Why rabbits?

I've been raising rabbits most of my life. My father bought a pair of New Zealand Whites when I was 9 years old with the idea that we'd raise them for meat and raise worms in their droppings to sell to fishermen. What really intrigued me about rabbits is we could feed them grass and weeds, things we couldn't digest and produce meat.

Yes, I really thought that way as a kid, growing up other kids would call me Euell Gibbons, who was famous at the time for encouraging people to eat pine trees and dandelions. His first book was "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" and he was my hero.

Most of the other kids thought I was crazy for wanting to raise and eat rabbits. They are cute, I have to admit. The math just told me they are meant to feed everything that eats meat on this earth. One female can easily raise over 30 young in one year. By the end of that first year her babies are also already having babies. It's the power of compounding interest on steroids. If all her babies survived they'd rabidly overpopulate and nothing green would be left alive. Rabbits have that high birth rate to overcome the problem of most of them getting eaten or dying of disease. The cool thing is, we can step in and help them avoid the dangers that would normally restrict their numbers, with the benefit of feeding our families on healthy meat. Other benefits are that they can be raised by people who don't have access to refrigeration and they can digest feed we cannot digest. No need to divert grains that could be feeding hungry people to feed livestock. Conveniently, they can be raised in a small space, in a garage, shed or corner of the backyard.

That first set of rabbits didn't do so well. We lived in the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the grass and weeds were always wet. I'd go out and pick grass and weeds and feed them directly to the rabbits. The first set died within two months. They'd be fine in the morning and dead by evening. My father got me another set that was older and near breeding age.  We bred them and they had babies on the wire instead of the nest box. I kept feeding grass and dandelions in addition to the pellets and they did fine for a while, then one day one was dead and a few months later the other died too. We asked an experienced breeder and were told that a lethal protozoa lived on the wet grass in our climate, and that we should feed pellets only. This didn't set well with me since I'd see cottontails and deer doing just fine in our river bottom land.

When I was twelve, I ended up living with my grandparents in American Fork, Utah. I saw an add for rabbits in the newspaper and had to get some. I had saved money from watering plants in my grandparents nursery and from helping my father in his landscaping business. Grandma talked it over with Grandpa and he ended up helping me build a shelter along the fence by the garden. I found a good deal on some old mink pens, then bought some 4 week old kits, a buck and two does. They thrived on the pellets, hay and weeds I'd give them and about 6 months later, they multiplied, many times they multiplied. I did have problems such as a doe escaping and getting killed by the dog, ended up raising her newborn litter by hand. I read everything I could find on rabbits and learned how to skin and butcher from a library book. Grandma, proudly cooked the meat I produced. Those challenges taught me more than just about raising rabbits.

Over the years I continue to read in rabbit books and hear people say that you should only feed rabbits pellets or to feed greens in moderation. Based on my first experiences I can understand why people think that. However, the European rabbit has been domesticated for over 1000 years and pellets have only existed for about 60 years. During world war II raising meat rabbits became popular due to meat rationing and they only had forage. Over the years I've continued to experiment with natural fodder and will share what I have learned and am still learning, in this blog.