butchered six young meat rabbits tonight.

the first three housed together:
one was a kit that I got off a doe I rescued from less than stellar conditions. Looked like a california cross...had a commerical build. 3 lbs. birthday sept. 30. This kit was raised with the harlequins and for quite a while was similar in size but gradually started losing ground.

two purebred harlequins: birthday sept 25. Weight 3 and half pounds, second was 4 and a half pounds. Why the weight difference??? not sure as they were identical in size and shape until I transferred them to a grow-out pen last week. The smaller one had a slightly larger gut area and makes me think it was having some stress issues playing out with the gut...

These next three were house together, also transferred last week to grow-out pen.
harlequin/new zealand mix - 4 1/4, 4 1/2 and 4 3/4. Quite similar in weights..the smallest at birth was the middle weight which I didn't expect.

I kept the largest to finish it's grow out for my own personal use the rest went for critter feed.

i just find it fascinating doing weights and seeing how things can change due to stress, genetics, breeds used and so forth.

Do you also do rate of food to weight gain comparisons?
...sometimes it's not worth it with rabbits, but it's a must for raising beef cattle.

Somebody did a study on two of their litters -- one NZ/Cal and one Silver Fox. Tracked food consumption and weight. Here's the thread:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/42891 ... al-results

That was a great article Miss M. I am working on similar data. I feel since I am working with avg rabbits I need to create a base line so I can bettor determine which ones to cull. I am working with one cinnamon doe and two silver fox does " just bought the sf today" all have peds but no other info.
Here is a video with some raw data.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apo1aOsw ... AAAAAAADAA

Thanks
Dan

I have another interesting weights experience. I noticed a huge growth spurt in 2 juniors I moved out of a cage that was 30x48 to a cage that was 30x42. Despite a slight loss in space and no change in feed consumption compared to the average of the whole litter they are near double the 3 siblings who were kept together in the other cage. The group kept in the 3x4' pen of very similar breeding (same sire, half sibling does) with a dozen kits is half the size of the group left to run the 24x12' colony and again food consumption is not all that different although hard to measure with adult rabbits in the mix. Growth suddenly slowed when the next round of kits came out of the nests and started wandering around with the rest, doubling the number of young rabbits in the colony. Pellets and hay are free choice and everyone has time and space to get everything they want with each rabbit eating about the same amount for it's current weight if put in it's own cage. No differences are found on butchering except size all around and the most crowded group had browner livers but no spots.

It seems the fewer rabbits there are in a group the faster they grow. I don't know how to account for that. I can account for it with fish. They all give off a growth reducing hormone and if they are crowded it builds up in the water faster slowing down growth but if you change the water often enough they grow normally even crowded. With rabbits I have no idea what signal could cause this. A lot of my rabbits are solid bottom cages and pens though where waste will accumulate faster in more crowded conditions but the first group I mentioned were wire bottom cages and still created a marked difference when the number was reduced.

I'm glad you're working on that, too, Dan -- it's such useful information! I'll have to look at your videos when I don't have to have the sound off.

Akane, that's so curious!

You may find that location of the cage has as much to do with a change as size or the number of occupants? Rabbits love sunlight...

All my cages have equal (or lack of) sunlight since they are in the middle of a very long building.

I've noticed the same trend, Akane, but in my small rabbitry I did not consider it statistically significant. My "theory" was that it was the larger number of interactions created stress... sort of like two kids will play for hours without conflict, where a group of four or five will soon be squabbling.

Small world. S and S poultry is where I got my silver fox rabbits. We have not eaten any because I have only had three litters so far. With a total of just 10 surviving , I have had them all spoken for. I have crossed the silver fox with the Cali/nwz mix with great results . I have not processed yet but I plan on it mid Feb. With some pure nwz kits just a few days older than the fox mix I will be getting the scale out too. At this point the younger fox mixes outweigh the nzw kits. I wish I had kept better records on feed. Maybe this next one I will keep records on. I am curious.
With this last group I did mix the two litters when I grouped them in grow out cages. One has 4 males mixed litter, 4 females nzw, 3 females all fox mix,4 males mixed litter. So I can honestly say that location and food competition can be eliminated as a variable with the mixed male groups. I will post results later.

Please do keep us posted on the progress.

Yes, please do!

I butchered my 2nd set now that were in with many rabbits, didn't grow as fast as their isolated siblings, and had slightly light livers that were more brown so I'm thinking it's not the rabbit interaction unless that stress can stress the liver. Maybe the rabbit waste level and minor illnesses kicking around like the colds that bounce around my college or any heavily populated building which I currently have one of but too minor to show symptoms in the rabbits. If you lay the livers side by side (I kept a sample from every rabbit since noticing the growth differences) you can see which ones were smaller by the slight difference. Not a major illness or any spots just a brown shade over it instead of only bright blood red. It seems pens of a few rabbits actually is working better for growout than huge colonies with double or triple the space per rabbit but 8 times the rabbits. I am debating trying a pen system with 1-2 does each for one season to see what happens compared to the colonies and cages.

I think this would be a useful experiment, Akane. I think that there is a lot we still do not understand about the grow-out process. I wish I had the space, energy and money to do a bit more experimenting.