Dear Chris and Steph, Thank you for this short video on the care and raising of your rabbits. As always, you distill a lot of experience in your videos. I appreciated learning these things : how the rabbit tractors work; what the rabbits like to eat and what they do not like to eat; the recovery of the lawn/pasture after the tractors are moved; and the importance of giving the rabbits the optimum space to flourish. Thank you for another informative video based on your tried and true experience. I keep bringing up your Partridge Chanteclers. I hope you will soon review how they have done this season. Sincerely, Larry Lewis London, Ontario.
We've been moving toward dropping the dependency on commercially sold, pelletized food and tractors are the Number One best way to get there. Here's what we've found to get up to weight in a reasonable time : move once a day, regardless. Every. Single. Day. Then for every 3 rabbits housed in the tractor, add an additional move. So 3 rabbits is 2 moves. The initial plus 1 for the three rabbits. 6 rabbits is 3 moves. 9 rabbits is 4 moves. Anything over 9 rabbits per tends to get too overcrowded and requires too many trips out there constantly moving. Your mileage may vary depending on your tractor and genetics ... Our tractors are 2 ft X 8 ft. 16 sq. Feet. About 2 sq feet each Rabbit when fully packed. They're rarely fully packed due to the litter sizes we get. Roughly 8 sq ft of grass/pasture each when multiplied by the moves. This is not quite sufficient for all their needs. They grow much slower than when on the Pellet (hey - but it's free and no outside dependency on a feed vendor - but it takes 3-4 weeks longer to make weight) ... so at least once a day they get a huge dump of whatever green waste is coming out of the gardens (20,000+ sq feet so there's plenty) and we put up tree hay (purpose planted for Coppice/Pollard their favorite species: Willow, Red Maple, Poplar, Pear. Hundreds of little trees that are basically Food Bushes. They're never really gonna get big and be trees 'cause theyre constantly being cut/harvested and bush out. ) .., Comfrey hay, autumn yard-tree fallen leaves, cornstalks & husks, Sunchoke stalks, Sunflower & sunflower stalk and Peanut hay to get them through the Winter without Pellet. Some Winter storage crop (Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Sunchoke) but those are more of a "treat" and don't make up 5% of their total intake. We've taken to spreading harvests out. For instance : We do 400 row feet of Sweet Potato. Pre Rabbit we used to harvest in a day. Now we harvest small sections over 3 to 4 weeks so the Bunnies can stuff their faces on vines. With a single day harvest most of that is wasted. The vines rot/start composting before they can eat 'em all. Now we get several week's free food for Meat Machines to eat. Corn staks (ditto Sunflower stalks (ditto sunchoke stalks)) used to get chipped in the wood chipper and composted. Now they're dried down whole, cut into pieces small enough to handle and fit through cage doors & such ... and stored as a Winter food source. ProTip : a really nice $200 scythe can yield hay equivalent of thousands of dollars of bagged Pellet in just 2 day's work putting up grass hay. It's not in nice, square, easy-to-manage Bales, but humanity and their animals have done fine on loose, stacked hay piles for 10,000+ years. Build some tractors, folks. The cost savings on Pellet in just the first year alone will pay for tractors that last 10 years or more, repeating that same savings year after year after year .. Tractors, folks. Build ya some.
Forgot to say: 2 Buck, 6 Doe. Pure Californian. Meat Production quality. Not show rabbits. Not pedigreed. Target yield of 100 growouts (2 per week on the dinner table)
This is such a great comment, and thank you for all the information and details. A lot of eat you are doing is very similar to what we are doing here in a lot of ways. Our tractors are a bit bigger but usually still require 2 to 3 moves daily. Funny, you talk about the hay... we watched a great video years ago, couldn't say who it was by, but in it, they cut their "hay" with a scythe and then let it dry, reused old bailer twine and made their own "bales" stuffing the dry hay into a rubber made tote onto the strings, and then tied it as tight as they could. It was a great storage method. We are planning to add a bit more rabbit garden next year, but we find the best "winter" crop to be kale.... if you plant it in August and then cover it ... even just with the vapor barrier, it lasts a lot of the winter. We just need to develop enough space to be able to do this with a larger patch. Fantastic comment, and thank you so much for watching!
We find it very enjoyable and relatively easy and inexpensive. It is also great for us because our kids enjoy it and are able to look after them on their own for the most part, which gives them something they are responsible for, which is a great thing.
The first 2 times they got out, they came right over to be picked up. The third time not so much, lol. But all are accounted for now, and we are being more careful. But a net would definitely be a good investment for the homestead, I think.
Thanks again for another great video! Do your rabbits stay in the tracors overnight? And if so, how do you protect them from predators?
Dear Chris and Steph,
Thank you for this short video on the care and raising of your rabbits. As always, you distill a lot of experience in your videos. I appreciated learning these things : how the rabbit tractors work; what the rabbits like to eat and what they do not like to eat; the recovery of the lawn/pasture after the tractors are moved; and the importance of giving the rabbits the optimum space to flourish.
Thank you for another informative video based on your tried and true experience.
I keep bringing up your Partridge Chanteclers. I hope you will soon review how they have done this season.
Sincerely,
Larry Lewis
London, Ontario.
We've been moving toward dropping the dependency on commercially sold, pelletized food and tractors are the Number One best way to get there.
Here's what we've found to get up to weight in a reasonable time : move once a day, regardless. Every. Single. Day. Then for every 3 rabbits housed in the tractor, add an additional move. So 3 rabbits is 2 moves. The initial plus 1 for the three rabbits. 6 rabbits is 3 moves. 9 rabbits is 4 moves.
Anything over 9 rabbits per tends to get too overcrowded and requires too many trips out there constantly moving. Your mileage may vary depending on your tractor and genetics ...
Our tractors are 2 ft X 8 ft. 16 sq. Feet. About 2 sq feet each Rabbit when fully packed. They're rarely fully packed due to the litter sizes we get. Roughly 8 sq ft of grass/pasture each when multiplied by the moves.
This is not quite sufficient for all their needs. They grow much slower than when on the Pellet (hey - but it's free and no outside dependency on a feed vendor - but it takes 3-4 weeks longer to make weight) ... so at least once a day they get a huge dump of whatever green waste is coming out of the gardens (20,000+ sq feet so there's plenty) and we put up tree hay (purpose planted for Coppice/Pollard their favorite species: Willow, Red Maple, Poplar, Pear. Hundreds of little trees that are basically Food Bushes. They're never really gonna get big and be trees 'cause theyre constantly being cut/harvested and bush out. ) .., Comfrey hay, autumn yard-tree fallen leaves, cornstalks & husks, Sunchoke stalks, Sunflower & sunflower stalk and Peanut hay to get them through the Winter without Pellet. Some Winter storage crop (Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Sunchoke) but those are more of a "treat" and don't make up 5% of their total intake.
We've taken to spreading harvests out. For instance : We do 400 row feet of Sweet Potato. Pre Rabbit we used to harvest in a day. Now we harvest small sections over 3 to 4 weeks so the Bunnies can stuff their faces on vines. With a single day harvest most of that is wasted. The vines rot/start composting before they can eat 'em all. Now we get several week's free food for Meat Machines to eat. Corn staks (ditto Sunflower stalks (ditto sunchoke stalks)) used to get chipped in the wood chipper and composted. Now they're dried down whole, cut into pieces small enough to handle and fit through cage doors & such ... and stored as a Winter food source.
ProTip : a really nice $200 scythe can yield hay equivalent of thousands of dollars of bagged Pellet in just 2 day's work putting up grass hay. It's not in nice, square, easy-to-manage Bales, but humanity and their animals have done fine on loose, stacked hay piles for 10,000+ years.
Build some tractors, folks. The cost savings on Pellet in just the first year alone will pay for tractors that last 10 years or more, repeating that same savings year after year after year ..
Tractors, folks.
Build ya some.
Forgot to say: 2 Buck, 6 Doe. Pure Californian. Meat Production quality. Not show rabbits. Not pedigreed. Target yield of 100 growouts (2 per week on the dinner table)
This is such a great comment, and thank you for all the information and details. A lot of eat you are doing is very similar to what we are doing here in a lot of ways. Our tractors are a bit bigger but usually still require 2 to 3 moves daily.
Funny, you talk about the hay... we watched a great video years ago, couldn't say who it was by, but in it, they cut their "hay" with a scythe and then let it dry, reused old bailer twine and made their own "bales" stuffing the dry hay into a rubber made tote onto the strings, and then tied it as tight as they could. It was a great storage method.
We are planning to add a bit more rabbit garden next year, but we find the best "winter" crop to be kale.... if you plant it in August and then cover it ... even just with the vapor barrier, it lasts a lot of the winter. We just need to develop enough space to be able to do this with a larger patch.
Fantastic comment, and thank you so much for watching!
Very good documenting! Much appreciated, we notice the same thing with our rabbit tractoring for a few years.
So far we have managed to always catch them, but once they figure it out, it is certainly more challenging.
Good video! I know next to nothing about raising rabbit. This makes me wonder if I should give it a try.
We find it very enjoyable and relatively easy and inexpensive. It is also great for us because our kids enjoy it and are able to look after them on their own for the most part, which gives them something they are responsible for, which is a great thing.
A large net with a sturdy pole for those pesky wabbits 😂
The first 2 times they got out, they came right over to be picked up. The third time not so much, lol. But all are accounted for now, and we are being more careful. But a net would definitely be a good investment for the homestead, I think.
@@HickorycroftFarm The black ear, gray furred rabbits are really pretty 😍
Wrasclie Wrabbits!
Indeed.