1st post, new guy, a few hopefully not-so-common questions

[OneAcreFarm]

Welcome Fellow Texan! :cowboy:

Couple of things to consider:
1) Do you have fire ants? If so, you may want to rethink an in-ground colony and go with colony style pens.
2) Anytime you raise rabbits on the ground, your risk of parasites increases dramatically.
3) Chicken wire and hardware cloth are not strong enough to keep a full grown rabbit from digging out. You need welded wire mesh.
4) You have much less control over who breeds who and whether or not the kits survive.

We are in SE Texas, so we have a lot more humidity than up near Dallas. I used to live there, in Cedar Hill, so I am familiar with the climate there. What about inground burrows with external cages and an access for the burrow? There are many people working on this type of setup. Kind of like the ones in this document: http://om.ciheam.org/om/pdf/c08/95605275.pdf

 

[GBov]

I had my colony with an 18 inch deep boundary.

Rabbits dug deep and then horizontal across the back yard. Falling into a deep rabbit burrow is NEVER fun!

Plus the inside colony ground level finished up two feet, over all, higher than the surrounding yard.

Rabbits can REALLY shift some soil!

So, having had them in Central Florida colony style I can say on the plus side.....

My buck NEVER went sterile. Being able to stay below ground in the coolness of deep burrows, he stayed cool enough to breed year round, even in the worst heat.

And all the rabbits stayed cool. In the heat of the summer we never saw a rabbit in daylight, only very early in the morning and late in the evening. Watching them by moonlight was pretty cool.

The downside was.......

Having crazy wild kits. I finally had to make a cage to feed everyone in, get them use to using it and then put a one way swinging door on it. That way I could catch all the rabbits and select out who I wanted to eat. It was a major pain.

When I finally have a place of my own I will be doing the combo method of cage and confined underground housing. It seems the best of both worlds, keeps them cool but also keeps them clean and healthy.

I started with local, ex-pet, mongrel stock. Not even as grand as meat mutts. :lol: But as many here will tell you, all rabbits is made out of rabbit meat! so you might give a try to just getting what you can get hold of and seeing how you all get on. That way you can get on top of the learning curve without stressing over how much cash each rabbit has cost you.

And :hi: