Meat Rabbit Farming

[Fox]

The wife cooks a lot of chicken, and I have thought about putting rabbit pens in the back yard. Just enough supply the pot, not really to fill the freezer or sell for profit. Though if we raise enough they could pay for themselves.

Less noisy then chickens..

Check your zoning, in many cases you can have rabbits but not chickens.

They taste sort of like chicken, to the point of being able to use a similar recipe but they are a bit sweeter. They are not fatty, leaner than chicken, so sauced is good but not necessary if you take care.

Remember, these are not the spruce bud eating old rabbits we go out hunting, these are 8-10 weeks old for a fryer and up to 16 weeks or so for a larger roaster, they are much more tender than the wild counterparts and a heck of a lot more meat on them.

The only real problem is that they are cute and cuddly, convincing my wife to help at slaughter is a chore.

Oh, a note on slaughter, if you are selling, feeding to someone that is not your immediate family or having the meat leave your property in any way then you need to have the animals slaughtered at a licensed facility, for your own consumption on your own property you can self slaughter. This turns the meat from a $4/lb cost to you down to about $1.75-2/lb for your meat in the freezer, cost.

We did not do any this year for us, supplying clients and enough other meat in our freezer from other animals, but a couple years back we had 80 or so rabbits in the freezer for us, ground, cubes and rabbit wings (front legs done of the BBQ and sauced), the 100 yard challenge, every item on our plates for a good chunk of the winter came from within 100 yards of our door.

[trappermatt]

I loved raising rabbits when I lived in the country , had 150 New Zealand does for a while , rabbits are super productive if managed intensively

[werner.reiche]

"The only real problem is that they are cute and cuddly, convincing my wife to help at slaughter is a chore"

I can see that being a problem.