One great way to ensure you have food in hard times is by raising rabbits. They multiply quickly, and forage on grass if needed, and they grow quickly to a weight worth eating. They are easy to cook as their meat can be prepared exactly like chicken meat. Anything you could cook with chicken, can be cooked with rabbit meat instead. There isn’t a lot of maintenance with rabbits. You just need some good quality raised cages (to protect them from predators), and keep them fed, watered and safe. They are very clean. You can even use a litter box with them if you choose, but most people who raise them for food and not pets keep them outside, and let the pellets fall to the ground, or in a catch basin of some sort.
Care and Feeding
Care and Feeding
Most breeders will feed rabbits a pellet style food available from places like Tractor Supply or other feed stores. Rabbits also love alfalfa hay, and things you can generally find around your lawn like dandelions or other weeds. We use cages, feeders, and watering systems from Bass Equipment. For water, we use a 5 gallon bucket with a Borak 5/16 Tank Connector and Borak 5/16 Flexible Tubing waterline attached that feeds to a brass Borak 5/16 water valve in each cage. This allows a one-way flow of water so water will always be clean and available. It is much easier to top off a single 5 gallon bucket every day or two than it is to refill individual water bottles. Plus, the valves/nipples we use do not leak like a lot of the water bottles do.
For a full listing of the items we use to keep and care for our rabbits, see our article names Recommended Rabbitry Products.
Breeding Rabbits
Rabbits multiply like, well, rabbits. Adult male rabbits are called Bucks, and adult females are call Does. Their babies are called a kit (or kitten). When they are born they are deaf and blind because their eyes and ears are closed. The average liter is between 5 – 14 kits, with most liters coming in around 8. Most does can be bred once they reach 5 – 8 months of age. They are fertile year round, and their gestation range (from conception to birth) is between 28 – 35 days, with 31 – 32 days being the average length to kindle (give birth). They are able to get pregnant again within one day of giving birth, although most breeders normally wait 4 – 5 weeks so the kits she is nursing will be old enough to wean onto solid food, they can be moved to another kennel, and she can have a short break before becoming pregnant again. Most meat rabbits are ready to eat in 8 – 12 weeks if fed properly. This is one of the shortest durations of any edible animal to go from birth to freezer. If you plan to use the fur, you will need to let them grow to at least 6 months of age, and harvest them during the coldest part of the year when their fur is the thickest. If you want great meat, you won’t get the best fur. If you want great fur, you won’t get the best meat. For this reason, you need to decide up front what their purpose will be.
Breeds
If you are raising rabbits for meat, you will want a breed that develops quickly using the least amount of food per pound of usable meat. For this reason, most people will raise one of the following breeds:
New Zealand
Easily one of the most popular meat rabbit breeds, the New Zealand rabbits, contrary to their name, originated in California where they were developed for meat and fur. They come in several colors including white, red, black, blue, and broken. The whites, sometimes called REW (red eye white) are so called because they have albinism (albino) which causes them to have bright pink (redish) eyes. Their fur is all white, and very beautiful. If you let them get older, their fur is great for making pelts. They get up to weight quickly, are very docile, and handle heat and cold temperatures well. If you handle them from infancy, they are usually very docile and loving rabbits, which makes them much easier to handle when you need to move them, establish their sex, breed them, sell them, or cull them. This is currently my favorite breed. A fully developed buck averages between 8 – 10 lbs, with a doe averaging between 10 – 12 lbs. See my rabbit galleries page here for some pictures of New Zealand White rabbits, and the other breeds covered on this page.
Californian
OK, this time, they got the name right. This breed does originate in California. They are actually a breed developed using the New Zealand Whites, Standard Chinchilla, and Himalayan rabbits. This breed was also created for meat and fur. Californian rabbits still have red eyes (albinism) but they generally have black feet, noses, and ears. All other traits and characteristics are the same as, or very similar to, the New Zealand Whites that they originated from.
Culling and Processing
If you are raising rabbits for food or fur, eventually you will need to cull (dispatch, kill, send them to freezer camp, or whatever word or phrase you prefer) the rabbit and process them for meat or fur. I will not get into the methods for culling or processing rabbits as those are best demonstrated in a video, and there are already several on YouTube that show you the process. Checkout this video for culling and skinning a rabbit or if you just need instructions on how to skin and butcher a rabbit click here. What I will cover is some of the details that don’t get covered in these videos.
First, you need to be prepared mentally for this step before you ever get rabbits. Once you get them, and you raise them, and they are so cute, and like a member of the family, and you have spent months thinking of them as pets, it will be much harder to remind yourself of their purpose and follow through on your initial plan. You need to go into this with your eyes wide open, and with their purpose and the endgame in mind. It is good to love them, and take care of them, and even name them. But understand that their purpose is ultimately to be food. My children and I raise rabbits for food as a supplemental/emergency food source. When the kits are born, we will periodically bring them inside to play with, or let them out in a tractor to play with them in the yard, and rub them and show them love. They have a GOOD life. They are protected from predators, well fed, and loved. This is better than nature would ever treat an animal. However, my family knows that at some point each rabbit will either be sold live, or be culled for food. When this time comes, we dispatch them as quickly and humanely as possible, and they are shown love and respect throughout the process.
When we process them, we use a large bucket or tub to catch the blood and pieces we will not use. After we process them, we take those pieces as far away from our farm as possible (so we don’t attract predators) and put them out for the animals of the forest to eat. Just about everything in the woods will eat this stuff, including possums, birds, ants, etc. Most of the time what we dump is gone within a week or two, sometimes much faster. If this is not an option, you can dispose of this the same way you would dispose of meat trimmings or bones from your everyday food, like chicken.
Freeze versus Fresh
My family doesn’t cull a lot of rabbits at any one time. We generally take the one rabbit we processed, and cook it as soon as we can. You really can’t beat this method as it is the freshest taste you can get. However, there is nothing wrong with freezing the meat either. Many rabbit farms will process multiple rabbits at once (which makes sense) and them freeze any they cannot use quickly. If you do this, there are heat shrink baggies that you can put them meat into, them dip it in very hot water to shrink the bag to remove any air, or you can use a vacuum sealer.
Rabbit Byproducts
Fertilizer
Rabbit pellets (poop) is great for gardens. Not only is it able to go immediately into a garden without having to compost first, it contains many beneficial elements. You’re feeding rabbits the same stuff you would throw in a compost pile anyway, they are just using the parts they need, and letting go of the parts they don’t need. Many breeders will collect and sell the pellets as it is a valuable fertilizer for many gardeners. We use old kitty litter buckets that a neighbor saves for us to distribute it to our customers. The customers will usually bring the buckets back when they are done so we can reuse them. You can put the pellets into anything that will hold them, just keep in mind that if it seals airtight, you may get some mold or mildew if it is in there for long periods of time. We have a large compost pile that we put any excess into when it is not selling fast enough, or during the winter months. During the summer, we are usually able to sell it about as fast as the rabbits make it. It helps supplement the cost of the food, and it helps the gardeners have a great natural fertilizer for their plants.
Supplemental Food for Other Animals
As mentioned above, a lot of animals will eat almost every part of a rabbit. If you have chickens, it is good for them to have some meat from time to time. It is best if you cook the pieces you plan to feed them first to ensure you kill any parasites, but as long as the animal was in good health, you are probably ok anyway. Chickens can benefit from the meat and organs (heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, etc.), but I don’t recommend you feed them the stomach or intestines. Chickens will pick the meat off any bones, so if you don’t keep/cook the ribs, give them that as well.
I hope this has been helpful to at least give you an idea what you will be getting into, and what to expect.