In late April I went to buy a couple of rabbits. I had been wanting to add rabbits to my "farm" for at least a year and was just waiting for the right time i.e. when the area I would house them was cleaned of junk and I could convince my husband. (He doesn't take much convincing as he lets me do whatever I want.) I had raised rabbits before and knew they were fairly easy to care for. Their "poop" pellets make the best garden fertilizer as there is no need to "age" it like you have to do with chicken manure. Rabbit meat is really good for you as it's high in easily digested protein (they suggest it for children and the elderly) and very lean. The trick to raising meat rabbits is practicality. You don't get attached to the babies even though they are very cute. You either sell them or butcher them - they are food just like chicken & beef.
I saw an ad on Craig's list offering a male, female and baby for $3 each. He said the male was black, the female brown and the baby was brown & white. I knew right away that these weren't the "preferred" breeds (New Zealand or Californias) for meat rabbits, but it was a start and the price was right. So following the guy's very round about directions I went to pick them up. When I got there he said the buck (male) was missing so his wife had instructed him to give me the other two. The price just got better. The owner explained that he had allowed his rabbits free run of the dog kennel, but they dug out. He was going to use them for bow hunting practice and cook them on his outdoor fire pit. But when his kids saw the baby bunnies come out of the burrows all over their yard, they just wouldn't eat them. His wife had decided she wanted a garden so told him the rabbits had to go - trap and sell them. I could tell these were transplanted city folk, but I figured they would learn. If the "tame" rabbits didn't eat her unfenced garden, then the cotton tails and jack rabbits would. I don't think the guy had been feeding the rabbits. They were just living on fox tails. No wonder they wanted to eat her garden.
So I brought home Momma and Baby. I asked my little friends Ricky and Christopher to name them. Momma became Daisy and Baby took on the name of Twinkle. Turns out Twinkle's a female (doe) also - sweet! They had to live in a bird cage for a little while until I could build the cages I had purchased.
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Daisy - notice the orange fur?
It was very coarse and she has
no dewlap. |
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| Twinkle |
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| Momma and baby. |
I had bought some cages from The Tractor Supply store, but they were un-assembled. I had also posted a want ad on Craig's List. The same day I posted the ad, someone else posted an ad for a rabbit cage & chicken cage. The price was very reasonable considering no assembly was required and they had a roof already built on. (Most cages come as a wire box and nothing more.) It worked out the woman selling the cages lived here in town, so my hubby and I took his truck to pick them up. The cages turned out to be very roomy and were ideal. I had a spot on the east side of my house that was in full shade, away from the dogs and fairly quiet.
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| Nice large cages. |
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| Plenty of room to grow. |
The next step in building my rabbit program was getting a buck. It just so happened that my niece was moving and needed a home for her son's rabbit, Barney. I offered to take him off her hands, give him a nice home, show him a good time and not eat him. It was a done deal. Barney turned out to be fairly big even though he's part Lion's Mane. He has funny tufts of hair growing between his ears and he's developing a fu-man-chu mustache. Now I'm just waiting for the weather to cool down so I can start breeding. The heat is very stressful on rabbits. I put large frozen bottles of ice in their cages on the days when it gets above 95 degrees. I know I could have waited for fall when the weather cooled off, but for me the time was right in April.
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Twinkle in front of Daisy. She's
getting almost as big. |
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Daisy. Notice the double chin? It's
called a dewlap and is a sign of health.
She didn't have this when I got her -
probably that fox tail diet she was on. |
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You'll also notice her coat is darker.
I think the orange was due to sun
exposure. It's also much softer. |
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| Twinkle is very playful & inquisitive. |
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| Beautiful markings. |
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By the size of her ears, she's not
done growing. |
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| Barney (I call him Herman.) |
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Notice the developing mustache?
He also has tufts of hair between
his ears. |
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| He's a handsome guy. |
