My Breeding Goals

Mothering Ability

Does should be good nest builders that will use the nest box. May be protective of kits but not vicious. Able to maintain own weight while nursing a large litter. Priority given to mothers that raise 10+ kits in a litter with no runts. Keep no doe that loses more than first litter due to her action or inaction. Priority goes to keeping offspring of mothers who never lose a litter.

Litter Size

Average over 8 kits per litter.

Health

Never keep a rabbit that requires antibiotics. Should respond well to natural remedies. Do well on natural feed. Easy keepers that gain weight easily. Healthy kits that wean without loss.

Temperament

Bucks should be calm, friendly, never bite humans or does.

Does should be calm, never spooky/easily startled and only protective of nest in late pregnancy or until kits can leave nest. Must be accepting of foster kits. Doe must be accepting of kits being handled from birth and removed for up to 12 hours during extreme heat or cold.

Adult Weight

10+ lbs

Coat Color

Should be hard to see from a distance. Agouti or natural earth tones preferred. 

Coat Type

Full natural length coat. Good for nest building in winter. No rex type. Less resistance to cold weather and more susceptible to sore hocks. No long wool. Don't want to mess with grooming and shearing.

Feed Conversion

Keep replacement stock that does best on natural forage.

Weight at 8 weeks

Only keep largest kits. Weigh and keep records.

Conformation

Blocky body. Meat type. Good loin, shoulder and hind quarters. No physical deformities.

Choosing New Breeders

Prefer meat breed or meat mutt that compliments any of the above traits missing in current stock. Keep track of other breeders working toward the same goals. See how stock sold to others matures. Work out a buck sharing program. Keep pedigree to track both negative and positive traits.

Baby Blues

My 7 month old agouti doe just had her second litter. My son Jordan calls her Amber. Both times I've bred her back to her blocky 12 lb New Zealand (NZ) white father. Her mother is a 13 pound fawn colored half NZ and half Flemish Giant. I've never done much inbreeding but I really like his blocky structure and the fast growing meaty kits he produces. He's also an "easy keeper" in that he doesn't eat a lot compared to his size. I fed him all through the summer on nothing but forage and he stayed in great shape. So, I'm anxious to see how his sons/grandsons compare.

Amber

Amber's 2nd litter, day 2

Amber has been a great doe and raised 9 our of 9 kits with her first litter born in the middle of winter. She kept good condition so I bred her back 3 weeks after kindling. This time she had 11 but lost one that got buried under the pile and didn't get the membrane cleaned off his head. The remaining ten are doing great. The interesting thing about this breeding is that I'm getting some new varied colors that I haven't seen from any of the 12 previous breedings, to other does, from this buck. Both of Amber's litters have had one with dutch markings. This letter has two blue/gray/silver kits. I'd like to keep a few does to see how the next generation performs and I'll have to keep track of the bucks to see how they turn out.

My thoughts on fur color

The commercial rabbit meat industry has a preference for white fur. However for backyard personal use, color is not an issue. They all taste the same. Witnessing the complexity of color genetics makes things more interesting at kindling time. One benefit of solid colored rabbits is that they are harder to see and count from a distance. Might be important for someone trying to raise rabbits from under the radar of nosy neighbors in areas with restrictive city ordinances. They are also harder for predators (animal or human) to see if running loose. Camouflage can be an advantage and while mothering ability and meat body type are top priority, all things being equal, I choose colors that blend into our environment. If I'm saving the skins for craft projects, I personally prefer natural earth tones instead of white or dyed fur.

Color can be fun :)

Winter Foraging

Suppose you have run out of pellets and have no access to more and it's winter. Hopefully you preserved feed from the previous summer such as hay (grass, alfalfa, tree foliage, twigs, bark), fodder beets, silage or grain for sprouts but you didn't and it's the zombie apocalypse (or insert other societal collapse). Now suppose there is 3 feet of snow. The ground is frozen and covered, so the only option is harvesting from trees. That leaves bark, twigs and buds.

Can our rabbits survive on that? Many herbivores do just that every winter. Rodents burrow under the snow and girdle the bark from young trees and eat the young stems and buds from last summer's growth. Snowshoe hares work above the snow and select the most nutritious browse they can reach. Deer browse what they can get at, even standing on hind legs to reach the tips of new growth. Our advantage is that we are built to stand on our hind legs and can come up with other ways to reach and harvest last years growth.

Don't despair, trees have their advantages, sending roots deep into the earth tapping water sources and minerals unreachable by the meadow plants normally harvested for livestock fodder. Tree roots can seek out new depths and go where other roots have not gone, whereas pasture plants compete with each other for the soil in the top few feet. Through the summer they store proteins and carbohydrates in their bark in preparation for the following Spring. 

Today Jordan and I went out for a foraging trip for the rabbits. We gathered some dormant Chinese/Siberian elm and Russian-olive branches, they are not yet in leaf.

Both of these are invasive tree species that grow everywhere in our area that they can get a foot hold. It might seem crazy to be gathering bare branches in the winter to feed rabbits but they really love them. A year ago I would have blown off the idea, assuming that bark and twigs would have little to no nutritional value. After feeding them through the summer and after further research, I've changed my mind. I'm not ready yet to say that they are a complete food but plan to do more feeding trials and see how well rabbits keep their weight on. This may be anecdotal but I've had no digestive problems or diarrhea since feeding Chinese elm and Russian olive branches.

This strip of Siberian Elm is behind a thrift store and strip mall.

These large Siberian Elm are bordering various commercial properties.

Along freeway frontage roads and railroad right of ways you can find lots of Siberian Elm and Russian Olive.

Can't resist the Russian olive bark.

Fresh load of elm & Russian olive

 I bought a book entitled "Black Elk Speaks" from a thrift store. He was a Lakota Sioux medicine man who lived through the time of Custer and Wounded Knee. Many people consider it a spiritual book but I found the description of how they lived interesting. In the winter they'd camp near groves of cottonwood trees. The women would go out and coppice the trees and bring back the bark and younger branches to feed their horses. He claimed that horses fed this way remained fat through the winter. Some references to trapper journals also say the same thing.

The trees we gathered are new introductions to the environment so they were not available during Black Elk's time. However I have seen references for elm being used for tree hay in Europe and Russian olive being used for livestock fodder in central Asia. Also did some googling and found studies that suggest the proteins get stored in the bark at high levels during the winter in many trees.

I'm not sure the real food value. I'll be doing further study and trials with my stock.

Kits enjoying bark, buds and twigs.

Afterward, use for kindling or chip for mulch

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.