Dreaming of baby bunnies!

[L&Tadventures]

I am still in the research and planning phase, but I so want to breed rabbits and have access to a steady stream of babies... SO CUTE and SO FUN to watch & play with. I had rabbits when I was kid, and my kids had pet rabbits also when they were young. I have never bred them though so that will be a new adventure.

We have 28 acres of land (8 of it pasture, the rest woods) and I am obsessed with the idea of homesteading & gardening. We have a small barn on the property, but no home yet so TONS to do!!

My bunny plans are to go with purebred & pedigreed bunnies, to raise them for show (very careful & selective breeding), pets, possibly meat (to be completely honest, I don't know if I personally can cull them, I might cry because I WILL be attached to them.) I very much respect and admire the food production aspect, as I feel being connected to our food supply, loving & raising them well, is much better than our current mass food production methods. Being grass raised is AMAZING (THANK YOU Joel Salatin & Justin Rhodes and many other youtube homesteaders for introducing me to this path!)

My husband and I are mid to late 50's and looking forward to this new adventure as we approach retirement.

 

[ladysown]

kicking, scratching, and eating you out of house and home bunnies... really not too difficult to cull those!
But I get your potential angst.

One way to combat that is to get bunnies that are one solid colour.
Another is to ship them off to a packer who will do the job for you and deliver a sanitized product.
or you might, as some do, offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the rabbit and the food it will provide you.

Be careful if you plan to run your bunnies on the ground as sometimes ground running rabbits will pick up disease/parasites. For instance, I can't run my bunnies on the ground since if I do, they get coccidiosis, so when I have them out I have them on a blanket or board so they can't touch the ground.

 

[Albert]

We keep ours on grass all year with no problems but that's probably because we live in the French countryside where everything is perfect. No diseases, poisonous plants or predators.

Hang on that's not true at all! I guess we're just lucky and we bought our rabbits locally so they're pretty well used to the environment.

You could get A LOT of rabbits on 28 acres

 

[Nibbles]

A great plan before retirement. Welcome to RabbitTalk. So home first?

 

[Preitler]

I'm with Albert there, my rabbits are outside during daylight to graze, dig, and whatever rabbits do, in 10 years of breeding not a single incident with coccidiosis. My rabbits are local farm stock, either any with the disposition to have problems with that got weeded out generations ago, or the local climate is favourable in that regard.

My take is that keeping rabbits off the ground is actually breeding rabbits to not cope with what they encounter there. There may be climates that really pose a problem, I would have thought those are rather hot and humid ones though. Or it's a mismatch of location and line of rabbits. I would look out for someone who keeps rabbits the way you intend to for getting stock.

 

[KelleyBee]

I am still in the research and planning phase, but I so want to breed rabbits and have access to a steady stream of babies... SO CUTE and SO FUN to watch & play with. I had rabbits when I was kid, and my kids had pet rabbits also when they were young. I have never bred them though so that will be a new adventure.

We have 28 acres of land (8 of it pasture, the rest woods) and I am obsessed with the idea of homesteading & gardening. We have a small barn on the property, but no home yet so TONS to do!!

My bunny plans are to go with purebred & pedigreed bunnies, to raise them for show (very careful & selective breeding), pets, possibly meat (to be completely honest, I don't know if I personally can cull them, I might cry because I WILL be attached to them.) I very much respect and admire the food production aspect, as I feel being connected to our food supply, loving & raising them well, is much better than our current mass food production methods. Being grass raised is AMAZING (THANK YOU Joel Salatin & Justin Rhodes and many other youtube homesteaders for introducing me to this path!)

My husband and I are mid to late 50's and looking forward to this new adventure as we approach retirement.

I started rabbits for meat, etc., last year for the same reasons. I was 59, hubby 56, and it’s been a doable proposition for people our age to delve into. As for dispatching, I was doing it all, but now hubby dispatches and I skin, gut, etc. I decided I could not dispatch because those babies only ever knew my hands as kind and I decided I did not want their last thought to be of those same hands now dispatching. I’m sure I am applying human sentiment to the situation, but that’s what I am doing for now. If necessary, I will dispatch, however, because I seek to be as independent as possible.

 

[JOhn B]

I am still in the research and planning phase, but I so want to breed rabbits and have access to a steady stream of babies... SO CUTE and SO FUN to watch & play with. I had rabbits when I was kid, and my kids had pet rabbits also when they were young. I have never bred them though so that will be a new adventure.

We have 28 acres of land (8 of it pasture, the rest woods) and I am obsessed with the idea of homesteading & gardening. We have a small barn on the property, but no home yet so TONS to do!!

My bunny plans are to go with purebred & pedigreed bunnies, to raise them for show (very careful & selective breeding), pets, possibly meat (to be completely honest, I don't know if I personally can cull them, I might cry because I WILL be attached to them.) I very much respect and admire the food production aspect, as I feel being connected to our food supply, loving & raising them well, is much better than our current mass food production methods. Being grass raised is AMAZING (THANK YOU Joel Salatin & Justin Rhodes and many other youtube homesteaders for introducing me to this path!)

My husband and I are mid to late 50's and looking forward to this new adventure as we approach retirement.

@L&Tadventures I have started to get that same itch (as I am getting less young). Rabbits seems like a good place to start since my in-laws, on adjacent property, already have chickens (for eggs). Looking to buy less at the store. Still learning.

 

[L&Tadventures]

Be careful if you plan to run your bunnies on the ground as sometimes ground running rabbits will pick up disease/parasites.

I agree, and was worried about fleas and ticks and thinking up ways to problem solve that, now I'll need to go research coccidiosis, yikes!! Well this is why I'm asking here, there are LOTS of things I'll need to be aware of.

 

[L&Tadventures]

You could get A LOT of rabbits on 28 acres

LOL... we have other plans for the 28 acres... garden, chickens, Cows, pigs, wood burning stove in the cabin.... looking to homestead and live off the land, Justin Rhodes/Joel Salatin style. Oh and your bunnies are ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE!!

 

[L&Tadventures]

A great plan before retirement. Welcome to RabbitTalk. So home first?

We plan to park a large RV to start before we commit to building a home. We also have another home we plan to rent out (the one we are living in in now) and if the whole homestead thing ends up way more difficult than we can handle, we could still have a backup plan. Our son and daughter in law live about 30 mins from our acres, it would be so nice to be nearby... ESPECIALLY if grandchildren should appear

 

[Nibbles]

We plan to park a large RV to start before we commit to building a home. We also have another home we plan to rent out (the one we are living in in now) and if the whole homestead thing ends up way more difficult than we can handle, we could still have a backup plan. Our son and daughter in law live about 30 mins from our acres, it would be so nice to be nearby... ESPECIALLY if grandchildren should appear

That's an excellent plan, with a pretty smart backup plan as well. Thanks for your response, and will you keep us updated?

 

[HTAcres]

I am still in the research and planning phase, but I so want to breed rabbits and have access to a steady stream of babies... SO CUTE and SO FUN to watch & play with. I had rabbits when I was kid, and my kids had pet rabbits also when they were young. I have never bred them though so that will be a new adventure.

We have 28 acres of land (8 of it pasture, the rest woods) and I am obsessed with the idea of homesteading & gardening. We have a small barn on the property, but no home yet so TONS to do!!

My bunny plans are to go with purebred & pedigreed bunnies, to raise them for show (very careful & selective breeding), pets, possibly meat (to be completely honest, I don't know if I personally can cull them, I might cry because I WILL be attached to them.) I very much respect and admire the food production aspect, as I feel being connected to our food supply, loving & raising them well, is much better than our current mass food production methods. Being grass raised is AMAZING (THANK YOU Joel Salatin & Justin Rhodes and many other youtube homesteaders for introducing me to this path!)

My husband and I are mid to late 50's and looking forward to this new adventure as we approach retirement.

I finally got the mini farm I've always wanted 2 years ago and I turned 60 this year. Rabbits were an excellent choice. I'm totally jelly of your pasture. We have 2 acres and most of it is limerock. My best advice is not to start too many projects at once. Wishing you all the best.