Meat Rabbits

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Originally Posted by poltrojan

oh here is an advise, not sure where you keep the food. but my previous landowner/hobby farmer had a shed of food.
she used an old non-working fridge or freezer and put it on the skid. the reason is so the rats/mice or other mammals won't chew their way through. pretty hard to do that through metal as opposed to wood.

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The food bags I keep in the house.

When I need food I have food grade buckets that I put it in and seal it with a lid in the garage. So far we have not had any rodent problems to the point of getting in the house or into the bins in the garage.

My plan for once we have a shed for animals is to use steel garbage cans with the feed in it but I do like the idea of old fridges or freezers, they are generally free, they do have seals that the mice can eat through though.

yes im looking at finding cheaper feed... herd the amish are around $12/bag, havent got over to them yet... currently going through about a bag every 2 weeks at $17... when i start bear baiting i may just buy a ton of feed, get half rabbit, half oats... my plan to is to break even on feed costs by selling rabbits... so far i have sold one at $10 lol hopefully be able to sell some more soon lol probably butcher my first one this weekend...

freezers are a great idea for storing feed... i just run out of space in a freezer pretty quick... rabbit pellets, chick starter, lay ration, alphafa cubes, sweet feed, duck grower, oats...

We had 2 get out of the nesting box yesterday and not get back in, they are fragile and lots of things can kill them, it sucks.

I get my feed from SW Ontario, I go down to see my parents and buy 4 bags. I have 4 still sitting in the basement, our wedding is in a month, maybe I can get dad to bring another 4 bags up with the car. He actually offered to come up with the truck and bring 30 bags but I hear that pellets can go stale and I don't want that.

Processed 21 yesterday, took me 5 hours in total, under 15min per rabbit on average, not bad for the first time.

The dress out weight worked out to about 2.25lbs on average with a high of just under 3lbs and a low just over 2lbs, these were rabbits around 5lbs, so 45-50% yield from live.

These were 11 and 10 week old rabbits, I was not able to get to them as soon as I wanted. I noticed that there was no real difference in weight from the 10 week old to the 11 week old, I guess I won't bother feeding them another bag for that last week.

With the feed it took to get them to weight and after dress out numbers I am right around $2.5/lb in the freezer without working through perfect math.

I ended up keeping 3 to boost my stocks so that would have made the numbers even better for me.

All in all this seems to be working out well and the wife really liked the rabbit with white wine sauce last night so things are going win/win.

We also have 22 babies now around a week old, another litter is due today so based on the last litter we should be at 30+ by this evening.

If anyone around Ottawa is looking for meat rabbits let me know, I sell live but I sell at a discount because of that.

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Originally Posted by Fox

We had 2 get out of the nesting box yesterday and not get back in, they are fragile and lots of things can kill them, it sucks.

I get my feed from SW Ontario, I go down to see my parents and buy 4 bags. I have 4 still sitting in the basement, our wedding is in a month, maybe I can get dad to bring another 4 bags up with the car. He actually offered to come up with the truck and bring 30 bags but I hear that pellets can go stale and I don't want that.

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Hey fox. If you are coming through toronto i would meet you up at a 401 exit and buy like four or five at a time frozen. We hunt them but farm raised taste so much better. Cheers.

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Originally Posted by flowerjohn

Hey fox. If you are coming through toronto i would meet you up at a 401 exit and buy like four or five at a time frozen. We hunt them but farm raised taste so much better. Cheers.

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Unless I can get them to a legal slaughter house this cannot work, if you can take them live we could do that.

Have sold most mine off... found a buyer that has orders for a 1000 fryers a week :s bought all my stock i would part with... curently im ip to 5 breeding females 2 bucks and another one im rasing up... had a litter of 14 last week and 3 bred rabbits right now... had a false prego 2 weeks ago...

And 4 that are at 9 weeka right now... going in the freezer this weekend...

I had one that did not take, she made a nest and everything but did not have any babies.

We lost one runt but still have 20 young ones at 2 weeks old now, that is with 2 does.

We kept 2 does from the first batch which will have us up to 5 does.

If you don't mind me asking, what did they pay for the quota fryers? I saw someone around here but they were only going to pay $8 a rabbit, not worth it for me to sell them at that then buy meat back.

Sold mine at $10 each at 8 weeks old...

Had got a new buck... pure white new zealand... bred him with my first nzw and had thw false prego... same thing... built nest but no birth... second one also did not take... hopefully this time...