they wouldn't eat the "chicken" any more and made a fuss about their pets being eaten . I tried to convince them that the cats and dogs were our pets and rabbits were food ... but that explanation didn't go over well with them .

Since the cats and dog had names , they reasoned that by naming every rabbit in the cages that it would elevate them from food to pet status and thus protection from being consumed !

Then my wife liked their view and sided with them ... thus ended my rabbit raising career .
A few of the young "fryers" went into the freezer , we kept one , my daughters favorite , for a pet and the rest went to a new home .
I don't miss having them ... it's a lot of work .
Gary

[WebMonkey]

we raised rabbits for a couple years.

the meat to feed ratio was great but the waste management was a pain.
copious amounts of urine to move.

rabbits are the easiest, for me, to process.

i'll probably end up getting back into them, i still have the hutches.
i'll just need to figure out how to dissipate the urine better.

lastly, rabbit fever was known to many people groups.

the condition has 'rabbit' in the name but it refers to anyone consuming a protein only diet.

really no fear of that today unless you're in the bush in alaska eating only game animals.

schedule a trip to wal-mart/schnucks/hy-vee/country mart for most of us.
i mean you gotta have a big cast iron skillet full of fried potatoes, peppers, and oinions to go with the rabbit straps.
(big dollop of kph pork fat/butter to get things lubricated)
tall glass of full fat goat milk


;) mmmmmm

[.429&H110]

I cut ryegrass for feed and bedding. A layer of rye under the hutches caught the urine and I shredded it along with everything else. The chinese made gunpowder from rabbit urine, so I had to figure that out. Concentrated, fermented, the stinky stuff will make nitrate crystals. If you have nitrate, you can have blackpowder. Bunnies maybe someday will make reloads. They surely did make peonies.

[GregLaROCHE]

When I stopped raising rabbits around fifteen years ago, some people were using cages with a small cubby and the rest was a wire grate. The rabbits could easily walk around on it, but their droppings and urine fell through to a tray, that could easily be cleaned. It made sense to me that it would greatly reduce the time cleaning cages. I was considering trying it, but then the wife put her food down about my raising cute bunnies anymore. I don’t know if that method ever caught on, but seemed very logical to me.

[WRideout]

we raised rabbits for a couple years.



lastly, rabbit fever was known to many people groups.

the condition has 'rabbit' in the name but it refers to anyone consuming a protein only diet

Technically, rabbit fever is Tularemia, a bacterial infection first identified in Tulare County, California (I am a microbiologist by education.) A fair number of rabbit hunters get it while field dressing game, often through droplets that hit the eye.

Wayne

[MT Gianni]

Much of the fat in rabbits is behind the eyes. If you're in a survival situation you need to be eating the organs and brain as well. If you are eating rabbit in a non survival situation and are worried about a lack of fat buy ice cream.

[blackthorn]

I grew up on what I would call a subsistence farm in south-central Manitoba. We had all manner of fowl, dogs, cats, sheep, goats pigs, cattle, horses etc. and we had rabbits. Everything we raised was meat, except for the horses, dogs and cats, a hard lesson I learned about age 6 when my pet lamb was sent off to market. In 1996 I married my second wife and during hunting season I bagged a couple of bunnies. I cleaned them and brought them home to cook. New wife said "those look like skinned babies", and she will not, does not eat them, so, no rabbit for me anymore. She was city raised and I guess its all in your perspective.

[Krag 1901]

MY family raised rabbits in the 50's my dad sold them plus our eggs and chickens out of his 1935 Buick in the Veterans Housing complexes. My Granny raised New Zealand Whites for the University of Loma Linda for medical research. She gave one little two week old bunny to my then future wife who had to bottle feed it and carried it to and from work in a cardboard box. The rabbit learned to be house broken and was quite a pet. Yep put them in cages above a box and collect the droppings, compost them in the grass clippings and leaves from the yard and in four months you can raise any thing!

[GregLaROCHE]

Rabbits are indeed lean. That’s why my preferred way of eating them is grilled wrapped in bacon.