Rabbits for meat production

[caitlinsmom]

Does anyone raise rabbits for meat production? How easy are they to raise? What breeds are the best for meat? How do you cook it?

 

We have been considering buying a couple of rabbits and trying our hand at it. I've read and heard the meat is fabulous and from an economic point, very inexpensive due to the high feed conversion. Is this true? It's been years, at least 20, since I have tried rabbit meat but I do remember it being very mild and moist. I was a kid so that could be very wrong. :)

[Starr]

It's a problem when one of the children gets attached to one of the rabbits. Ask my sister. :leaving:

[ocelotmom]

We started a few months ago. Ate our first rabbits last week.

 

It took a while for us to get baby rabbits to survive. During the summer it was too hot, and in the winter it was too cold. We've worked out the "too cold" part, and now have surviving bunnies. Didn't help that one of our mothers was a bad mother. She constantly had false pregnancies, and always let her babies die when she had real pregnancies.

 

But now our good mama had 5 babies with one litter, and 11(!!!!) with the one born a few days ago, so it's starting to be worthwhile.

 

I admit that raising cute soft furry rabbits and then eating them makes me ponder ethical vegetarianism.

[milovany]

We've thought about doing this, too. Have you read Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits? From that, I settled (if we do it) on Florida Whites. He has some other good recommendations if this breed wouldn't work for you.

[KungFuPanda]

We did it once. It wasn't hard. My city slicker husband did it with minimal effort. The trouble was, I don't really like rabbit meat all that much. I we ever HAD to raise our own meat, this would be an easy way to do it. It's A LOT less trouble than chickens.

[caitlinsmom]

We've thought about doing this, too. Have you read Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits? From that, I settled (if we do it) on Florida Whites. He has some other good recommendations if this breed wouldn't work for you.

 

I have the Florida Whites on my list of 5. Around here it looks like the New Zealands are the most common as there are quite a few breeders close by. They are also on the meat list so I may go with these. What made you decided on the Florida Whites?

 

I love all of the Storey guides. They make me think I am capable of raising all domesticated animals. :) Now only if my dh and time agreed with me. lol

[caitlinsmom]

We did it once. It wasn't hard. My city slicker husband did it with minimal effort. The trouble was, I don't really like rabbit meat all that much. I we ever HAD to raise our own meat, this would be an easy way to do it. It's A LOT less trouble than chickens.

 

Why don't you like the meat? Is it a texture thing? I keep reading that it is similar to white meat chicken. :) Not sure if I believe it or not.

 

We raise chickens too. My dh tackles the gory parts and I tackle the gallons and gallons of stock. :)

[milovany]

I have the Florida Whites on my list of 5. Around here it looks like the New Zealands are the most common as there are quite a few breeders close by. They are also on the meat list so I may go with these. What made you decided on the Florida Whites?

 

 

It was his summary at the end of the book: "A meat rabbit of small size that dresses out better than any other breed. It is basically a solid block of meat, with small ears, and small feet, and small bones. At 12 weeks, you can get as much dressed, edible meat from a Florida White as you can from a rabbit twice as big at 8 weeks. Has large litters for a small breed; often used in crosses with larger rabbits to produce meat."

 

Thinking of your comment about ethical vegetarianism, I see the end result kind of differently. Maybe seeing how you treat your animals with humane respect, you'd possibly choose to stay away from mass-produced meat, but not necessarily all meat. Your ethical decision could be to eat meat you've raised humanely (or locally humanely raised meat) rather than what is typically found at a store.

 

ETA -- I will confess that if I was required to butcher them, it likely wouldn't happen. I'd need my husband or one of my sons (or the one daughter I can think of that might be okay with it) to do that part.

[Vida Winter]

I have considered this but cannot wrap my mind around processing rabbits - raising them, fine, processing them, not sure. I could possibly do this but am not at that point now. Many years ago my grandmother served us rabbit stew and it was pretty good although it did not taste like "chicken" as we had been led to believe...

[beaners]

I think at the moment we have New Zealand White and Californian mixes. It was economical for us at our last home because we were selling breeding quality kits to pay for some of the feed. We haven't been doing that here lately, so they're an inexpensive pet/source of meat. The meat is okay, but we don't consider it fantastic.

 

I would recommend avoiding the Brazilian rabbits if you read anything about them. They sound like great rabbits if you're looking for meat with a low input. I was involved in a project for them, but they're too inbred in their present state to reproduce well in an average US climate.

[nevergiveup]

Have any of you figured out how much $$ per pound it ends up being?

[BlsdMama]

We have done it.... Living on a farm, killing them was less an issue. My husband did it and we as attached. Living in town... Well, DS sold them. We couldn't do it.

 

My soon says if he were to raise them again he wolf raise all white rabbits purely because cute rabbits are hard to kill. Truly, we aren't usually squeamish. Puffs and chickens caused no problems at all. Furry bunnies you raise from birth is hard!

[Melissa in Australia]

we have thought about it, but couldn't think of a way to stop them getting Khaleesi Virus.

[JuanitaL]

There's an excellent youtube video of someone ... um..processing... meat rabbits. It's about a 10 minute video and he goes through the entire thing. I won't link since I'm sure it could be upsetting for some. We watched it and thought ".... oh cute little rabbit hopping around ... OH! Oh, (deep breath) ok, yes ... if we're going to eat it we do have to transition somehow from it eating grass in the rabbit tractor to ending up on the grill."

 

We have built one hutch (our first successful hinged door installation on a DIY project, very proud of that accomplishment), we just don't have the rabbits yet.

[justamouse]

I am jealous, I would love to have rabbit. Did you ever see Gordon's Ramsey's episode on rabbit?

 

My Italian In Laws ate rabbit all the time. They had a local person who raised them, and they were an inexpensive meat back then.

[jenangelcat]

We raised them for about 2 years and quit. I was the only one that liked the meat, we had tons of trouble keeping the babies alive and they even when kept for an extra month or two and feeding them lots, there was never a lot of meat on them. We raised the big white ones.

[caitlinsmom]

It was his summary at the end of the book: "A meat rabbit of small size that dresses out better than any other breed. It is basically a solid block of meat, with small ears, and small feet, and small bones. At 12 weeks, you can get as much dressed, edible meat from a Florida White as you can from a rabbit twice as big at 8 weeks. Has large litters for a small breed; often used in crosses with larger rabbits to produce meat."

 

Thinking of your comment about ethical vegetarianism, I see the end result kind of differently. Maybe seeing how you treat your animals with humane respect, you'd possibly choose to stay away from mass-produced meat, but not necessarily all meat. Your ethical decision could be to eat meat you've raised humanely (or locally humanely raised meat) rather than what is typically found at a store.

 

ETA -- I will confess that if I was required to butcher them, it likely wouldn't happen. I'd need my husband or one of my sons (or the one daughter I can think of that might be okay with it) to do that part.

 

Your comments make me want to search for Florida Whites now. :) I don't remember reading that part in the Storey's book. I will have to go pick it up again.

 

It wasn't me who mentioned ethical vegetarianism. :) We were vegetarian for a while years ago and it was purely for health reasons. That said I don't really want to be the one to do the butchering. I don't mind being around to take care of everything else but the actual killing part, eh I get a bit squeamish. Thankfully I have my dh and we have some friends who will help out with these sorts of things in exchange for help on their homestead. It works out well for all of us.

[Punks in Ontario]

We've raised them before. It was a project for the older boys. We were able to get cages very cheap and had a shed to keep them in. The most critical item is to make sure you have somewhere to market them first. A local butcher would take them, but he paid a lot less than another farmer would. He would then take them to market with his. Here in Ontario, they were being shipped to Quebec. For the first year they were making a modest profit and paid for their cages, waters and their feed. Then the price of feed went up more than the price of bunnies so they weren't making much of anything.

 

I would agree that New Zealand's are excellent meat rabbits. We've had some cross breeds, but I'm not sure of their origins - just that we got them from serious breeders. What you don't want are breed like Californians that are large, but have large bones. Rabbits can handle cold quite well, but don't like heat. We had no trouble with winter litters in -10 degree weather. It would occasionally go down to -20 for a few days with no problem. We just wouldn't check the litters when it was that cold. Better to just leave the insulating fur alone.

 

We've eaten a few of them, but I'm not all that fond of rabbit meat. We've thought about having the younger guys raise them, but it took a fair amount of work for me and I'm just not that interested. I had to do all the breeding since the rabbits were too big for the guys to safely carry, do most of the moving and weighing and some of the manure cleanout and supervise the feeding and watering to make sure everything was okay.

 

There is information on the web about how to raise them and what the feed/lb of meat ratio is. I've forgotten all that.

[Punks in Ontario]

Sorry. Double post.

[Wendi]

I have a friend who is raising rabbits now. (It's a little weird, because I have two house rabbits, and used to work for a rabbit rescue.) They've already let their daughter keep one as a pet. I'm not sure how things will go when it's time to "process" them.

[milovany]

 

 

Your comments make me want to search for Florida Whites now. :) I don't remember reading that part in the Storey's book. I will have to go pick it up again.

 

It's at the end of the book where he has a picture of each breed (a different one on each page) with comments underneath the photo.

[KungFuPanda]

 

 

Why don't you like the meat? Is it a texture thing? I keep reading that it is similar to white meat chicken. :) Not sure if I believe it or not.

 

We raise chickens too. My dh tackles the gory parts and I tackle the gallons and gallons of stock. :)

 

I just don't care for rabbit. I think it tastes like rabbit, not chicken. It has the texture of a drier white chicken meat, and I'm a person who always chooses thighs over breasts anyway. I didn't hate it, I just happen to like the flavor of most other meats better. I liked that it was a cheap source of protien when we were poor college students :-) I'm also a better cook now, so I'm sure I could make it taste better than I used to. I don't remember what breed we had. That was DHs project. One stewd rabbit was plenty to feed the two of us with some leftovers.