Three rabbits live at the Fat Ewe Farm, a Flemish Giant buck imported from Holland and a locally bred Flemish Giant female, called a doe, plus a French Lop , also local. These are true gentle giants, especially the French Lop. It is hard to imagine eating them, but that is what they are bred for. The rabbits are the best converters of food to meat of all the animals. Pound for pound, two rabbits will produce more meat than a cow in a year if they are bred several times. Each of these rabbits will dress out at ten pounds or so and there are maybe ten babies in a litter, three litters a year. From the three rabbits, then , three hundred pounds of meat can be produced, but they require less space than cows and eat about a tenth of what cows do or less. The manure from rabbits can be utilized without composting, aka fresh, and is full of nutrients and nitrogen.
The hardest part of all this is the fact that they are friendly, sweet and cute. How am I going to eat the bunnies? I have a hard time raising anything to eat it, but I am getting better. At first, I could not eat the pork raised here and now I can. The lamb is better than the store bought because it is strictly grass fed. The rabbits are primarily grass fed too, except for right now. They are getting a little grain, not much, to supplement them in winter. In the wild, rabbits would not eat grain in any quantity, just the odd seeds here and there. I feed them hay and it has leaves, weeds, some twigs and grass in it and should supply all they need to remain healthy. I have put off breeding the rabbits because I am not sure I can go through with butchering their babies, yet, from a point of sustainability, it is a wiser thing to do than to buy a cow. I do enjoy the rabbits and do not plan to eat these three, but what happens when they are old? Geeeeeeee.
The hardest part of all this is the fact that they are friendly, sweet and cute. How am I going to eat the bunnies? I have a hard time raising anything to eat it, but I am getting better. At first, I could not eat the pork raised here and now I can. The lamb is better than the store bought because it is strictly grass fed. The rabbits are primarily grass fed too, except for right now. They are getting a little grain, not much, to supplement them in winter. In the wild, rabbits would not eat grain in any quantity, just the odd seeds here and there. I feed them hay and it has leaves, weeds, some twigs and grass in it and should supply all they need to remain healthy. I have put off breeding the rabbits because I am not sure I can go through with butchering their babies, yet, from a point of sustainability, it is a wiser thing to do than to buy a cow. I do enjoy the rabbits and do not plan to eat these three, but what happens when they are old? Geeeeeeee.
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