Ten Commandments for Raising Healthy Rabbits

Enlarge Image Image Gallery A doe of the popular New Zealand White breed. PHOTO: RANDY KIDD

Believe it or not, even if your back yard is no bigger than a queen-sized mattress (about 30 square feet), you can produce 200 pounds of homegrown meat every year ... by raising rabbits!

Domestic "hare" is a tasty, amazingly versatile food, too. Its flavor is often compared to chicken, and—like the barnyard fowl—rabbit is good fried, baked, stewed, cooked in casseroles, and prepared in many other ways. And the mammal's firm, fine-grained flesh actually makes for more healthful eatin' than does the bird's. In fact, rabbit has more protein—and less fat and fewer calories —per pound than any of our popular meats!

Rabbits are a wise choice for the small livestock fancier for other reasons, too: The critters are quite easy to raise, feed, and—because of their clean habits—care for. They're also quiet (which is an absolute "must" consideration for folks who're rearing animals in an urban area).

Of course, if you do get into caretaking a batch of the furry beasts, you'll want to keep your livestock as healthy and productive as possible. And—to help you in such efforts—I've prepared the following ten rules for raising rabbits free of disease.

I. Recognize Your Market

The main reason for raising your own rabbits is, obviously, to produce meat. So before you get started in your venture, you should know just how much food you can expect to get. A good doe (female rabbit) will yield four or five litters—with six to nine youngsters a batch—per year. Each of the young animals should reach a weight of 4 to 4 1/2 pounds (at which point they'll dress out to between 2 and 2 1/2 pounds) by the standard butchering age of eight to ten weeks. Therefore, a single doe can contribute 60 pounds—or more—of meat for your larder in one year. That ain't a bad output from one 10 or 12-pound animal. (What's more, unlike the steer that yields all its 500 freezer-filling pounds of "harvest" in one lump sum, your rabbit meat will be produced—in meal-sized portions—throughout most of the year.)

You won't need to throw out your rabbits' innards, either. In my household, we slice the kidneys in half, deep-fry the segments, and serve them—with beer—as hors d'oeuvres. Rabbit liver can be cooked and chopped up into a tasty sandwich spread, or fried with mushrooms and bacon. Even the offal from your butchered fryers can be utilized ... as a tasty treat for dogs or pigs.

Rabbits produce more than meat, too. You can, for instance, shovel their high-quality manure straight onto a vegetable plot. "Thumper pellets" have more nitrogen and phosphorous than does horse, cow, or pig manure ... but won't burn plants, as chicken droppings will.