How is covid 19 effecting everything? : Ethical Rabbit Raising for the Pet Market - Page 2

My biggest fear with people impulse buying rabbits is the tendency for irresponsible people to dump them instead of butchering them. We already have way too much of an invasive rabbit problem in the US right now, and it's a massive contributor to disease in both domestic and US native rabbits.

My buns cans produce meat fairly inexpensively, but, I can feed bucks, juniors, and dry does primarily on forage, lawn and garden scraps.
As much as I'd like to think anyone could do it, plant ID and balanced feeding takes time (often years) to learn how to do well.
It can be too much for some when you add-in the learning curve of raising rabbits.

Also, it's been more than a few years, and we've probably still not come close making back what I spent on cages

Honestly, keeping the feeders full of high calorie pellets can cost you more than just the price of wasting feed. Brood stock can easily become obese and slow down or stop breeding.

I'd guess a lot of it has to do with why the folks are buying rabbits. A lot of the folks who have contacted me to buy rabbits have just wanted a house pet now that they're home more.

Covid has, if anything, increased the demand for rabbits around here. I've been breeding much more than usual (sixty so far this year, which is a huge number for a non-meat breed) and have a waiting list for rabbits. Well, at least, a waiting list for certain rabbits. At the moment, they all want white females with really fuzzy ears. Last time folks were looking for specific rabbits, it was anything but white rabbits. There's no telling what folks are gonna want, at least, as far as specific breeds, colors and genders of rabbits go.

If anyone is interested in New Zealand White stock, I'm selling or butchering all my stock. Northern Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. I'd rather sell them as breeding stock than end up slaughtering for food, but they are going, and soon. Reply if interested.

I'd keep them if I had the time to forage for food, but I don't. Working very long hours, they get nothing but pellets.

__________ Mon Feb 15, 2021 8:13 am __________

I had four of my grow-outs tear apart the chicken wire of their cage and get loose. No idea if they interacted with the local cottontails, but I used a cage trap and caught them all over the next week. Those cage traps are really useful!

I processed three of the four as soon as I caught them, btw.