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

[chromedome]

It feels odd to say this, given that we haven't even reached the solstice yet, but we're well into our last breeding cycle for this year.

 

Little grey doe Silverbell's kits have been weaned, we have new babies from the black does, the brown does are due in the next day or two, and our remaining white doe (Sugar) will have hers around month-end. That means her litter will be ready for harvest around the end of October or beginning of November, at which point we'll get everything buttoned down and snugged up for the winter.

 

This also means we'll be rehoming our current generation of breeders in favor of new stock, which will be just a bit melancholy. They all have their own distinct personalities, of course, and we've grown fond of them. The bucks in particular are very sociable and enjoy being petted and handled. But refreshing your breeding stock is always a part of good husbandry, and you do it more often with small animals that have rapid reproductive cycles. We've already rehomed Silverbell into a household where she'll be a pet. Our brown buck was a pet before he came to us, and may go as either a pet or a breeder. We aren't going to be raising any brown bunnies next year, so there's also a possibility that we'll offer all three as a package deal for someone who wants to start raising rabbits.

 

Going forward we're going to have a buck and two does in each of white, black and grey. This is because (as mentioned previously) my GF has plans for the pelts. Originally she'd planned on white and black only (and yes, we'd joked about her Cruella de Vil color scheme) but little Silverbell was so beautiful that she decided there was room in her vision for shades of grey as well. We already have our second-generation breeders in hand, though most of them aren't yet of breeding age. The exception is our two black does, who are sisters and were kept back from one of our earlier litters. They're already second-generation.

 

The grandkids named our new black buck Pepper, which was in fact the same name as our original black buck (the one that had the misfortune to meet the mastiff in person). He never had the opportunity to contribute to the gene pool, so allowing the new guy to become his namesake won't confuse our record-keeping. The grey buck and does don't have names yet, though one of the bucks will probably be "Smokey" because my granddaughter likes that name.

 

Our juvenile white buck is an interesting case. Most white rabbits have pink eyes, but his are a startlingly deep, vivid blue. It struck me there was an obvious association there, so I've dubbed him Frank after "Ol' Blue Eyes." He's quite the little charmer, very affectionate and keen for attention. So are the new greys, but Pepper is a bit stand-offish so far. It'll be fun getting to know them all over the coming months.

[chromedome]

I believe I've mentioned a time or two that our white buck, Snowball, is a big fella even by Flemish Giant standards. Here's the photographic evidence:

 

[blue_dolphin]

On 6/9/2023 at 4:10 AM, chromedome said:

… Going forward we're going to have a buck and two does in each of white, black and grey. This is because (as mentioned previously) my GF has plans for the pelts. 

…

Our juvenile white buck is an interesting case. Most white rabbits have pink eyes, but his are a startlingly deep, vivid blue.

First, thank you for sharing this saga as I’ve found it very interesting. 

When you mentioned breeding for coat colors, I wondered how much of that had been worked out. That sent me down a whole 'nother rabbit hole of rabbit coat genetics where I learned how many variations exist (so many cute bunny photos included to demonstrate.) I was especially intrigued by your Mr. Blue Eyes as I had mistakenly assumed all white rabbits were albino though I'd never make that assumption with every species. I'll be interested to hear how the breeding for color goes, especially if you find any surprises!

[chromedome]

3 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

First, thank you for sharing this saga as I’ve found it very interesting. 

When you mentioned breeding for coat colors, I wondered how much of that had been worked out. That sent me down a whole 'nother rabbit hole of rabbit coat genetics where I learned how many variations exist (so many cute bunny photos included to demonstrate.) I was especially intrigued by your Mr. Blue Eyes as I had mistakenly assumed all white rabbits were albino though I'd never make that assumption with every species. I'll be interested to hear how the breeding for color goes, especially if you find any surprises!

Oh, we've already learned that breeding for color is an exercise in randomness. We bred our grey doe to our white buck, for example, and got 2 grey, 1 black and 5 white kits. I haven't looked into the genetics of it myself but my GF has. If I understand the scenario correctly, it takes a few generations of selecting for color-dominance before you consistently get uniform litters. In our case, for example, white doe Sugar consistently gives us all-white litters when bred with white buck Snowball, but her littermate Salt did not. So make of that what you will.

[blue_dolphin]

4 hours ago, chromedome said:

Oh, we've already learned that breeding for color is an exercise in randomness.

Yeah, my cat breeder friend got into it back in vet school when cat coat genetics were believed to be more simple and she thought there was more to it.  She's been breeding American Shorthairs for decades, has written papers on the topic and still gets surprises popping up! 

[chromedome]

Oy. Yeah, I don't plan on gaining that level of expertise. I just feed 'em.

[chromedome]

Having said that, mind you, if you care to post (or DM me) links to her papers, GF and I would be keen to have a look at 'em. I don't know how much is applicable to rabbits, but it would still be interesting.

[heidih]

8 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

I was especially intrigued by your Mr. Blue Eyes as I had mistakenly assumed all white rabbits were albino though I'd never make that assumption with every species. I'll be interested to hear how the breeding for color goes, especially if you find any surprises!

I had an all white one with the red eyes and later a white one with blue eyes and dark grey edges on his ears -  Siamese cat like. Behavior and attitude wise like the cat.

[chromedome]

We've trying to rehome our little house bunny, Tina, for a couple of weeks but haven't yet been successful. I've recently upgraded our fenced-in back yard to make it more critter-proof in both directions (ie, Wembley can go out to use the facilities but not carry on down to the road to race the cars), so yesterday we decided to give her the opportunity to live a larger life out there (she's gotten pretty big for that indoor cage).

 

So she has a large and comfy nest box filled with straw, and a yard filled with all the clover and dandelions she can eat, and lots of sunshine and fresh air. There's a marginal risk from birds of prey but our cats come and go unscathed, so it seems that any raptor large enough to be problematic gives the immediate area of the house a wide berth. Overall she seems happy, but this morning when I went out to feed the rest of the rabbits and stopped to give her some pets and some sweet words (our usual morning routine), she flounced away. Clearly she's Not Speaking To Me Right Now, which amused me greatly. It was just like watching my 8-yo granddaughter when she's gotten steamed about something.

 

I'll post more later; just stole a few minutes before heading into town for a medical appointment (just routine followup with the urologist, there'll be a similar one with the oncologist in September).

[chromedome]

Evidently I'm forgiven, she came out for pets when I got home from the doctor (and all is well on the urology front, if anyone wondered).

[chromedome]

On 5/24/2023 at 9:33 AM, Smithy said:

Does a doe ever reject a bunny on purpose? If so, will another doe accept it? In the case you cited above, did you simply have to put the baby back with the doe, or did you have to hand-raise it after that?

 

Stealing a few minutes during my lunch for an update.

 

One of our does has been a bit of an escape artist (her name is Aster, nicknamed "pain in my"), and what with one thing and another we'd never managed to get a litter out of her. Either she was AWL at the crucial moment, or her breeding didn't "take," or what have you (breeders can and do manually assist, but we're not that hard-core). Recently she did give us a small litter, but when we checked on them after 24 hours one had died and the remaining three were clearly hungry and weak. Whether she was rejecting them or just plain clueless is uncertain, but we transferred them to the next cage where the super-reliable Posey had just had her own litter. All of them are now fat and flourishing, so there was no issue with her accepting them. That's probably not universally true, but it worked for us in this instance.

 

We'd also ordered up a quantity of watering containers for the cages. Last year, as I'd mentioned earlier, we had a gravity-fed system of hoses running to nipples attached to the cages. This wasn't ideal, and we thought individual waterers were probably a better solution than open dishes which can easily be fouled or spilled. So we brought in a bunch and put them on the outdoor cages (the youngsters) and a few of the indoor cages. We need to order more when cash flow permits, because the plan for winter is to have two sets and simply swap them out twice/day so there's a non-frozen source of water.

 

A few days later we randomly had a dead adolescent, followed by a couple more on the ensuing days. After some panic, and a few sad morning burials, I eventually deduced that while most of the bunnies had successfully adapted to their new drinkers, a couple hadn't and were dying of dehydration. I've gone back to having an open dish in that one cage as a backup, and there were no more deaths after that. The two younger litters behind that one adapted with no issues, so it seems as long as they're exposed early in life they'll figure it out. Lesson learned.

 

We're now at the point of actively advertising our current bucks for rehoming as pets or breeders, and Aster as a pet (though someone took on our other problematic doe to see if a change of scenery would help, so who knows?). The older adolescents hit harvest age last week but we didn't have time to do the deed, so that will have to happen this weekend before I go to NS for my monthly visit (my sister will be here from Vancouver, so it's this year's Really Big Deal visit). That in turn will free up a cage for the now-departed Silverbell's fast-growing litter to come outside and live on the grass in one of the larger cages.

Our next-gen bucks are California/Rex and California/New Zealand crosses, so they'll be smaller when full-grown than our current Flemish Giants but they grow more quickly to harvest weight and have a better meat-to-bone ratio. We'll be breeding them into our current Flemish bloodlines, with the ultimate goal of having bunnies that grow somewhat larger than the California crosses but somewhat faster than the Flemish Giants. We'll see how that plays out.

[chromedome]

It's been a while since my last update, partly because of busy-ness and partly because there was relatively little to relate. I have a bit of time this morning, though, and have some random things to share, so this will be something of a sprawling, meandering post.

 

One thing I was surprised to learn when we first started with rabbits was that they're really, really deft at handling objects with their mouths. A couple of our does have the amusing habit of stacking their food and water dishes once they're emptied, and if I'm late bringing up the rations a few of 'em will start banging their dishes against their cages or shelters when they hear me coming (in the approved tin-mug prison movie style). The funniest example of this came about a month ago.

 

I've mentioned in previous posts a couple of our younger bucks, black-furred Pepper II and blue-eyed Frank. In the course of things, as our bunny population ebbed and flowed, we found ourselves short on cages and were forced to put the two young bucks together for a while (if they were older they'd fight, but juveniles generally get along okay for a time). I mentally thought of this cage as the "bachelor quarters." One day, as I came up to feed the rabbits, I watched in surprise and delight as the two bachelors took turns tossing and flipping their dishes one after the other, for all the world like a couple of bored teenagers playing "football" with a coin or tossing bottle caps. They'd retrieve their dish, bring it back to the back of the cage, and then toss again. I have no idea whether they were competing on distance or style, but it was impressive.

 

...and speaking of those "bachelor quarters," something happened a few mornings ago that made me raise my eyebrows. I came into the lean-to as usual for the morning feeding, topped up the water and pellets, and gave them a big bundle of hay. Frank immediately pounced on the hay, but instead of chowing down on it he began gathering it up in big mouthfuls.

Now this is not at all unusual behavior, I've seen it many times in the past year. In does. Who are about to give birth, and feeling the nesting urge. Ummm.

 

So I separated them and placed Frank (or "Frannie," as I'm now calling her) into the adjoining cage, with a nest box full of straw, which she wasted no time arranging to her satisfaction. You can't leave the buck and doe together in a cage at birthing time, because the buck will kill the newborn kits and/or toss them out of the cage (this happens in many species; the male knows he's not getting any until the youngsters are weaned and therefore Takes The Necessary Steps). Unfortunately this cage has had an unsatisfactory roof all along, because we'd run out of the proper wire and used range fencing over top (4-inch squares, meant for larger livestock) with various patches meant to keep the rabbits in place. You can see where this is going, right? Yup... next morning I went up early to feed the bunnies and see if Frannie'd had a litter, and she was back in Pepper's cage and there were 10 kits on the ground.

 

Two of them were dead but the other eight were still warm and lively, so I put them back in the nest box and returned Frannie to her duties (she wasn't happy, as the scratches on my forearm can attest). I found more and better materials to patch the roof temporarily, and fixed it properly with a sheet of chicken wire that afternoon, so it won't happen again in future. The eight survivors are all lively and vigorous, so clearly Frannie has settled into the mothering role (a lot of does don't do well with their first litter, so this wasn't necessarily a given).

 

I'd been meaning to get a pic of "Frank" so you could see those beautiful blue eyes, but it hasn't been easy. These are the best I've managed so far, while she was arranging the nest box to her satisfaction:

 

 

 

As a followup to our previous discussion of coat colour and genetics, I'll note that all of the kits are black like their father.

 

We're considering how large an establishment of rabbits we'll want to carry forward to next year, because currently we're raising more than we need. My stepdaughter and the grandkids are not at all keen on eating rabbit, so I'm only feeding two of us rather than six. Also, we've found that having them out on grass over the summer hasn't meant as much of a saving on feed as we'd anticipated; the impact has essentially been negligible. In witness whereof, here's what happens when they get their pellets:

 

 

We like the idea of having them on grass - emotionally it's satisfying - but in practice it's been a real complication with few benefits and some notable downsides (the mysterious deaths I'd mentioned earlier weren't happening inside). We may opt next year to limit ourselves to just the number we can reasonably keep up at the barn. I've been brainstorming ways to make the tarped sides of their enclosure roll up and down, to give them more light and fresh air when the weather permits. We'll see how it all shakes out.
 

Presently we have 30-odd rabbits in the freezer and 40-odd kits in various stages of growth. That's going to be plenty for our purposes, and a few left over for barter and for gifting family and friends.

 

On that note, and in the spirit of back-filling useful information for planning purposes, when we harvested our last batch of 14 (the ones you see clustered around the bowl in the above pic*, plus a few from another cage) I kept track of the time required. From start to finish - wrangling them from their cage one at a time, doing the deed, skinning, gutting and cleaning, prepping for the freezer, and then salting down the pelts - took 6 hours, though that includes time spent feeding the other rabbits and stuffing a few pieces of (delivery) pizza into my own face. It works out to about 20 minutes/rabbit, which seems reasonably efficient. At our first harvest we processed only 6 rabbits and it took me the same length of time, though in my defense it was the first time I'd skinned and gutted a bunny in 50 years or so.

 

That's useful information to have for planning purposes, and I'm rather sheepish that it took me this long to quantify it. It'll be a big help though the fall, because now I'll know how much time to block off (and how early to start!) for any given batch.

 

On another practical note I've been putting the rabbits into regular freezer bags (the twist-tie kind) initially, but will allocate time to transfer the now-frozen bunnies into vacuum-seal bags for longer-term storage. Freezing them first in the other bags means I don't have to worry about blotting them scrupulously dry before putting them into my FoodSaver (and no, before anyone says it, a chamber vac just isn't in my budget for the year).

 

I'm not sure how much more I'll have to say about the bunnies going forward, but I may occasionally post a pic or two just because - let's face it - rabbits are cute.

 

*The runty white one with the dark ears that you see in roughly the 5:00 position got a reprieve, and is now sharing the grow-out cage with a younger litter who are roughly the same size.

 

ETA: I should clarify on the Frank/Frannie thing that a) it's really hard to sex rabbits accurately when they're small; and that b) "he" was a throw-in when we picked up our grey breeders. That was a cash-and-trade deal that saw our white doe Salt go home with the other woman, but she brought along the blue-eyed (ahem) buck on spec to see if we'd want him because of those blue eyes. And we did, and we did take a quick look, but... see a). The grey ones got a much closer scrutiny, but "Frank" was younger and smaller, and well, these things happen.

Edited August 6, 2023 by chromedome (log)

[heidih]

Sounds like quite the mix of hard work, planning and amusement. Do you have a roster of rabbit dishes you make? I buzzed through the Rabbit Cook-Off but did not see any of yours.  Oh and they can also count it seems. A friend used to give her English Spot 3 of those "baby carrots" every eve. She ran out and only had 2. Bauhinia pitched a fit.

[chromedome]

7 hours ago, heidih said:

Sounds like quite the mix of hard work, planning and amusement. Do you have a roster of rabbit dishes you make? I buzzed through the Rabbit Cook-Off but did not see any of yours.  Oh and they can also count it seems. A friend used to give her English Spot 3 of those "baby carrots" every eve. She ran out and only had 2. Bauhinia pitched a fit.

I haven't delved very far into my playbook at all, because my poor sweetie (on top of the chronic illnesses, etc) has had a lot of dental issues this summer. So they've mostly gone into the IP and been cooked to a pot roast/pulled pork consistency. I've served them pulled-pork fashion on a bun, and in rabbit stew and rabbit pie, and have also cooled the cooked rabbit and then grilled it with her favorite brand of sauce nicely caramelized onto it.

 

She loves cutlets and has asked if it's possible to do that with a rabbit, which after some thought I decided should be possible. The loin muscles are long enough to butterfly and pound out, and the thighs of the hindlegs are big enough as well. So that's on the agenda for sometime in the coming weeks. I eat the "giblets" myself, since nobody else cares for them, and those I usually just pan-fry with onions, garlic, mushrooms, soy and Worcestershire. If I'm having them over potatoes (rather than rice or noodles) I'll make a quick pan gravy.

 

Of course cooking a tender young rabbit that way is a bit wasteful, but... extenuating circumstances and all that. I'll go for some quicker-cooking options now that her mouth is back to normal, and will be a bit more adventurous, but probably won't have the time to really have fun with 'em until winter.

[heidih]

18 minutes ago, chromedome said:

I haven't delved very far into my playbook at all, because my poor sweetie (on top of the chronic illnesses, etc) has had a lot of dental issues this summer. So they've mostly gone into the IP and been cooked to a pot roast/pulled pork consistency. I've served them pulled-pork fashion on a bun, and in rabbit stew and rabbit pie, and have also cooled the cooked rabbit and then grilled it with her favorite brand of sauce nicely caramelized onto it.

 

She loves cutlets and has asked if it's possible to do that with a rabbit, which after some thought I decided should be possible. The loin muscles are long enough to butterfly and pound out, and the thighs of the hindlegs are big enough as well. So that's on the agenda for sometime in the coming weeks. I eat the "giblets" myself, since nobody else cares for them, and those I usually just pan-fry with onions, garlic, mushrooms, soy and Worcestershire. If I'm having them over potatoes (rather than rice or noodles) I'll make a quick pan gravy.

 

Of course cooking a tender young rabbit that way is a bit wasteful, but... extenuating circumstances and all that. I'll go for some quicker-cooking options now that her mouth is back to normal, and will be a bit more adventurous, but probably won't have the time to really have fun with 'em until winter.

Thanks for the explanation. I'll look forward to maybe seeing some of your"play" in the Cook-Off. Good to hear GF's dental issues are on the wane.

[TdeV]

Yes, please. Photos of the dishes you make will be appreciated!

[chromedome]

I mentioned a little way upthread (a few months ago, now) that we'd been losing random adolescents mysteriously, and that I'd blamed it on a shaky adjustment to our new waterers. That proved not to be the case, and I was unable to match the symptoms to a specific disease. We'd even begun reading up on which plants might be in our yard that could conceivably be toxic to the poor bunnies, thinking that this might explain the randomness (and the fact that it hadn't impacted our indoor bunnies).

 

In the event, our last harvest finally provided the "smoking gun." Because they're raised for meat I do - in effect - an ad hoc necropsy on every rabbit we harvest, and I've occasionally seen livers that looked mottled, like the marbling on a good steak. This last batch had several whose livers looked that way, and this is when the penny dropped for me. It turns out to be hepatic coccidiosis, a parasite spread through their droppings (remember me mentioning that they're coprophages?). We can still safely eat the bunnies (phew!) and our dogs won't become ill from snacking on the bunny droppings (these parasites are species-specific) so that allayed our immediate fears.

It also tells us our countermeasures, which boil down to improved cage hygiene. That in turn means some tweaks to our cage design, to improve the feces' proverbial ability to move downhill. Mostly these are things we'd already discussed, because on a practical basis cage-cleaning takes time and energy: if it can be minimized, so much the better. And if it protects against coccidiosis (it does), better still.

 

As for the affected bunnies treatment is to keep them hydrated and fed, by syringe if necessary. Many get over it handily enough, and many are asymptomatic (ie, most of the last litter I harvested), and adults are largely unaffected. It's just the adolescents who are really vulnerable, or rabbits who are already suffering from health issues. This was timely information, because this morning when I went to feed the little guys I found one of our indoor bunnies sprawled on its side and showing the symptoms I've come to recognize (floppiness, lethargy, etc). We've not had an indoor bunny get sick before, so this was a new development and an unwelcome one, especially as I'm rather fond of this litter (they're all very personable).

 

So currently the little guy is in a box here in my office, a couple of feet away, and I've just given him his second watering from the syringe. He's starting to perk up a little, but still seems pretty subdued. I've put a couple of dainties in the box, to tempt his* tummy, but if necessary I'll feed him through the syringe as well. For this morning that'll have to be unsweetened applesauce, the only rabbit-friendly thing I've got that can be administered this way, but apparently it's possible to cook up the alfalfa pellets into a sort of loose porridge that can be syringed into convalescents. We'll see about that later, if it should be necessary.

 

More later, but right now I'm supposed to be working.

 

*Not verified, but in my head this one's "Max" after the childrens' books and TV series about "Max and Ruby."

Edited August 11, 2023 by chromedome (log)

[chromedome]

I've been meaning to come back and wrap up this topic for the year, but you know... one thing and another, busy-ness, blah blah blah. I'm taking today off from work, to mark my completion of a 60th orbit around the sun, so I'll rattle off a quick final installment here.

 

I harvested our final batch of youngsters for the year in mid-November, before my last visit to NS. We're now down to next year's 11 breeders, plus Sugar - the last of our three initial bunnies - who is transitioning from "working doe" to "house pet." That involves some give and take around our granddaughter and her ability/willingness to accept and demonstrate responsibility, so for now she lives in a cage in our (fenced) back yard and is let out most days for at least a brief opportunity to hop around, socialize, nibble the dandelions, etc.

 

 

Our current breeders represent the transition I'd mentioned between all Flemish Giants and mixtures with other meat breeds. In the smaller breeds, we have Pepper 2 and Frankie (black buck, white doe) as well as our three grey breeders. The grey buck is Ash, and the two does are Stormy and Misty. I'd hoped to name them Agnes (a literary reference) and Jane (an historical one) but my GF had already written those names on her breeding sheets so it was a done deal.

 

On the Flemish side we have a white buck with grey nose and ears, named Max, and we have two does (Sugar's daughters) in the same color scheme. I argued that if one has a buck named Max one must therefore have a doe named Min, but was overruled. I'd mentioned upthread that Max was named after the character of that name in the "Max and Ruby" childrens' books and animated show, so she had already settled on calling the does Ann and Ruby (because "Max - Ann - Ruby"). Then we have our two black does that you've already met, Noir and Ebony (also Flemish) and a black Flemish buck named Jett.

Most of the bunnies are quite friendly and sweet-natured, though a couple (Noir and Jett in particular) are wary of physical contact. Sugar and her daughters are the most affectionate, with Ann and Ruby coming to the front of their cage at every feeding to solicit pets, offer friendly nose-boops, and just generally enjoy a few minutes' affection. Sugar is very much the same: when I got back from my most recent trip to NS (after 5 days away) she pinballed around her cage in excitement, and burrowed her face into my hand just as the pups and cat do.

 

We'd originally suspended our cages from the rafters inside the rabbitry as an added protection against predators, but now that we have 15 months' experience to work with we're confident that it's not a concern, so we're moving them back out to the walls and mounting them directly. The cage containing Jett, Ebony and Noir is already in its new location, and I've got most of the prep done to move two other cages (the one with Max, Ruby and Ann; and the one with Pepper and Frankie) to the long side wall. That will create enough additional space to move the three greys indoors, which hasn't happened yet. They'll be secured to the barn wall.

 

Over the winter I'll be shortening the height of the larger cages by about 8 inches and then reattaching their roofs, which will give us enough vertical height to allow for a second cage underneath (and a panel of sheet metal in between, to catch droppings from the "upstairs neighbors." That'll give us enough housing to keep next year's adolescents indoors, something we'd been contemplating for the last several months. Having them out on grass was emotionally intuitive, but in practice the benefits weren't there and - as you'll recall - we learned a harsh lesson about parasites. In the spring I'll rearrange the tarps on the outer walls to allow for them opening and closing, and will make the indoor life rather more gracious during the warm months. The scenario will doubtless evolve further, over time.

 

We didn't add chickens this summer, as we'd hoped/intended, but plan to have the infrastructure in place by spring. GF is also obsessed with the notion of having a small flock of quail in an indoor cage, and that may happen sooner. We'll see.

I need to reorganize/ defrost our freezers now that the various harvests are done (and to make room for some make-ahead holiday baking), and will weigh our total season's accumulation of rabbit when I do that.

[chromedome]

Earlier today I'd made up a couple of rabbit terrines for holiday entertaining/gifting. I took the opportunity to get a meat/bone ratio for our current Flemish Giants, since we'll be doing a compare/contrast with other breeds next year. My start weight for two well-grown bunnies was 3.686 kg (a little over 8 pounds, so they were big ones) and the weight of stripped bones left over at the end was 496g or just over a pound. Quick math tells me that's a meat:bone ratio of just over 7.4:1. Not too shabby.