Hi. We are excited to begin our rabbit adventures! Nice to find this community to support the zillions of things we are pondering. See you all hopping out there in the threads.
Just starting out!
- Thread starter LoveMyBarnyard
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savedbygrace979
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Welcome, what are you raising/breeding?
Thanks for the welcome Nibbles. To begin with we are raising for meat for just some of our family. We'll see how that goes and decide if we want to add it to our market sales. But I am guessing there are probably a bunch of setup and licensing hoops to get approval from the county to sell meat. We are excited to start making compost tea too!
Hi savedbygrace,
We are starting with TAMUKs because the one local person we know raising rabbits for meat likes them. Well, and we are in Texas and they are said to handle the heat here. We don't actually get them til the 27th, so we are just setting things up. So much to figure out! What are you raising/breeding?
savedbygrace979
Member
We are starting out with Champagne D'Argent rabbits. Breeding for meat, fur and pets. Most will go to freezer to offset our food costs. Rabbits will just be a minor part of our overall plan in the next few years. We plan on branching out to raising Rex, French Angora, Satin, American Chinchilla, and New Zealand and will have about 300 adult rabbits on an acre. I say they will be a small part because those 300 rabbits will be offset by about 40,000 chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, quail, pheasant, partridge, grouse, snipes etc...
Anyway, been researching and planning for going on a year now and we're just starting to implement phase one of our plan.
Anyway, been researching and planning for going on a year now and we're just starting to implement phase one of our plan.
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I raise Tamuk in west Texas. They are good at tolerating heat but do observe your own microclimate. I have no shade trees and so I do still use a fan and sometimes an evaporative cooling unit (husband made it out of PVC, regular cooling filters and cow panels).
Here is a good explanation of the basic law in Texas governing small producers. Under 500 rabbits a year has very little regulation. There is another standard for 500 to 10,000 and how hard it is to meet seems variable.
https://farmandranchfreedom.org/chicken-rabbit-processing-tx-2019/
Thanks, that's a great article, funny I have actually met the author Judith McGeary. She is a lawyer and I remember she was big in pushing through legislation in Texas for farmers to be able to sell raw milk.
As for the heat, we will watch them carefully thanks. We have a pen inside a well insulated barn that has fans that is 14x8. So we're thinking we could start them off there with two females and one male. We would section it off into 4 or 5 areas and then build a couple of cages for added flexibility. This way we can learn and start slow with just two mamas. If we like it and want to invest more, then we'll build a protected area outside. First we have to see if we even like the meat ourselves and if we can handle processing such adorable creatures. I think we'll do fine. We love our chickens and goats but still manage to eat them.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful informative note!
As for the heat, we will watch them carefully thanks. We have a pen inside a well insulated barn that has fans that is 14x8. So we're thinking we could start them off there with two females and one male. We would section it off into 4 or 5 areas and then build a couple of cages for added flexibility. This way we can learn and start slow with just two mamas. If we like it and want to invest more, then we'll build a protected area outside. First we have to see if we even like the meat ourselves and if we can handle processing such adorable creatures. I think we'll do fine. We love our chickens and goats but still manage to eat them.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful informative note!
Wow!! That's an exciting endeavor. I'm wondering what climate you live in. We had thought about putting the rabbits in "tractors", but someone cautioned us against it due to some illness that is prevalent in the wild rabbits in Texas....
savedbygrace979
Member
Oh it won't be a wide open acre with bunnies running wild and free per se. Our current plan is using a raised hutch style bunny dorms with enough space for 12 does that have a common area to roam around in. This will be predator proof with hard wire cloth/chain link all around. Bucks will have their own raised hutch area to allow for controlled breeding and to allow us to let the bucks and does live communally (at certain times). (Think large bunny run with raised hutches for 12 does, 6 separate pens inside this for the bucks). Each breed will have its' own dedicated area like this. Dedicated kindling boxes in these areas to keep track of kits. And separate areas for raising out the kits that end up on freezer train which will be most. We're on the fence on whether we want to excavate out a certain depth on our land put in concrete with drains and raised concrete berms up the side to fix all the predator fencing to (foundation) and this will allow the bunnies to dig their own dens and there would be no digging predators getting in.... Still on the fence on this one though....
We are considering colonies with concrete perimeter too... for down the road once we learn more and are really committed to the idea. Talked to a guy today who does this on a small scale. Says hard because you don't always know what they are up to in the tunnels they dig. So gets into problems with them kitting underground, tunnels closing in when one digs over another, and generally more fighting and killing one another. He also says population control is tougher because it is not as easy to catch the rabbits who are often underground. But they do have more fun digging! When you say raised hutch style bunny dorms, is that basically cages made from hardware cloth? Do you raise them as a means to protect them from preditors or for some other purpose? Did you guys get this plan from seeing someone do this or from a book or ... ?
savedbygrace979
Member
That's exactly what has kept us from fully committing to that.
The bunny hutch idea we got while looking at bunny hutches online to get ideas for building them ourselves. Think raised box with large door for cleaning and human access, opening with ramp for bunnies, either plexiglass or wood for sides with ventilation. No cage floor. These will mostly be for sleeping places for the buns. Allowing them to roam around on the grass below. There wasn't a book or plan we looked at just my wife and I talking and brainstorming.
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I'm not gonna lie, it's not fun dispatching the rabbits. But it is totally worth it.
That's cool you met the author - that is a woman doing important work.
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I would love to have rabbit tractors. But I don't have any pasture or even much grass (it grows around my other stuff). There have been incidents of the RHDV2 as close as an hour from me and we do have a lot of wild rabbits in the area. Plus dogs running loose, coyotes, cats, raccoons, and who know what all else. And we cannot currently put a perimeter fence around the whole property. So mine are all in cages above the ground. We plan to move east at some point and I would love to have some in a colony or at least some tractors.
https://www.rhdv2.com/outbreak-maps
Thanks for the info! Very insightful for me as a newbie sorting through the noise.
Very creative. I hope you post pictures when it's built!!
savedbygrace979
Member
I will definitely.
