Rabbits:
Video of rabbit building her nest
Baby Rabbits
Article re:rabbits as livestock
Our rabbits
Showing posts with label rabbits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rabbits. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Baby rabbits
Our baby rabbits are born! We were a little worried, because we thought she was long overdue and thought something happened to the babies or she wasn't pregnant. But, she was just hiding them in a nest she made outside of her nest box. Smart girl!
(yes, we are still in our pajamas. sorry!)
(yes, we are still in our pajamas. sorry!)
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Rabbits
We have more new "farm" animals! These are called American Chinchillas which are a very rare breed of livestock--The American Livestock Conservancy calls their conservation status "critical." I found these on craigslist, from a homeschooled boy that lives about 20 minutes away from here. He is into 4H and breeds all kinds of animals. He had these two does bred for us, so hopefully in a month we will see some little babies.
Guy loves the rabbits. He likes to just sit here and feed them--shoving carrots and lettuce and, well, anything he can find into the cage. Partially I decided that rabbits would be a good animal for us to have as Guy really likes feeding and just hanging out with them. Maybe now he will stop harassing our chicks a little. But probably not.
So, meat rabbits. Oh boy. I know, it is hard to stomach for me too. But I am so tired of all of the food controversies... the way that animals are raised in this country is totally disgusting and inhumane. I would like to get to a point where we don't really eat any meat that we didn't raise ourselves or was sourced locally. Not that we eat a lot of meat. We don't. But it is part of our diet and so we need to find a way to be as responsible as possible, for our wallets, the planet, for the animals themselves.
I am hoping that we can sell any excess babies. We will see.
So when considering a meat rabbit breed, the idea is that they need to grow to a harvestable size quickly, so that they are still tender meat when they are slaughtered. These rabbits can also be used for their fur, but their fur takes much longer to mature. I have no idea how to use fur but I like the idea of making use of the whole animal.
I found two good blogs last night about raising rabbits for meat. I am looking for a lot more information so hope to have more resources posted in the future.
Polyface Apprentice
Living the Frugal Live
Guy loves the rabbits. He likes to just sit here and feed them--shoving carrots and lettuce and, well, anything he can find into the cage. Partially I decided that rabbits would be a good animal for us to have as Guy really likes feeding and just hanging out with them. Maybe now he will stop harassing our chicks a little. But probably not.
So, meat rabbits. Oh boy. I know, it is hard to stomach for me too. But I am so tired of all of the food controversies... the way that animals are raised in this country is totally disgusting and inhumane. I would like to get to a point where we don't really eat any meat that we didn't raise ourselves or was sourced locally. Not that we eat a lot of meat. We don't. But it is part of our diet and so we need to find a way to be as responsible as possible, for our wallets, the planet, for the animals themselves.
I am hoping that we can sell any excess babies. We will see.
So when considering a meat rabbit breed, the idea is that they need to grow to a harvestable size quickly, so that they are still tender meat when they are slaughtered. These rabbits can also be used for their fur, but their fur takes much longer to mature. I have no idea how to use fur but I like the idea of making use of the whole animal.
I found two good blogs last night about raising rabbits for meat. I am looking for a lot more information so hope to have more resources posted in the future.
Polyface Apprentice
Living the Frugal Live
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