(Take a handful, squeeze it into a bundle and saw it off into a box with an ordinary hand saw.) You can also feed vetch, cow peas, and other rich hays. The rabbits can manage the hay better if it is cut up in three or four inch lengths. Timothy isn’t as high in protein as clover, but if it’s properly cured it’s better than a poorly cured clover or Alfalfa.
Starters orders 6 breeding guide full#
This you keep full of hay - the rabbit experts recommend Alfalfa, but a good, leafy clover hay is all right. Of course, when you can put rabbits or chicken or anything else in a freezer and leave them there for a few weeks or months you’ll find that you think of them as “meat” - not “cute animals.” What to Feed RabbitsĮach rabbit hutch should have a hayrack. Incidentally, after we did get the rabbits we didn’t mind the idea of raising them to eat - I guess after eating some rabbits raised by somebody else it’s easier to go into rabbit raising strictly from the standpoint of raising them for meat and not let yourself make pets of them. I guess it was a year before I got my hutch back and got to keeping rabbits myself. Carolyn and I both liked rabbit very much it tastes something like chicken but has a “firmness” that chicken doesn’t have. Wally, who is a most generous-minded fellow, kept us supplied with rabbit - he kept saying that after all he had to pay “rent” in some form or other for the hutch. Wally had such good luck with the rabbits that, of course, I wanted to see what I could do. I could cut that in half, but I like puttering around them.” That is, he explained, “I spent 14 hours actual chore time - as a dub beginner - raising 14 meat-meals for the family. Wally figured out how much time it took him to raise a three pound fryer. You’d pay a dollar, at least, in the market for him. A Chinchilla weighing three pounds, live weight will cost you from 25 to 35 cents or a little more to raise. Wally rubbed a little Mentholatum on her nose so she couldn’t smell the difference between her own and the young one from the other litter.Īt seven weeks all 14 of the young rabbits were alive and frisky. So Wally destroyed four from one litter of 12 and gave the other doe an extra to bring her litter of six up to seven. Seven is a big enough litter, according to the experts, for one doe to raise. He bred the does shortly after he got them.
Wally started with a “trio” - a young buck nine months old and two does of the same age.
You can obtain names of buyers from a rabbit magazine. Right now, for example, buyers are offering from 30 cents to $1.50 apiece per pound. In ordinary times many of the small rabbit raisers don’t bother to save the skins, but they do have some value. Of course, there are Angoras (with their beautiful, white, long fur) and other “fancy” breeds. There are are a number of other good medium weight breeds. The New Zealand Whites are another popular medium weight breed - their white fur is worth more than the Chinchilla. They eat a lot more, of course, and their fryers, at seven to nine weeks, weigh not too much more than do those of the medium breeds at the same age. You could go in for the Flemish Giants, for instance, that sometimes weigh 20 pounds. Wally favored the medium sized breeds, which weigh around eight to 10 pounds grown. You can take your pick of several good meat breeds. Wally picked a variety called the Chinchilla. He borrowed the hutch, set it up in his garage and began reading up on the subject of rabbits. Then, a friend of mine, Wally Boren noticed I hadn’t done anything with my rabbit hutch and he asked if he could use it until I got ready. It wasn’t hard to put off getting the rabbits for a while. The hutch eventually came, but Carolyn was still skeptical and, anyway, we were up to our necks getting our barn finished up, learning to milk, running our broiler battery, tending to our bees and goats and setting the geese. One payday when I happened to read an advertisement offering a six compartment, all-metal wire hutch for sale for less than $20 I couldn’t resist this good buy. My wife, Carolyn, however, was sort of skeptical of the project because she thought that she she might not be able to eat the rabbits - they looked so cute.
I had read many times that they produced excellent tasting meat at little cost. One of the first projects I wanted when we moved to our place in the country was rabbits.
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