for me the story goes. one saturday morning i decided i would like some rabbit meat over the weekend. wild rabbits in my area are not as abundant as they were 20-30 years ago but neither is the available hunting area or time (not the same taste i know). anyway i went to a local food outlet known for pretty much any kind of meat you wanted. and wouldn't you know it the d--n stuff was frozen and raised in china and $6.00 per lb. now who in their right mind would trust eating this wonderful meat raised by a foriegner. it blew my mind. so this past summer i decided to get into rabbits.2 nzw/cal does due around the end of jan and 1 cal. buck. which led to 5 laying hens as well. and i have not looked back. any way thats my story. schmitty WHATS YOURS?

Honestly, I am not totally sure HOW I got interested in raising rabbits.... But, somehow I did... and the idea of providing fresh, healthy meat for my family really appealed to me. Also, it makes me feel more connected with my family, providing for them in such a concrete way. And now I am COMPLETELY hooked!

For me, it was a result of moving to the country... At last my taste for homesteading activities could be indulged. I started with chickens in 2003 and added geese and rabbits in 2005. The geese are as close to being pets as livestock can get but the rabbits and chickens are for meat and eggs. I like to live close to the land.

Why not? Just give me one good reason, lol!

I wanted a steady source of homegrown meat and fur for our family, that would provide for us in even a worst case scenario situation where there is a lack of basic services up to and including food distribution and electricity.

Plus they are darn cute.

Ours started as a means to feed my cats with food allergies, and now we are regularly adding meat to our own freezer for us. I love knowing whats in the meat, where it came from, and that it's fresh.

my parents got me and my sisters easter bunnies one year. we kept all 3 in a hutch my dad built. they died. not sure of what... one day me and my cousin went out to feed them and my sisters rabbits were hopping around fine but mine was dead and deflated looking. and being hopped on by the other two rabbits. but i was like 9 then.

when i was 11 or so i got a rabbit for $5 at a sale someplace. i named it taco. it was a little black and white bunny. i only had him for a fw months because i didnt pay attention to him and dad gave him to someone.

it wasnt until i was in tenth grade really that i started to like farm stuff. my parents got divorced. my sisters and i moved in with mom in town. dad stayed on the farm. kinda "dont know what ya got til its gone" kind of thing. realized how much i liked it.

now i have two goats, working on getting more. and getting rabbits on sunday.

I had a really really bad day so my husband bought me the tiniest little broken castor mini rex doe with this little triangle head. I picked her up from the pen and never put her down. Then we needed a buck. Then we needed pedigreed mini rex to make show quality offspring to sell. Then we needed champagnes for meat and cremes and crosses to increase the genetic diversity and netherlands cause they are so cute especially in sable and chin.... Now we have 50 something last count. I think it was 57 and I butchered 6 since.

We had been wanting to raise rabbits for meat for some time, as a way to help ensure a food source for our family in unsettled times. But we lived in an apartment... so, how to do it? And so we didn't get started.

Until somebody moved out of their apartment and "freed" their little minilop. After a week, Shay was finally able to trap him and bring him home. So, apartment or no, our meat rabbit herd began.

Fortunately, before our first litter was quite grown out, we moved, so butchering wasn't the sticky issue we thought it would be anymore.

We raise meat rabbits to provide healthy meat for ourselves that has been raised and butchered in a humane way. We raise meat rabbits to help make sure that we have food if times get really bad. We raise them in order to be more self-sufficient. We raise them because they are quiet, fit into a small space, and slip through the cracks in the local laws. They have a great feed:meat ratio compared to a number of other livestock. They go from breeding to table in 14-18 weeks. We raise them to show our children how to provide for themselves.

My interest in Rabbits was sparked
when a neighbor gave my Daughter a Rabbit for Easter.
It was a SURPRISE! With that I was forced to:
Build a Cage, read every book I could find on the subject
and bend the ear of every rabbit breeder or showman I could grab hold of!
We came a long way fast, because we had to! There was no internet
so we scoured the used book stores and the library for anything
we could find about Rabbits and their proper care.
We got lucky and ran into some very helpful rabbit people in our area.
We got our first Red Satin from one of the top breeders in the nation.
Brian Sawchuk He had even won: Mr Satin. He was very helpful
in teaching me the fine art of Culling.
I never stop learning, Knowledge is an unending trip, that is
one of the reasons that Rabbit Talk is such an important forum.
Everybody here has something of value to share.
Thanks everybody for posting and asking and sharing with each other.
Ottersatin.

My parents raised rabbits for meat.we lived on a farm.after i got married i bought some pedigreed rabbits and i started showing.

I had owned rabbits when I was a lot younger: 2 albino rabbits that clawed each other to be have patches of fur and eventually my dad released them into the wild because they didn't understand rabbit care. Second rabbit a couple years later, scrambled out of my arms and could never be caught. Lived around our backyard for some time before it disappeared. I was to young too understand rabbit care then, but last year when I started dating my boyfriend I found out he was a reptile guy...with a bunny. haha I didn't care to much until I met my holland lop x Jack a few months later. I sold a crossbreed I had from my boyfriends rabbits producing after I found out you can show rabbits!(also they were wayyy to jumpy and didn't like to me held) Jack is my baby boy that just is the best rabbit. Thus, I fell in love with the Mini Lop I also ride horses, but I showing rabbits is a cheaper alternative plus they are adorable!

My husband's family had a farm, and I enjoyed working on it for a few years (I even had 2 pigs of my own). They raised chickens and turkeys (free range eggs and meat), geese and ducks. We (hubby and I) moved to Edmonton for a few years, the inlaws stopped raising their own food animals and started getting sick/aging faster. In early 2010 hubby was told to lower his cholesterol or he'd be medicated.
I did the research to find better ways to lower cholesterol and found, along with other things, rabbit was good for that. I could not afford rabbit at $24 each in the grocery store. I got my first doe in Aug 2010.

Raised them as a kid, my grandparents had them also.
When my son's where young we raised them to help with their learning experience.

My mom's husband starting raising them last year, he brought me some fried rabbit this fall and I remembered how good it was. He got to talking about his rabbits and one thing led to another...

That's ironic. For me getting back into rabbits after an absence of quite a few years was the result of moving to the city. I stopped raising rabbits in Oklahoma because there were other meat animals I could raise and the heat there took a heavy toll on rabbits.
When I moved to San Diego rabbits were about the only meat animal I could raise in a suburban back yard.

This!