Does anyone have pics of an over-fat butchered mature rabbit?

[Phrick]

Internal pics, I mean. I butchered 2 mature ~18mo bucks yesterday - holy frick it was hard to get their skins off!! They never LOOKED fat externally, sired litters OK all that stuff. They were butchered purely for space reasons; I had planned to try to sell them, but I have 2 litters that NEED to get separated from their mommas, the babies are starting to barber the moms and the weather is still too hot to use the outdoor growout cage so I butchered the bucks so I could separate the mommas to their own cages.

These are the oldest rabbits I've butchered by far, and they had what seems like a lot of internal fat, but I have no comparison to gauge if they were over-fat or if it was pretty normal. They're American Chinchillas, and the live weights were 8.47 and 9.85; finished weights 5.49 and 5.65. They weren't fasted or anything before butcher. I'm trying to decide if I was overfeeding and should cut back for the others. Mostly everyone gets a pellet ration and timothy/alfalfa hay cubes (nursing does get a bigger ration until the babies are out of the nest box then I fill their feeders to the toop & let them all free-feed but that's the only time the get more than their ration)

 

[Alaska Satin]

Internal pics, I mean. I butchered 2 mature ~18mo bucks yesterday - holy frick it was hard to get their skins off!! They never LOOKED fat externally, sired litters OK all that stuff. They were butchered purely for space reasons; I had planned to try to sell them, but I have 2 litters that NEED to get separated from their mommas, the babies are starting to barber the moms and the weather is still too hot to use the outdoor growout cage so I butchered the bucks so I could separate the mommas to their own cages.

These are the oldest rabbits I've butchered by far, and they had what seems like a lot of internal fat, but I have no comparison to gauge if they were over-fat or if it was pretty normal. They're American Chinchillas, and the live weights were 8.47 and 9.85; finished weights 5.49 and 5.65. They weren't fasted or anything before butcher. I'm trying to decide if I was overfeeding and should cut back for the others. Mostly everyone gets a pellet ration and timothy/alfalfa hay cubes (nursing does get a bigger ration until the babies are out of the nest box then I fill their feeders to the toop & let them all free-feed but that's the only time the get more than their ration)

In our herd, a certain amount of internal fat (though not so much that it obscures the organs) indicates a healthy rabbit. They seem to have a different health profile than humans! My daughter, who does the butchering and keeps close track of these things, says that healthy rabbits have guts lined with fat, while little or almost no internal fat = malnourished, and heavy fat outside the body cavity, e.g. lots across the shoulders and around the hindquarters = overweight. I'm sorry I don't have photos... annoyed with myself! I'll check to see if my daughter has any, and post them if she does.

The only photo I have that might be helpful is this one, which shows a fairly reasonable amount of shoulder fat (arrows), although this 3-year-old buck (talk about a struggle to skin!!!) had developed fatty lipomas and hyper-vascularization, so all of that veining is not normal:


You can usually tell if a live rabbit is overweight by feeling its shoulders. The skin should be taught and firm. Fat rabbits have loose skin/fat across their neck and shoulders - some call it "chuffy," which is a weird word but strangely seems to fit.

Older meat rabbits, especially bucks, are really hard to skin (relatively speaking - they don't compare to a big animal, of course). Even at 8-12 months of age, rabbit bucks hold onto those hides tenaciously! My daughter and I have both had to put our whole weight into getting the hides off the carcasses of bucks > 6 months old. The other side of the coin, though, is they are wonderful to tan - fleshing and breaking them, while a workout, is much easier to do without tearing the hide.

 

[Cindy in SD]

I had some rabbits that I’d been spoiling with a bit of corn every day as a treat. (It was a bad winter and I was afraid they needed more calories to keep them warm. When I butchered them, they had curtains of fat inside their body cavities. The good thing (or unfortunate thing, depending on what you like) is that the muscle tissue doesn’t get marbled with fat. It’s separate. And I’m sure you can eat the fat; I gave it to my chickens along with a portion of the entrails. But yeah, you can definitely fatten up your rabbits.

 

[Preitler]

After reading here "How to render fat" I'm saving that fat in a bag in the freezer, didn't butcher anything this year so far, so it'll take some time to have enough to do it. But you can definatly use that fat. Don't waste it, it's fat after all.

 

[Preitler]

https://rabbittalk.com/threads/rabbit-fat.36329/#post-352260

read the whole thread

 

[MsTemeraire]

I once had to cull an older doe, about 4 years old, with a stuck kit (absolutely no way to remove it and vet not an option at the time). I opened her up for a look and was shocked to see how much internal fat she had, although she was in 'normal' fit condition externally. I couldn't help feeling that may have contributed to the stuck kit.

 

[Phrick]

In our herd, a certain amount of internal fat (though not so much that it obscures the organs) indicates a healthy rabbit. They seem to have a different health profile than humans! My daughter, who does the butchering and keeps close track of these things, says that healthy rabbits have guts lined with fat, while little or almost no internal fat = malnourished, and heavy fat outside the body cavity, e.g. lots across the shoulders and around the hindquarters = overweight. I'm sorry I don't have photos... annoyed with myself! I'll check to see if my daughter has any, and post them if she does.

The only photo I have that might be helpful is this one, which shows a fairly reasonable amount of shoulder fat (arrows), although this 3-year-old buck (talk about a struggle to skin!!!) had developed fatty lipomas and hyper-vascularization, so all of that veining is not normal:
View attachment 43484

You can usually tell if a live rabbit is overweight by feeling its shoulders. The skin should be taught and firm. Fat rabbits have loose skin/fat across their neck and shoulders - some call it "chuffy," which is a weird word but strangely seems to fit.

Older meat rabbits, especially bucks, are really hard to skin (relatively speaking - they don't compare to a big animal, of course). Even at 8-12 months of age, rabbit bucks hold onto those hides tenaciously! My daughter and I have both had to put our whole weight into getting the hides off the carcasses of bucks > 6 months old. The other side of the coin, though, is they are wonderful to tan - fleshing and breaking them, while a workout, is much easier to do without tearing the hide.

Super helpful actually (even without pics haha). It sounds like my boys were just about perfect then. Just a little shoulder fat, none really on hindquarters. Some internal fat but definitely not enough to obscure organs (though the kidneys were near completely encased in fat, but it didn't like cover any other organs - testes, bladder, etc all perfectly visible.

Unfortunately I struggled SO hard to get the skins off that in the end I cut them into pieces - no tanning for me. Which is just as well, in AZ we never get cold enough for them to develop a really robust coat in the first place, plus Ashe had just molted and Flopsie was starting to (so it was an absolute mess on top of being difficult LOL). It's just me for butchering, my husband refuses to participate, but I knew that would be the case when I got into it.

 

[tambayo]

Yes, older bucks hold on to their skins. Does let go of them much easier even at 6-7 years old. Mostly i try to put bucks in the freezer at 12-16 weeks when they still let go easy.
Some kidney fat and a little on top of the shoulderblade is normal, more i rarely see.
But fasting before slaughter won't get rid of fat, just empty belly/intestines (making putting them the freezer mandatory or you have to nurse them back into eating and everything working, not my choice, stuff happens sometimes after all).