Post information and experiences about raising meat rabbits.
https://nwedible.com/meat-rabbits-truths-no-homesteading-article-tells-you/
https://nwedible.com/meat-rabbits-truths-no-homesteading-article-tells-you/
P.S. To 'Taint Worth It.
I realize most readers here already are expert Preppers and probably know this, but this is for a nuby that may be lurking by considering living off rabbits during a year of chaos.
Realize you can free range chickens and they will come home every night to roost in their own beds. This means you can leave handy spots for them to lay eggs during the day and for the most part, they can feed themselves to a degree.
Rabbits cannot be free ranged as they will run away.
Realize that if you start with just a start-up inventory of rabbits or chickens and then seriously raise them it will take between three and six months to feed your group, depending on how large an extended family is in your hungry group.
But Jim, the book says 3 months for either to grow to slaughter weight, doesn't it? Yes it does, but you can't eat those eggs if you are hatching some of them. The same for young rabbits. you need them to mature to create offspring as well. You need to have a variety that can be bred and not just the same two parents the entire year.
Now here's the real problem with rabbits.
Calculate how many you need to produce the expected cook-pot fillings for your group, keeping in mind the three months to grow them.
Next calculate how much bagged rabbit food will be required to feed them for the year.
Next calculate how long a bag is good before it goes bad.
That gives you the maximum number of bags you need to purchase the day before you bug-out.
Now where do you plan to purchase that many bags from? You may get the shut out as supplies dwindle as they are purchased by other rabbit ranchers. This is what you are betting the lives of your group on, how successful your timing and shopping skills are.
You may be able to overcome these problems if you . . . .
But I am just suggesting you look ahead before locking yourself into raising critters for a bug out location for survival of chaos.
Best of luck to your group as you proceed.
GP, are you asking me?I’m curious what breed your rabbits were. All breeds do not have the same nutritional requirements.
We have hawks, owls and eagles around here. Along with coyotes, fox, bobcat, mountain lions, bears, wolves, badgers, and weasels. So far we only lost one hen to a fox. In winter we see coyote and fox tracks on the back deck and in the chicken run. I've seen bears around the coop looking in the windows. We never lock the chickens up at night, or any other time. I saw one hawk grab a chicken but he dropped it. The wife wants me to build a new chicken coop next year. On the new coop I'm going to add an automatic door so they can be locked in at night.I have so many hawks cruising over my place everyday any chickens/ducks would be gone in 1 day flat if I free-ranged them without a 'tractor' to protect them. I collect a dozen or more hawk feathers laying on the ground around my cabin in a week's time. If I had saved them all, I could have made a full-size Native American tribal headress by now, easily. Cayotes are seen regularly at my BOL, too. All reasons I may, in the end, decide to not raise meat animals at all, to be honest. Just not convinced it's a practical investment with so many predators around. My neighbor, after all, lost all 40 of his guinea hens, so raising in numbers are obviously not the answer. Fresh meat is always better than canned, but I find myself weighing not only the $$ cost to produce fresh meat, but the time/maintenance/building housing) vs. the cost of buying/opening a can of meat. But I also know the stockpiled canned meat and alternative portein sources will eventually run out in a couple years, so I may have no choice but to revisit such a project.
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