My Rabbits, or "On Raising One's Own Meat, With Some Discussion of the Attendant Pleasures and Dilemmas"

[chromedome]

I've mentioned occasionally on other threads that my GF and I raise rabbits, and I thought perhaps some of you might be interested in seeing them. So I'm starting a new topic for that, because there wasn't a place where they'd be on-topic: they're not garden animals, and they're emphatically not companion animals. I suppose there are a couple of things that might have fit into the "food ethics" thread, but that would have been pretty limiting. So here we are (and for anyone who's not interested in the nuts and bolts, there will be pictures of cute bunnies).

 

Our year-round rabbitry is in a lean-to shed that was built off the side of our barn by a previous owner. They used it for their little tractor (the barn was for horses). We took all of the equipment from the lean-to, put range fencing around it to keep out predators, and an electric fence to deter my stepdaughter's mastiff (truthfully, she mostly keeps other predators at bay). In the autumn as the weather deteriorated we also put up tarps to block the wind and snow. The plan for this year is to tweak the tarps so we can raise and lower them like blinds, giving the bunnies more light and airflow during pleasant weather but still protecting them when it's inclement. During the summer, the young 'uns we're growing out get to live outdoors on the grass. We currently have three cages outdoors, and one more will be moving outside as soon as I can find the time and an extra pair of hands to help.

 

So here's what the wee ones look like in their nest box, when they're just little and their eyes are almost open (the grey fuzz around the edges is mama's fur, the rest of the bedding is straw). It's a few days already since I took these pics, and in that time their eyes have opened and they've begun exploring their cage.

 

 

 

These ones come from a pretty silver-grey doe we've dubbed Silverbell. You need to give 'em names or numbers in order to track the bloodlines and which doe/buck combinations give you the best outcomes, and with grandkids in the mix there was never any question that they'd get names.

 

One of the reasons we sometimes lose bunnies at this stage is that Mama bunny will hop out of the nest box when she's done nursing, and occasionally one of the little guys will still be latched on. If you're lucky, you'll find the teeny critter before it dies of exposure. If not, you lose a bunny (we won't be actively breeding them next winter, partly because of this). This little one was lucky. Here's the before:

 

 

...and here's the after (the same little one, three weeks later).

 

 

 

 

 

You'll note the wire cage bottom, which allows most of the droppings to simply fall through to the ground (we do periodically scrape out any accumulation, as well). We were using a gravity-fed watering system last summer, with hoses and Ts and metal nipples that attach to the cages, but that's not usable in winter so we switched to open dishes. The cages have been reconfigured since autumn to accommodate our burgeoning bunny population, so we need more hose and fittings before we can get it re-established.

 

Here we have a couple of does with their litters, a bit older and more developed than the ones in the first photo. The white doe is Sugar, and the black doe is Ebony (and no, we haven't expended a lot of mental energy on the naming process).

 

 

 

 

Sugar's litter were exceptionally lively right from the start. Trying to count them, my GF giggled and said "They're like popcorn!" Note that the coloration is pretty random, even within a given litter. This was Sugar's first all-white litter, but her third litter with the same (white) buck. Go figure.

 

This little guy is one of Ebony's litter, mostly black but shot through with brown. My granddaughter's daddy's girlfriend (as a culture we really need to find shorthand terminology for this kind of relationship), who is a veterinary tech, fell completely in love with this one and dubbed him/her (we haven't checked yet) Coco Bean.

 

 

Here's a litter of adolescents, from our silver-grey doe. As you see, we only had one in this litter with the coloration we were hoping for. He's a cutie, though (and this one we have checked).

 

 

This is the cage that will be moved outside within the next few days. Our other adolescent bunnies are already outside:

 

 

It's easy to tell which spots were under a cage and which ones were between 'em, isn't it?

 

The three white ones in the cage to the left (that's two bunnies, not one deformed mutant) are now of harvesting age, but they've had a brief reprieve because somebody's possibly coming today to buy one. The middle cage are roughly the same age as the ones still indoors, and have a month or so to enjoy the grass. The bunnies in the three individual enclosures in the right-most cage are our next-generation breeders (it's good to refresh your line every year by swapping out the breeders). Here are some closer pics:

 

 

 

It's fun watching them react when they realize that "Dude, it's food! Everything we're walking on is food!" It always reminds me of the first time we took our granddaughter to the apple U-pick.

 

Finally, this handsome gent is Parker, one of our two current bucks (the other is Snowball, who's white). They're both Flemish Giants, but Parker is the smaller of the two at probably 13 or 14 pounds. Snowball is a chonk, and probably checks in at 18 or so. Parker was a pet before he came to us, and will become a pet again once he's done his duty by the gene pool.

 

 

Oh, and little Wembley has appointed himself Deputy Bunny Inspector, and comes with me each morning and afternoon while I attend to them. Can't leave him out.

 

 

I will fill in some details shortly, but right now I need to go feed and water the critters.

Edited May 22, 2023 by chromedome (log)

[gfweb]

Do you sell them?

[chromedome]

When I was a vendor at the farmer's market out here, a decade or so ago, the farmer at the stall next to me would frequently regale us with stories of the silly and funny things his sheep and pigs had done. On one of those occasions he said "TV is for people who don't have pigs to watch," and that line has stuck in my head ever since.

 

And yes, we get a lot of enjoyment out of our bunnies. We handle and cuddle them a lot, because rabbit husbandry is just a lot simpler when they like you and aren't "hand-shy." They need to be moved from smaller to larger cages periodically, the does must be taken to the bucks when it's time for them to be bred, and the grandkids just plain wanna (though the novelty has somewhat worn off, now). Also we sell a lot of them as pets or breeders, to help defray our costs, and the better-socialized they are the better pets they make, and it's just plain fun to watch them scamper around and play. There's a specific "bounce up in the air with a kick of the hindlegs" maneuver that they do when they're happy and high-spirited that always brings a smile to my face.

 

Which brings us to one of the core questions that everybody has to face when raising livestock (however large or small) for consumption: How do you square that enjoyment of the living creature with plunking its mortal remains onto your dinner plate? This is where we overlap somewhat with the Food Ethics thread, as I'd mentioned in my initial post (and I chose to post in this forum because this is where Gardening is, and it seemed an appropriate complement).

 

I'm going to get into some nitty-gritty here, so if you're at all squeamish or would just rather not think of such things, feel free to skip the rest (future posts will have more bunny pictures to make you smile). Also - and I cannot stress this enough - I absolutely understand those who still wish to eat meat and poultry, but prefer not to see the actual deed done, let alone participate in it. None of what ensues should be interpreted as a criticism, slight, or attack of any kind, whatever your position on such things.

 

All of animal husbandry can be thought of as a contract, of sorts, between humans and our livestock. We get the enjoyment of their milk and eggs, their fleece, and ultimately (in most cases) their flesh and/or hides. In return, we offer them a life of security from want and predation (the idiosyncratic pantheon of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels includes a god of "small creatures whose lives end with a snap and a crunch). Ideally they'd see some measure of comfort as well, though factory farming has certainly taken that element out of the equation for commercially-produced meat and eggs. Of course many producers pay close attention to ethics and living conditions, and knowing the growing conditions of the animals we eat for food is one of the perks of growing one's own (or alternatively, of buying from a trusted vendor).

 

Our bunnies live in wire cages: the breeders and young kits are indoors in suspended cages, and the adolescents (as you saw) are outdoors. The droppings simply fall through the floor of the suspended cages, while the outdoor cages are moved daily onto new grass. The bunnies happily do a portion of the mowing for us, and in return fertilize the grass (the droppings from the barn come out in the wheelbarrow, and go to my garden). They have wooden shelters within the cages, and outdoors are sheltered from the sun and rain by tarps (I need to build a few more of the wooden shelters for the outdoor cages, we've expanded the number of cages but had some attrition on the shelters; the bunnies tend to chew them down because that's what rodents do). The outdoor bunnies get fresh greenery supplemented with modest quantities of hay and commercial feed pellets, while that's reversed for the indoor bunnies (the grandkids love bringing them dandelions, a particular favorite, and they also get veggie trimmings from the kitchen).

 

All of which is to say, they have a pretty good life.

 

Which brings us to the end-of-life scenario, which was something we put thought into before we ever started raising rabbits. Our whole reason for going this route is that my GF has rheumatoid arthritis, and eating red meat (especially cured pork, sadly) causes inflammation and in turn can bring about a flare of her RA. Those of you who have RA yourselves, or know someone who does, will understand that anybody who's experienced a full-blown flare will go to considerable effort to avoid one in future. So we eat a lot of fish and poultry, and - as discussed on that corresponding thread - a fair bit of Beyond's faux-beef product as well (we've tried the Impossible, and considered it inferior).

But she still craves some form of meat that isn't poultry, and the feedback from her RA support groups was that many people have found they can still eat rabbit. It's theorized that this is because rabbit is so lean, but there isn't really any science to back that up as far as I've found in a few desultory searches. So we began raising them, and she can indeed eat them without any negative impact on her RA (the smart thing would have been to buy one at the supermarket first, but that's just not how we roll around here).

 

So we spent some time looking into, and discussing, the various methods used by homesteaders to humanely harvest their bunnies. We rejected seriously old-school options like the ol' hatchet and chopping block, and the equally traditional method of breaking their little necks by hand. Ultimately we settled on a method endorsed by many modern homesteaders, which uses a dog's choke collar. It's a two-person operation. One holds and cuddles the bunny, and slips the collar around its neck. The other gently grasps the hind legs, and... gives a sudden jerk. It breaks the poor bunny's neck instantly, so it's like flipping a switch. One moment warm and coddled, the next moment "lights out."

 

We typically harvest our bunnies at 16 weeks (a "fryer," if you will). At this age they typically dress out at around 3 pounds, with outliers as low as 2.5 or as high as 3.5 (for those accustomed to metric measurements, that's just over 1 kg to just over 1.5 kg).

 

Do I look forward to this part, or enjoy it? No, of course not (anyone who does is just plain wired wrong, and needs therapy). But from early childhood I've had a very clear understanding that if when we choose to eat meat, we're choosing that something dies (I'll circle around to vegans momentarily). When my father wasn't at sea (he was in the Navy) he usually had snares out for wild rabbits, and I could skin one with my pocketknife by the age of 6 or 7in the brief interval between getting a new pocketknife and losing it. Most kids aren't overly burdened with empathy at that age, and I was mostly just enthused about the forthcoming bowl of rabbit stew.

 

As I grew up we raised our own ducks, chickens and pigs, and I participated to varying degrees in dispatching and butchering them. Currently with the rabbits, because it's a two-person job, my GF does the holding and cuddling while I give the fatal tug on the legs. The cleaning and butchering falls to my lot, as well as the salting of the hides (she has plans for those as well). Then I bag them for the freezer, either whole or in parts. So squaring my enjoyment of the cute, fuzzy living bunny with my enjoyment of the cooked bunny is something I was acculturated to in early life (which is part of the purpose behind organizations like 4-H, I suppose). The grandkids are more ambivalent; the younger ones will eat rabbit occasionally but not always, and the teenager outright refuses.

 

My personal feeling, as mentioned on the Food Ethics thread, is that there's no such thing as a cruelty-free meal. I suppose one could make a case for eating the eggs of humanely-raised poultry, though (to my mind) there's an element of sophistry involved even in that. At the simplest level, if you eat meat in any form then - as said above - you've chosen that something die in order that you may eat. But for me vegans don't get a pass, either, because agriculture exacts a terrible toll in animal life. I don't have the link right to hand, but an Australian university quantified the death toll per acre (or hectare?) of land under cultivation, and it ran into many thousands of rodents, birds, snakes, amphibians and (of course) insects, and this doesn't even take into account the downstream effects of herbicide and pesticide runoff.

 

Then there's the question of whether and what plants perceive, which has been the subject of some fascinating research over the past decade or two. Not in a hippy-dippy Secret Life of Plants kind of way, but sound research that demonstrates at least a limited ability to "remember" stimuli and react to them, as well as some primitive ability to communicate within and between species. So there's at least a question mark hanging over, say, salad greens grown hydroponically in a hermetically sealed environment (which, of course, would not scale well enough to feed the world).

That's my personal take. Everyone who undertakes the raising of livestock has their own, and so does everyone who thinks seriously about food. And it's in no way necessary that any of them align with each other.

 

If anybody's interested in the links to the studies I'm mentioning I can dig them up later (I'm supposed to be doing other things right now), but they're easily enough Googled. The remainder of the thread will have less philosophy and more practicality, but I'm probably done for the next several hours.

 

 

 

[chromedome]

24 minutes ago, gfweb said:

Do you sell them?

Not as dressed carcasses, because there's a whole lot of overhead involved in meeting provincial safety regulations. But we do sell them (or trade them) as pets and breeders. The price we get per rabbit squares neatly with the price of a sack of feed pellets, and two of them pays for the 10 bales of hay I can fit into my minivan, so it does definitely help defray our expenses.

[heidih]

Thanks for taking the time for this.  Linking the rabbit cook-off for those who may be experimenting with it.  https://forums.egullet.org/topic/162122-eg-cook-off-86-rabbit/

 

[pastrygirl]

Cute and tasty!  There are wild bunnies around my neighborhood, one is often in my yard when I get home from work, it's almost like having a pet.  I like to think they are eating the grass and helping with the yard work, but do they actually eat lawn grass or is it certain little clovers or other things?  Or everything?

[heidih]

24 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

Cute and tasty!  There are wild bunnies around my neighborhood, one is often in my yard when I get home from work, it's almost like having a pet.  I like to think they are eating the grass and helping with the yard work, but do they actually eat lawn grass or is it certain little clovers or other things?  Or everything?

In my experience it leans to "everything". On one trail, early mornings, I'd see them leaving the big lawns of homes and heading back to their warren in the chapparal hillsides. I've heard about some grazing animals take on the flavor of some of the "stonger" things they eat. Wonder if holds for rabbits. I lived with an English Spot once who cracked me up when she ate her beloved parsley treat. Because of the way they nibble the the sprig woud twirl around in a circle. A house bunny - not for table. 

[chromedome]

1 hour ago, pastrygirl said:

Cute and tasty!  There are wild bunnies around my neighborhood, one is often in my yard when I get home from work, it's almost like having a pet.  I like to think they are eating the grass and helping with the yard work, but do they actually eat lawn grass or is it certain little clovers or other things?  Or everything?

I'm sure they would play favourites if left to their own devices, but when confined to a small space they Hoover up everything. It's a principle that farmers like Joel Salatin replicate on a larger scale by rotating cattle through their pasture with movable electric fences. If everything is cropped to a nubbin, it favors grasses over some of the less-desirable plants.

[BeeZee]

We don't mow the grass every week, so we have tiny wild strawberries that will pop up in our back yard (property behind us previously had grown strawberries, I guess) and the wild rabbits definitely enjoy those. The description of the method of dispatch (to put it clinically) certainly sound humane, more so than a wild rabbit torn apart by a feral cat or raptor, and they live well prior to that. I respect your consideration of the rabbits "quality of life" and good health.

[MaryIsobel]

If only all animals bound for our tables were raised as kindly as yours...

[AlaMoi]

short version of long story . . .

 

my grandparents had five children.

during the depression/WW2, my grandfather raised rabbits as meat for the table.  with some success, they all survived and he traded rabbit meat for . . . all manner of other things they needed . . .

 

fast forward to 1986, my parents and grandmother were visiting us in Germany.  at a restaurant specializing in 'wild game' - my grandmother ordered Hasenpfeffer - and then added she had not had rabbit in 40+ years . . . having eaten her fill 'back then' - later asked my uncle (their youngest child) about that and he quite readily confirmed . . . 'we ate a lot of rabbit'

 

anyway a good time was had by all . . .

[Anna N]

Played a major part in my upbringing. I have noted before that my uncle was the game keeper on a huge estate in Lincolnshire and often came home with rabbits which my aunt would turn into the most amazing rabbit pie. And my father-in-law who emigrated to Canada from Denmark and arrived with very little, kept his family going with paper routes and rabbits he caught along the way!  

[Smithy]

Thank you for your interesting and thoughtful post. I look forward to more of this topic. That said, I just want to tell you that this particular line made me smile. A lot.

 

8 hours ago, chromedome said:

(the smart thing would have been to buy one at the supermarket first, but that's just not how we roll around here)

 

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Rabbit is my favorite meat.    Rarely prepared well in restaurants.    And since I'm the only enthusiast in our family, $45 for a 3 pounder is a lot for me.

[chromedome]

3 hours ago, Smithy said:

Thank you for your interesting and thoughtful post. I look forward to more of this topic. That said, I just want to tell you that this particular line made me smile. A lot.

 

 

Well, she's a ginger and tends to just jump in with both feet. Which complements my style well, because I'm the "overthink and procrastinate" type. So I check her (much of the time) and she prods me into motion (much of the time) and it usually balances out.

 

In this particular instance, the first I heard of the impending rabbit project was when she mentioned to me that we were picking up a buck and two does.

[heidih]

You guys sound like a perfect pairing

[liuzhou]

My maternal grandparents , French refugees during the Nazi occupation (1940), moved to the UK where they opened a newsagents / tobacconist shop. During the harsh rationing caused by the German blockade of Britain, local farmers would come to the shop hoping to exchange wild rabbits, which they had shot, for tobacco. So, my mother was brought up eating a lot of rabbit, a habit she passed on to me and my siblings.

 

Years later when I moved to London my local butcher Norman obtained wild rabbits from his younger brother, a farmer, then call me to tell me he had them. So the tradition continued.

Here, I can obtain rabbit no problem, but only farmed, highly probably not in good conditions. Sad, but better than no rabbit.

 

Rabbit is hugely popular in Sichuan, especially roasted 'ma la'* rabbit heads sold as street food all over.

 

Rabbit Head

 

Also, I sometimes make Sichuan style 辣子兔肉 (là zi tù ròu), rabbit with chillies, a take on  the more common 辣子鸡 (là zi jī) chicken with chillies.

 

辣子兔肉 (là zi tù ròu)

 

* 麻辣 (má là), the iconic Sichuanese combination of chilli and Sichuan peppercorns. Literally 'numbing hot'.

 

That said, I do most often cook it in a more French style with mustard sauce.

 

Edited May 23, 2023 by liuzhou (log)

[kayb]

Can I put in a word for rabbit and dressing? Roasted or boiled rabbit. Cornbread dressing, a bit heavier with the black pepper than you might go for turkey, otherwise the same. Shred the rabbit, stir into the dressing, bake.

 

If I roast the rabbit, I add the pan drippings to chicken stock as the liquid for the dressing. If I boil it, I use the rabbit stock.

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, kayb said:

Roasted

 

Roasted Rabbit.

 

 

[chromedome]

Bartered a kitchen-ready bunny yesterday for a used manufactured-stone countertop for our bathroom vanity. Gotta love the rural economy, right?

 

I said off the top that the rabbits are emphatically not pets, but we currently have a couple of exceptions. One is little Coco Bean, featured above, whose status as my granddaughter's daddy's girlfriend's favorite (she'll be abbreviated as "J" henceforward, to save typing) means that he/she will either go to their place as a pet, or be kept out as a breeder when the time comes.

My GF also spotted a little lame kit in one of our recent litters, which I brought indoors because runts and physically impaired kits tend to be crowded out by their siblings and starve. The wee one had deformed hind legs and (I believe) hip problems as well, so I dubbed him "Tiny Tim" after the similarly afflicted Dickens character. Except upon later inspection "Tim" turned out to be a doe, so now she's Tina. Now that she's a healthy and growing adolescent we've begun advertising her for rehoming as a pet. She's very cuddly and affectionate (Flemish Giants are known for having a pleasant disposition).

 

Here she is:

 

 

Although she can't hop around like other bunnies, she still manages to thrash around her cage at high speed, using the same sort of motion as a swimming frog. It's odd-looking, but very effective. She is, of course, spoiled rotten with vegetable trimmings, apple cores and similar delicacies.

 

 

[BeeZee]

FYI, Wild Fork Foods currently shows a whole rabbit fryer (U.S. farmed) at $35.70 ($12.98/Lb).

[chromedome]

56 minutes ago, BeeZee said:

FYI, Wild Fork Foods currently shows a whole rabbit fryer (U.S. farmed) at $35.70 ($12.98/Lb).

The last time I looked at them in the supermarket up here (it's been a few years) they ran in the $25-$30 (CDN) range.

[lemniscate]

When The Stinking Rose was a thing (is it still a thing?), the best entree to me was the rabbit with garlic and olives.   I was not excited by a "Garlic" restaurant, but I did like that dish because it was so unusual to see rabbit on a menu.   And rabbit seems to like to be paired with garlic.

 

 

[FlashJack]

@chromedome

 

I'm enjoying these posts very much. Nice writing and a thoughtful approach to husbandry and the table.

 

Thank you.

[Kim Shook]

Thank you so much for this topic.  I grew up with a grandfather who raised beef cattle, but who managed to be off the farm on one errand or another when the man came to collect them for their destiny.  He loved his creatures.  He wasn't sentimental about them, but he just couldn't watch them taken away.  They were all born on his farm and he used to say that that was the first time they would have been frightened in their lives.  But when the meat came back in neat little packages we all ate it and didn't really think strongly about the animal we had known.  And I love that the animals we consumed had a good life and a quick death.  Not a lifetime of misery and a terrifying death.  I wish I could afford to exclusively eat responsibly raised meat.