Breeding rabbits has many benefits; it's relatively clean, quiet, easy, much production and a cheap & healthy high quality meat. To keep rabbits successfully you need some basic knowledge about rabbit breeds

Rabbit breeds

When you decide to start breeding it's import to start with a healthy breed. One of the great breeds below grow easily and need less care. Breeding without good genetics wil result in smaller or weaker rabbits.

Examples of breeds

• New Zealand(tip)
• Belgian Hare
• British Giant
• Champagne d’Argents (tip)
• Cinnamons
• Satins
• Silver Fox
• Crème d’Argents
• California white

The best breed for meat consumption is the New Zealand breed they can get up to 6 kilos. They get easily pregnant with up to 10 bunnies. They are the perfect breed for homesteaders. A big benefit about rabbits is that they are very easily to butcher. Skilled people can butcher and remove the fur in a couple of minutes. Try that with a chicken!

Breeding of meat rabbits

Rabbits are group animals like most preyed upon in nature. With rabbits the optimal group size is between 2 and 10 depending on the amount of males and food. They originally come out of the area around the Mediterranean sea but can handle cold extremely good. Rabbits do easily get hot and almost always prefer shadow. The heat can easily make them sick or even kill them in summer depending on the climate. So now you know how to keep them alive let's go to production.
Reproduction for every doe (female rabbit) is 3 to 5 litters per year. This depends on food, surroundings,breed, age and how intense you want to produce. Before you put the buck (male rabbit) together with the doe you need to have space for the litter. Pregnancy only takes a month and the young can get pregnant in 4 months. You don't need your calculator to know that the rabbit population can explode easily. So have multiple cages ready, even better a rabbit tractor. This works great but cover the cage with fabric in summer. Rabbits don't like it hot remember :)

Cage

I normally always prefer to let animals run freerange or as close to that as possible. Rabbits are an exception. It's simply not safe enough for rabbits and often get killed in the wild. This is why they reproduce so damn fast!
The best cage is so called rabbit tractor that lately became popular but exists for at least hundred years. It's simply a moveable cage that you move one meter forward every day to new grass. One tip build it with PVC .

Rabbit feed

Rabbits are very sensitive if it comes to food. Especially rabbits that are eating pellets need to be slowly switched on to grass. In nature rabbits mainly eat grass, herbs and leaves. Definitely don't give them high caloric foods like a carrot. The more space you give a rabbit to find food the less you need to feed them. A big reason why rabbits are unhealthy is overfeeding especially on pellets.
Don't expect a rabbit to know what's poisonous, but give them non poisonous brush or trees. They need some wood to chew on otherwise they chew on the cage.

Don't feed them:

• bread
• salt stones
• cabbage
• leeks
• beans
• soft corn/canned corn
• onion
• mushrooms
• The list of poisonous trees/brush is to long to include here. Just give them birch/hazel or another obviously non poisonous wood.

Butchering and recipes

You can butcher a rabbit on different ages depending on the meat purpose. Young rabbits of a maximum of 3 months are juicy and soft. 3 to 6 months are much tougher but suitable for soup or a stew. Older than 6 months are very gamy and tough. I love the taste, but the only way to prepare it is with a slowcooker or in a stew with wine. Homemade wine ofcourse.

Killing the rabbit
It's not my favourite thing to do but it's needed to eat healthy meat. There are 2 ways in my opinion. The first is breaking the neck with a rabbit wringer or stick. The second option is with a captive bolt gun. The bolt gun is much easier for the faint hearted. Practise first before you use it to avoid unnecessary suffering of the animal.
The fur of rabbits is great. It requires much work so only do this in big batches.

Preparing rabbit meat

Like it already mentioned it important to know how old the rabbit was. A old rabbit won't be tasty if just baked. Personally I only make stews because it's damn tasty. The best things to add with rabbit meat is :

• wild sauces
• beer, bouillon
• fat, bacon or butter
• onion
• potatoe
• mustard

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