300+ Pounds of Protein?? | Meat Rabbit Math
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- As backyard homesteaders beef cattle or pastured sheep isn’t an option, but how about a renewable delicious protein source like rabbit? How much meat can you generate from a trio of breeding rabbits on a small footprint? Much more than you probably think!
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When you have one of your kids say "dude! That's cool! "
You are the winner in the race!! Wish i could have hit the 👍many many times! Way to go Dad!!!!
Thank you so much! Doing our best to raise our girls right. I appreciate your comment more than you can realize.
I don't really want to raise rabbits for meat....but.....I'm not eating bugs or fake bioengineered meat...
so this is a very viable option for not having acres of property.
My Great Granny and grandma did this for half their lives through the depression and past. it was just survival. they had stacks of notebooks they used to keep track of the lineages
Thats really cool to have that kind of documentation. Don't rule out other meat sources as well like chicken or quail for the small acreage or suburban lots. I can assure you that we aren't eating the bugs here either!!
We find that once they're fully boned out they're only coming in 2.5 to 3.25 pounds pure meat, no bone. 12-14 weeks Californian.
Feed is hella cheaper if you buy an 800 pound round bale of hay instead of a pallet of pellet. Not as convenient to feed hay, but saves about 2/3 of the cost to get 'em up to weight.
Good info! Also we are looking at bringing in some goats so we will be sharing a lot of the same hay.
New subscriber, i enjoyed watching this vidoe, Thank you for sharing, till next time God Bless.
Thanks for subbing! Welcome to the process, lol.
I like to have 3 does and 1 buck. This way I bred one doe a month. I breed one doe at the beginning of the month and put the next box in around the 25th to 30th. Rotating like this, I have a litter to butcher every single month without much thought on my part. And it gives the does plenty of time between breedings. I think I said everything right! I don't have rabbits right now because I live in a hot climate. But if I could figure out how to keep them cool in summer, I would raise meat rabbits again.
We initially started with 3 does, but one decided to not cooperate with our buck and she had to go. Your outline sounds like it would work well and give the does plenty of time to recover after each liter. In your hot climate check out TAMUK rabbits. We have them in South Texas which is HOT during the summer and our guys did phenomenal. They were bred for hot climates. Thank you so much for commenting and we appreciate your advice!! Let us know if you get some TAMUKs. We love ours.
@@cedarporchhomestead thank you for the bred advice! I will check them out!
That's what I was going to say... look into the tamuks
Spot on rabbit supply a lot of protein they multiply quickly and also you will have an unlimited source of organic fertilizer
They do provide quite a bit of fertilizer..... I have high hopes for my garden this year!
i shared my garden withh my little buddy for helping so much in that department! It's AWESOME fertilizer, and so is the kombucha/ scobys i made and shared wIth him
Hey guys, love your videos. I live in Northeast Texas and am just now getting started with laying hens. Planning on get some rabbits in about a year. Love the info in the videos. Keep up the great work!
Thats awesome!! Thank you so much for watching. Enjoy those chickens and rabbits.
Fam, I would get rabbits asap. They are super easy to take care of. I have NZ & TAMUKS. Starting to breed them since they are around 6 months now. Feed per 50 pound bag was 15-17$. I also feed alfalfa too. I have other animals too. But rabbits are way easier than chickens and when processing too. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
@@MansahxI was going to say the same thing.. rabbits can be fickle, but are definitely easier than chickens.. I started with meat mutts, but have since moved to purebred New Zealand and Silver Fox
Did you ever get some? 😊
so when in full production, how many live rabbits do you have on property at a time when starting with a trio?
Great question! We don't push our does at all. They get plenty of time to raise their babies for 5-6 weeks and then we give them some down time before rebreeding them. Usually we have anywhere from 15-18ish rabbits at any given time with the two liters at different grow out points.
You could be stuck on a island with only rabbit to eat an still starve to death. Also grandpa always said to not eat rabbit's in spring because they are full of worms wild rabbit's of course and this is old school cause I'm old and grandpa was born in late 1800s just some old school knowledge
My grandpa used to say the same thing about wild rabbits! Also, yes Rabbit meat is very lean, and you can get what's called protein poisoning if you only eat rabbit because there is hardly any fat in the meat itself. We always use a fat to cook with when we eat rabbit unless we grill it, which is also delicious.
I remember those compromises. My no meant no. But, my husband's no meant I'll talk your mama into it 😂
He knows he'll get his way, especially since he pays the feed bill 😂😂
She became diner “in unapoplectic laugh” - it is what it is.
Lol, sometimes I think I should work on certain levels of sensitivity, but I think you just said it best, it is what it is.
What were the weights of the rabbits b4 you processed them?
That’s a good question. Our rabbits are processing out at about 3 lbs so their live weight is probably 6-7 pounds.
Newbie can’t wait for more
Awesome!!! Welcome aboard
Dinner...LOL
4 to 5 lbs live = 2.5 to 3 lbs finished meat if you do California buck to new Zealand doe... 12 weeks to mature process
I'm still thinking we can get ours to the 4 lbs finished mark in 12-13 weeks, but that might be just hope talking. We breed TAMUK rabbits because we live in the south and it gets HOT! The TAMUK grow quickly and do extremely well in the heat.
Great video 👍🏻 awesome when the kids are involved and enjoying it! Just curious what breeds you have that are producing that weight at 12-13 weeks? I'm fairly new to rabbits but we're getting a much larger average at 12 weeks... Great video
Thanks! We raise TAMUK rabbits here in South Texas due to their heat tolerance. We just brought in a New Zealand Doe to see what we can get with her and our TAMUK buck.
@@cedarporchhomestead good luck to you sir. I hope it brings up your average weight on your grow outs
Does the approx $40 a month feed bill include the babies food also or is that just the cost of keeping the 1 male and 2-3 females?
Yes the $40 covers the breeders and typically 2 pens of grow outs. We move the grow outs twice a day in grass and that accounts for much of their feed needs.
If you average 8 are more get rid of the doe
Great video. You should do one in depth on the whole process of raising meat rabbits. Breed and all. I would like to get into rabbits soon. This video had great info!
Well it’s funny you say that…… going to be doing a video on just that in a few weeks with Spring here and bunny production almost in full swing. Thank you for your suggestion, I hope we cover what you’re looking for. Good luck with your own rabbit adventures!!
@@cedarporchhomestead Can't wait to check it out. 😃
4 lbs? Are you butchering mature New Zealands?
We are growing out TAMUK rabbits. We are getting closer to 3lbs per rabbit and processing at 12 weeks. We could get a larger rabbit if we waited, but have found 12 weeks for us is the sweet spot.
Great video, we started our journey 3 years ago, and tamuk rabbits were our first proteins to be born at our homestead.
That is awesome! We just had 9 more born yesterday!
@cedarporchhomestead our last doe had 13, but we have lost about half. Something has happened, and we don't know what it is yet.
@@catalinaacreshomestead oh no thats terrible. We had a doe that lost her whole litter and next time around was a great mom.
By alfalfa Pellets, do you mean actual alfalfa Pellets or rabbit feed?
Rabbit feed!
I love rabbits. I prefer the taste of wild rabbits but both are good. One thing wrong with your math is you can't compare the price of store-bought chickens to home-raised rabbits. It needs to be an apple-to-apple comparison. The hard part for me was killing the bunnies, more so than the chickens. But for me, the best solution by far is to raise both!
Great point, but wanted to draw a comparison to the closest “main stream” staple. Harvesting is always the hard part for us, but we know where our food comes from when we do it ourselves.
@@cedarporchhomestead My supper market sells rabbits. I am not sure of the cost tho.
@@radamson1Usually "unusual" products sell at a premium, warranted or not, and rabbits are considered "exotic" in the modern USA kitchen. Also, economists have a concept of "substitutionary cost:" the economics of producing rabbit meat is essentially in competition with that of raising or buying all other types of meat, because meat, not rabbit or even "tastes like white meat chicken" is the fundamental product category aka dietary role/"need." In extremes (dire financial conditions or extreme urgencyto save/allocate money for something else), most Americans will fall back on the cheapest meat available, which is usually "generic" (not organic, pastured, Amish, caoon or anything else fancy) chicken thighs at least where I live. If I am evaluating how to feed my family, I will unfortunately have to look at zoning rules but also the costs and "trouble" (my labor/time) of raising some particular livestock and how that compares (cost, supply security, peace of mind from knowing how something was raised--not having had weird chemical exposures for instance like stuff imported from Red China often does) to basics like chicken thighs even if they aren't my personal favorite.
1 Pound of protein comes from around 5 pounds of lean meat,you are having a wrong title it should be 300+ pounds of live weight rabbits not protein
😂 exactly my thoughts. When I read the title and doing a quick mental calculation, I was expecting him to say he produced over 1/2 ton of meat with three breeder rabbits. Meat is not 100% protein.
I have New Zealand’s and Silver Fox. My rabbits are purebred show rabbits, and I keep the best from the litters as my next show/brood stock and eat the rest. I have been lucky to add some excellent fast growing lines. They are typically between 6 and 7 lbs by 12 weeks. Those that don’t grow quickly are never added back to my breeding lines. I get 5 lb DRESSED rabbits regularly. I currently have 9 does and 3 bucks. I try to get 4 litters per doe per year. I am in the South and the heat is hard on rabbits so I breed from Sept- April (last litters born in May) though this year I had two litters born May 22 and they have struggled. Next year I will probably not breed past the end of March. I also do not keep does who produce small litters consistently or who aren’t good mothers. I operate on a STRICT 3 strikes rule. A fellow breeder often says ‘keep the best eat the rest’
That new rabbit looks like a new zeland that’s what we have
You very well may be right. The fur doesn't quite look like a rex after I thought more about it. I'm hoping you are right, and we can add another healthy doe to our breeding program. Thanks for your input.
Should get 5p live wait at 8 to 10 weeks
Depends on breed, climate/season, and probably forage quality (e.g. his grow outs are mostly eating his lawn, supplemented by commercial pellets and hay), doesn't it? It sounds like he lives in a hot climate (adapted grasses & forbs are often water stressed and invest more in antiherbivory strategies because the insect pressure is greater; rabbits were originally from Iberia [usually cooler; and with a tendency to retreat into burrows when hot--we usually don't allow that in domestic livestock for fear of predation and escape/invasiveness] and only a few breeds handle heat well [not necessarily the tops for productivity, which are usually NZ White and California], and he may even have problems with fire ants [though I have only observed them murdering the babies that get kicked away by bad mothers] or other noxious critters of warm places). Uniformitarianism is seldom a good assumption.
olright, zajebis
You know only rabbit diets are deadly right??
It’s called protein poisoning and it’s because there is little to no fat in rabbit meat. However when you cook rabbit in a healthy fat and make it a part of a diverse diet it makes for a delicious addition.
Almost no sedentary American is at risk of "rabbit starvation." It was a factor for Arctic Explorers and some early, underequiped pioneers, but modern people eat a lot of carbohydrates and/or fats. Normal people aren't eating only rabbits (non waterfowl birds have the same "problem"). We tend to use protein as protein (ie as an amino acid source), not as a major calorie source. Protein poisoning comes from liberating more ammines (including. NH3) than our liver and kidneys can handle, and we cleave off the amine when we burn protein into CO2 and water, not when our bodies simply chop them up to rearrange into other proteins.
Yes, if you eat rabbits ONLY. But who does that?
And, in domesticated rabbits there's fat around some organs. Problem solved 🙂
If it is a doe breed it
May be less meat but the furs will be nice.
Bandit is a netherland dwarf I believe 👍
That is very possible. Didn’t even think about that breed! Thanks!
@@cedarporchhomestead hard to tell thru camera but the ears and head indicates he's at least a netherland dwarf x breed👍 thanks for your videos