The Return of Pastured Rabbit

We can now officially announce that we will have pastured rabbit available for sale in 2015! It's been many months of thinking and planning, but we're committed and forging on ahead.

If you've followed some of the past posts (here and here), you'll know that we've been exploring rabbit production for many years, starting with our very first trio of rabbits acquired back in 2009. Rabbits were a bit of a gateway animal for us, but I never felt comfortable with the traditional way rabbits were raised, individually in small cages. It's been a test of persistence to come up with a husbandry method that I like, but I feel confident now that I've found one. As you can see in the picture above, cages still play a role in the husbandry. We've settled on raising the breeding does and bucks in suspended cages, with high carbon material below to absorb the manure (we're using low quality hay right now). This is very similar to the deep bedding methods we use in our pig production, except that the "bedding" is not in contact with the rabbits (they would be sitting in their own manure if we had them on bedding in cages). The manure soaked hay gets cleaned out and replaced regularly, eventually becoming high quality compost for our organic seed garlic production.

The most unusual (and probably the most controversial to the conventional rabbit breeder) aspect of the setup is that the does are housed two to an extra large cage. The cage is actually three cages fastened together with a small "holes" cut out in the wall of the cage so that the rabbits can hop from cage to cage. The total cage surface area is thus 1.5 times "normal" for each rabbit, but the rabbits have essentially 3 times the room to move. Each cage has a door, and the middle cage has the feeder, the waterer, and a place for hay or other seasonal forage to be added. By having one feeding and watering station for two rabbits, I save a bit of time on the daily chores. The nest boxes will eventually go in the two outer sub-cages when the does are ready to kindle. This will give them their own space. In my testing of this prototype, I didn't experience any fighting or negative behavior between the does, so I'm optimistic that this will work in the more scaled up version. If for some reason we start to see negative behavior, I can add doors to the "holes"  and/or modify the cages with a central partition. The bucks are still housed individually for now, although I'm interested to try communal housing in the future. For right now, I want to make sure that I have healthy bucks for the first breeding cycle. 

We currently have 12 does and 2 bucks, after I added 7 does and one buck from outside sources over the last month. This should help to maximize genetic diversity and allow me to start selecting for the traits that work the best in these husbandry conditions. The goal, if demand is strong, is to expand to 40 does over the next few years.

The pasture shelter that I prototyped last year (seen above) worked satisfactorily, but it definitely needs some modifications. The prototype was a modification of the original open-bottomed pasture shelter that I built several years ago, and the "runners" on the bottom of the cage were both too wide and wrongly positioned. The vertical wire needs to be on the inside of the runners rather than the outside, so that the rabbits don't manure on the wood. The shelter was heavier than it needs to be, and built in a way that made it difficult to move. When I build the new shelters over the next few months, I want to use lighter materials and make the shelter more of a square than a long skinny rectangle. This will maximize square footage while minimizing the cost of materials. The basic idea will remain the same, though: chicken wire on the bottom and chicken wire on the sides running up to the top boards. One end of the shelter will have a roof and solid sides to block the wind and provide protection from rain. The floor will be raised in this end as well to give the rabbits a place to escape if the ground is too wet. The rest of the roof will probably be chicken wire, to prevent escapes and raptor attacks. I will use regular water bottles to begin with, but I want to transition to some sort of gravity fed system eventually.

We're tentatively planning on using Osprey Hill Butchery located in Acme to do the processing of the rabbits. I took some test rabbits to them in November and I was really impressed with the facility and the owners Anna and Geoff. I can always use the mobile processing facility in the future as well--it's always great to have options. The picture above is from the first test batch of rabbits in November, and I think it looks great!

It's been a long journey to get to a position where we feel comfortable producing rabbits, but I'm quite optimistic that this endeavor will be successful. After three full years of farming under my belt, I feel like I've got a much better idea of what will work for me.