Raising Rabbits..

[Icarry2]

Good info.

300k a year for 30 hours a weeK? Holy cow how many rabbits does that end up being? Are you processing them and then selling them?

Building 48' x 200' x 8'
Dirt floor for red worms
1,000 does
100 bucks
2-300 young does
25-50 young bucks
1 doe has 5.5 litters of 8 bunnies each per year or 44 bunnies
44 bunnies @ 4.5 pounds live weight sold at $1.59/# = $314.82
$314.82 x 1000 does = $314,820 total
$14,820 will cover feed, power and any other supplies other then original pens, building and breeding stock cost.
$300,000 profit..
Rabbits are sold to processors alive..
It would take 3-4 hours per day, every day, to tend the herd.
Red worms can be seeded in the dung and are paying about $30 a pound right now.
Hundreds of pounds of red worms can be harvested after a few months.. and that income stream is on top of the $300k from the meat..

 

[Icarry2]

Oh and the large scale operation would have automatic watering and automatic feeding. Both are expensive.

Building would not need heat and would only need moderate ventilation in high heat, high humidity situations.

Building would only need moderate lighting and would not need to have much in the way of electrical power, lights and a radio is about it..

 

[Icarry2]

Subscribed!
IC2 u r full of info man!
Rep inbound!!!
Trying to convince the wife is not easy ... pets yes...meat not so good

Have her look into the health aspect of rabbit meat. If cholesterol is a concern rabbits have much less cholesterol then even chicken. The taste of domestic rabbit is completely different then any wild rabbits that she may have ever eaten. If she won't try food that is good for her trick her like you would a kid and tell her after.. Rabbit also has a little more protien and slightly fewer calories then chicken.. Especially if you buy your chicken meat from the store..

My personal favorite is to boil a roaster (larger rabbit) and then let it cool and de-bone it. Then mix up my favorite BBQ sauce and make pulled rabbit.. Throw it on a bun and yummy... Tell her it is pulled chicken..

Also farm fresh eggs eaten within 3 days of being laid have almost no cholesterol compared to months old store bought eggs..

 

[J man]

Also farm fresh eggs eaten within 3 days of being laid have almost no cholesterol compared to months old store bought eggs..

Never knew that.

 

[Sailor]

I checked out that web site Pel-Freez apparently does not pick up in IN, were you transporting the rabbits yourself?

 

[Icarry2]

Sailor, they pick up in Arthur, IL last I knew. They evaluate their routes quarterly I think and we were told that if we began our big operation they would consider making us the end of the run. Our family farm is a bit North of Arthur, IL but they were open to the idea if we had large numbers.

With a 1,000 doe herd I think we estimated about 2,500 - 3,000 fryers a month once you got the ball rolling.

 

[Zoub]

Building 48' x 200' x 8'

A business built on a 1/4 acre. Not bad at all. Great thread. So a person could have a smaller operation as a side business and maybe generate 25k to 50k. Another example of using a small space to generate cash and be useful in SHTF. My focus is on plants and a few things connected to that but this is great.

 

[Icarry2]

Zoub you could add a few rabbits and sell to those you know and then when you have enough to get them processed you have that option. And your garden will love the rabbit dung. My Dad grows tomatoes that grow to over 8 feet tall, he puts one round nose shovel scoop of rabbit dung in the hole then puts the seedling on top and covers with dirt, he stopped using cheap wires and now uses a 6 foot hoop of heavy gage welded fence wire made to fit right inside his clay tiles and supports them with long T posts..

1 buck and 10 does can produce over 1,500 pounds of meat in one year and only take up about 150 square feet of floor space, less if you stack pens. Stacking pens costs more because you have to put a deflector in to keep urine and dung off of the lower cages.

I found this a while back and thought there was some interesting info about rasing rabbits, even though I disagree with some of the info it is still good reading.

Raising Rabbits

 

[grouse08]

thanks for sharing

 

[Sailor]

With a really small production set up, what is the average cost per meat rabbit?

And then factor in that I may have access to cheap/free hay.

 

[Zoub]

My Dad grows tomatoes that grow to over 8 feet tall,

When he gets tired of the short ones, let me know and I will show you how to double that.

Rabbits....................not just for hunting anymore.


Grow up, over and back down. There were 8 plants in this small test bed, alternating growing up the left or right side. Each one grew up a string, then went over the top and hung back down on the other side. While it worked well, I am not sure I prefer it to the Florida Weave. I do 8' tall plants easy with the weave technique and harvest is E-Z! Your Dad should look at the weave technique. I will bet you $5 he loves it.

The bed below was made out of an old frame for swinging porch type seat. We rent this place and the Landlord lets me do what I want in terms of the landscape.

 

[Beech Grover]

thanks for the info. Posting so I will get updates on this.

 

[Icarry2]

With a really small production set up, what is the average cost per meat rabbit?

And then factor in that I may have access to cheap/free hay.

First, all our figures and such are for Californian rabbits. A typical starter doe will cost $10-15 each.

Second, we never fed anything except pellets, no hay, no greens, no veggies. Pellets only. Normally at night or evening and a regular doe or buck would get 5 counces per day.

We used to use a small mushroom can but the best thing is find a cup, weight it, add 5 ounces by weight of pellets and mark it or find a can that you can just fill completely up and go with that so that one full cup for bucks and does with no litter. We used to have a stach of a particular small mushroom can because if you filled it up it was right on the money at 5 ounces.

Three days after the doe has bunnies go to one and a half cans or 7.5 ounces. After the first week go to 2 cans or 10 ounces, once the babies are 10-11 days they can start eating pellets so fill the feeder and let them all have all they want, the babies should start eating pellets at 12 -14 days for sure.

At 5 weeks after birth breed the doe back. At 8 weeks take the bunnies out, butcher them and or seperate them for breeding stock.

Never let weened bucks and does stay in the same cage. It is acceptable to leave a pen with more then one doe in it for a few days if your waiting to butcher them. When you do this keep the feeder full or at least leave one 5 ounce cup per rabbit in the pens feeder.

Good quality pellets cost anywhere between $11-$15 per 50# bag depending on where you buy them and if they are on sale.

We used to buy our feed by the pallet load and it was much cheaper, like $8-9 a bag. Buying in bulk and having it delievered by truck and dumped into a silo is even cheaper then that.

So roughly a 50# bag will have 800 ounces or about 160 - 5 ounce servings. But if your feeding does with a litter you may feed her and her litter over a pound a day and the older they get the more they eat until they are 8 weeks old and ready for the frying pan.

It really depends on the doe, her litter and other things like weather and such as to how much one rabbit might eat from birth to harvest. I will ask the old man and see what he says.

We used to rotate our does and breeding so that a group of does would give birth and thus have fryers ready to butcher with in a few days of each other and have a good old fashion butcher day and knock out a few cages all in the same day. Sometimes more then we had freezer room for and the old man would have to call everyone in the family and take fresh butchered rabbits to them to store in their freezer.. I used to laugh cause he knew that they were due to be butchered but we wouldn't have room and we had a huge chest freezer just for rabbits.

So in the long and the short of it it is really hard to say exactly but a good round number is that from birth to frying pan a rabbit might eat about 10-13 pounds of pellets. At $15 a bag (high) or $0.02 per ounce it would cost about $3.50 for pellets per fryer. A fryer bringing $1.45 per pound live weight that weights 5 pounds would gross you $7.25 minus feed of $3.50 would net you $3.75 per rabbit.

Hope this helps.

TJ

 

[Icarry2]

When he gets tired of the short ones, let me know and I will show you how to double that.

Thanks but he is so stuck in his ways I couldn't get him to change the way he does it even if I went to his garden and installed the system you describe.. lol

He also has always stated that you can grow "maters" in 100% rabbit poop and the vines and roots would never burn but I wouldn't want to try..

Thanks thought, I have been contemplating a system like you recommend in my garden, just have to make myself try it..

Hope you are well,

TJ

 

[.40caltrucker]

@.40caltrucker From my experience putting rabbits on the ground is in no way beneficial, puting them in with chickens isn't something we have ever done either but then we wanted to produce more rabbits never kept them as pets. Has your doe ever had a littler? I would guess not and would go further to guess that she never will in the setup you have. Chickens will peck baby rabbits to death, chickens love blood.

If you want more rabbits, separate them from the chickens and separate the bucks from the doe. Refer to my post on breeding if you want to breed them otherwise you have three fine pets or three fine meat rabbits but will never have any more then that.

Just my experience

We actually have a few areas set up that only the rabbits can get into. I put a pallet in there and covered it with dirt for them and there are 3 spots only accessible to the rabbits inside the hen house. That's where their food is so the chickens can't get to it.

I don't know if she ever will have litters with this set up but they do make good pets and the kids love them. They love eating grass so I don't see the problem with having them on the ground and running lose. They've been fine now for over 6 months like this.

Over the summer we found a wild baby rabbit and put him in there and they (chickens) never bothered him either. Once he got a little bigger we let him go since wild and domestic rabbits can't successfully breed.

 

[Icarry2]

No other Rabbit related questions or comments?

Hope you are all well,

TJ

 

[browncofiddler]

Thanks for this thread. We have 3 NZ white does that will be bred by the end of March. We have 1 NZ white buck. For some reason the does are crazy and attack us when we water them. We put gloves on and handle them anyway trying to see if they'll get over their aggression in time. We bought them when they were about 2 months old & have no idea why they're so wild. Used to have Flemish Giants that were very tame, never a problem - but these NZ whites are buggers. The buck does not behave this way - only the does have aggressive behavior.

We're really looking forward to our first litters and some tasty rabbit dishes by early summer.

Really liked reading the thread, lots of good info. We do have all of our rabbits in separate wire cages.

 

[Jenel]

All I know about rabbits is all those chocolate treats they leave behind are really stale.

 

[roisigns]

44 bunnies @ 4.5 pounds live weight sold at $1.59/# = $314.82

How long does it take them to get to 4.5 lbs?

p.s. Your Avatar freaks me out.

 

[Icarry2]

Thanks for this thread. We have 3 NZ white does that will be bred by the end of March. We have 1 NZ white buck. For some reason the does are crazy and attack us when we water them. We put gloves on and handle them anyway trying to see if they'll get over their aggression in time. We bought them when they were about 2 months old & have no idea why they're so wild. Used to have Flemish Giants that were very tame, never a problem - but these NZ whites are buggers. The buck does not behave this way - only the does have aggressive behavior.

We're really looking forward to our first litters and some tasty rabbit dishes by early summer.

Really liked reading the thread, lots of good info. We do have all of our rabbits in separate wire cages.

Some animals are just that, animals. If they are all the same way and from the same litter it could be genetics and thus nothing you can do. Eat them and buy more..

If they haven't had a little yet they may calm down or get worse after.

Unless they have a little now why are you waiting to breed them? Start trying now, if they don't take then get another buck.

Where ever they are is there a radio playing? Put a radio just soft enough to hear near them and see if it helps calm them down.

How long does it take them to get to 4.5 lbs?

p.s. Your Avatar freaks me out.

normally by the time you ween a Californian they are between 3.5 and 4.5 pounds. That is at 8 weeks. Some rabbits from some litters will have to be fed them out, meaning put them in a separate cage after weening and feed them for a week or so to make weight. No more then 3 months.. At least not in my experience.

Sorry about the avatar, is this avatar better?