Meat rabbit questions for Hoodat (or anyone else for that matter)

[nachoqtpie]

Thank you hoodat!!! From the 3 sister boards I've gotten quite a lot of answers. I feel excited to get into our venture, but I know that I've got to get more knowledge before I dive in! It's not like when I started in horses and I had someone right here with me to show me what to do and how to do it... I've got nobody physically here, but I do have some great friends who are willing to share their expertise from all over the country!

I will definitely check out rabbittalk!

 

[hoodat]

Rabbits are one of the easiest meat animals to raise. They need minimal space, don't make noise or bite the postman and if kept clean have very little odor. They are high producers. A good pair can raise a litter every 35 days or so but I tend to only breed when the present batch is weaned. That gives mama a bit of rest to get her weight back. A good pair can give you several hundred pounds of meat per year. Very few other animals can match that. The rabbit manure is an outstanding garden fertilizer that won't burn your plants.
Like any animal they can get sick but generally they stay healthy if cared for properly. You can go for years without having health problems. Quarantine any new rabbits you bring in for at least 30 days to keep from bringing in disease or parasites. You should always have at least one quarantine cage set up as far as possible from your rabbitry.

 

[Mickey328]

Thanks for the link, Hoodat. I joined up on RT today and what a wealth of info!

 

[lesa]

I am fascinated by the prospect of meat rabbits- do keep us posted on your journey into this...

 

[hoodat]

I am fascinated by the prospect of meat rabbits- do keep us posted on your journey into this...

What I like is all that free meat if you have a source of good greens. The grain only costs a few cents per day. I know you can grow beef on nothing but grass but it takes an acre or more of top quality pasture to do it. I live in a city and I can still get all the greens I want alongside the streets by watching who lets water run onto the area behind their back yard when watering their lawn. In the rainy season I can get greens all over the place.
My bucks cage is 5 square feet and my does 8 square feet. My growout cage is only 12 square feet. You can run a setup like that in one side of a two car garage or the North wall of a building outside. Course I love bunrabs so I have more cages than one setup. They need fresh air but don't need sun. They are animals that are most active just before and after sunup or sundown. They loaf during the brightest part of the day.

 

[Mackay]

Does anyone pasture rabbits, like they do chickens?

I was wondering about a rabbit tractor? but without a wire floor on the bottom so they can easily access the grass.
We have dogs that keep preditors like fox away so Im not worried about anything coming up from under the cage walls.

Can rabbits eat too much alfalfa? Do they eat timothy and orchard grass too?
How about yarrow? We have lots of lambs quarters to feed them also. Will they eat dried alfalfa/grass mix hay from bales?

Im looking at the prospects of rasing basically organic rabbits so that might require me to leave out
the pellets in their diet unless I can find organic pellets. To me it would be worth the extra cost if I can find them.

 

[hoodat]

I don't raise them that way so don't know too much about it but I know many others do. I'd recommend you go over to the rabbit talk board and start asking on their Rabbit Colonies section. We have people there who have been doing it sucessfuly for years. As I said before, unlike some boards they are very friendly to newbies questions there.

 

[wsmoak]

Does anyone pasture rabbits, like they do chickens?

I was wondering about a rabbit tractor? but without a wire floor on the bottom so they can easily access the grass.
We have dogs that keep preditors like fox away so Im not worried about anything coming up from under the cage walls.

Can rabbits eat too much alfalfa? Do they eat timothy and orchard grass too?
How about yarrow? We have lots of lambs quarters to feed them also. Will they eat dried alfalfa/grass mix hay from bales?

Im looking at the prospects of rasing basically organic rabbits so that might require me to leave out
the pellets in their diet unless I can find organic pellets. To me it would be worth the extra cost if I can find them.

If you read some of Joel Salatin's stuff, he talks about early attempts to raise rabbits on pasture. (In fact those structures were re-purposed as chicken tractors later.)

Apparently the rabbits will dig out of floorless cages and you will spend all your time attempting to re-capture them.

I believe he's got some tractors now with 2x2's at intervals across the bottom. It lets grass stick up between the slats and manure fall through, but isn't enough room for them to dig out.

All of the info you are seeking is on RabbitTalk. There's a whole section on 'Natural Feeding'.

-Wendy

 

[Kassaundra]

This is something I have been doing a lot of research into. I am considering a couple of females and a male for meat for our family. I have been lurking for a while on the rabbittalk site. I live in OK and our summers are brutal so I've been doing alot of research into heat management for the rabbits w/o added expense of time or money (electricity) I came across a fascinating idea to me anyway here is the first site I found that got me to searching for other ideas http://ressources.ciheam.org/om/pdf/c08/95605275.pdf I have also been looking into ideas for gardening duing drought conditions and came across the idea of keyhole gardens (just google that term and you will see what I mean) it is used alot in Africa and such places. So .................................................................. that has lead me to thinking about ways of combining both new ventures. I was already planning on (and have started) making at least one keyhole garden (and hopefully two) I am just at the beginnings of making it so I'm thinking about adding the underground dens into the structure of the keyhole structure w/ small cages connecting to the outside perimeter. I'm thinking for 2 females and 1 male, I would need 4 cages/dens (one for grow out, one for the male, one each for the female) and those could be in the one keyhole garden.