Meat Rabbits

Another venture I am beginning, technically restarting, is meat rabbits. I have raised rabbits for the majority of my life, rabbits being my main 4H project and eventually dabbling slightly in ARBA. In my later years, I always kept a rabbit or two for hobby. A few years ago, I did have a couple unplanned litters and eventually attempted to tractor the rabbits (fancy word for mobile coop) but, unfortunately they dug out one night. As luck would have it, within the same month my breeding doe got sick and died and my buck also died in a freak accident, so my first attempt at meat rabbits came to a screeching halt.

This go around, however, I sourced some sound genetics from a lady who raises rabbits for meat and show. She was willing to sell me a buck who had almost the perfect body type, but would be disqualified from any show ring due to some scattered white hairs in his black coat. Perfect for me, as I wasn’t planning on eating the hair anyway! I also picked up a nice doe from her that complimented the buck quite nicely. My ultimate goal is to transition the rabbits completely off of commercial pelleted feed and onto a natural diet. Because rabbits are hind gut fermenters like horses, any diet transition must be made very slow. With it being winter, my access to anything green is quite limited (although they are enjoying bark from several types of trees) so I anticipate my transition may take a generation or two as I will breed the doe before she has fully transitioned onto a natural diet. We shall see what happens!

UPDATE: Before I got around to posting this, I discovered my “doe” very much so had a penis. Ugh! It happens, young rabbits can be notoriously difficult to sex and every once in awhile you get a “late bloomer.”

Back to the drawing board…