Rabbitry Lessons Learned

 Rabbits have been a very difficult area for me to master. Three years later and I'm still in the beginning level of the rabbit self-sufficiency class. The teacher has been the Internet and the academy, the school of hard knocks.The longer I am in this project, the more I realize I don't have a clue what I'm doing. It doesn't help that the teacher has differing opinions and sometimes refuses to tell me the intimate details I need. But just as our ancestors saw great benefit in this area of husbandry, we see it also. Why not when a male and three females can produce the meat equivalent of a beef in one year if you have the right set up, which we don't. But I do know that a rabbit in just a few months is ready for the dinner table and that means a steady supply. A beef needs eighteen months to two years before it is ready to process. That is a long wait and then a glutton amount of meat all at once. Not that we plan on not having a beef now and then but I'm wanting to lower the number of freezers we have and change what's in them.

We are finally realizing some success with our rabbits and we have learned a number of lessons. I'd like to pass them along. Maybe you won't have to spend so much time in the school of hard knocks like we have. Since our first rabbits, Oreo and Whitey had been inherited and they had produced kittens before we figured it would be smooth sailing. She had not been bred for quite some time but I was not in the market for pets so I figured they might as well earn their keep. The first mating wasn't bad, she had eight and six survived. I wasn't pleased with the mortality rate but read that wasn't bad. Then the next kindling she had a single and it died. Then she refused to drink water for days on the next batch and refused to feed them so we tried bottle feeding. They slowly died as they do if not at least two weeks old when orphaned. The following batch died with no interest in them from mom.

Lesson number one  - Obey the professionals when they say don't give a doe more than two chances to get it right.

We should have quit two batches ago. The question became just how old should a rabbit be to kindle and how old before a doe is retired or becomes table fare? That is a debatable answer I found.  Part of the answer I found lies in rabbits longevity. Rabbits in the wild live from a year to three years depending on the number of predators so it stands to reason that a commercial operation would not keep their rabbits very long. In fact many don't keep them past eighteen months old as after two the production rate drops. They of course are kindled frequently. Not what I have in mind but I'm thinking three batches of bunnies a year would probably be the limit to our possibilities because of housing and cage availability. That is when we get everything all built. What we will need when everything gets up and rolling full time is an answer not yet solidified. Then you include our weather and that we don't want a heated or air conditioned building just too much money.

The longevity story changes when the rabbit is for pet use. Then with proper feeding - mostly high quality grass hay - then they can live seven to twelves years of age. The larger rabbits living a shorter lifespan. 
 
Lesson number two -- Age is a factor in fertility, live births, and birth to adult size success rates. With age it goes down just like in chickens. We plan on removing does from the operation when they turn three.

With Oreo gone, we were looking for does. Our neighbor, who had just gotten back into rabbits, offered us two rabbits he claimed were does. That was handy. I bred them to Whitey,--- and I bred them to Whitey--- and I bred them again to him --- no babies. First I thought something must be wrong with Whitey but low and behold, they were bucks too. Wasted 3/4's of a year on that one. But I learned a great lesson, you need to sex your own animals. Cockily I thought this was a no-brainer task. I used the kitten formula of one hole, one slit is a girl and one hole a boy. Found out the hard way that that doesn't work. Off to the internet I went. The best source of information I found is on this site - http://www.raising-rabbits.com/sexing-rabbits.html  . I learned that they both have a hole and a slit but the males slit is smaller and it has a tube that will protrude if pinched correctly. This tube has a hole also. You could say the female has two holes and the male three.

  Lesson number three - learn to sex your own rabbits.

The neighbor gave me more babies as he lacked enough cages for  all of his and I sexed them keeping two girls and processed the boys which included the boys he gave me the last time that were suppose to be girls. One of the two young does, Sheila, I kindled last spring about a week before our daughter and I left to go to the cancer center in Tulsa for her first time. We were gone a week when I received a phone call from my distraught daughter who was home taking care of the grandlittles and animals to tell me she had done her best but the kittens were all dead. She could not figure out why. In part I realized we needed nesting boxes.

Lesson number four - Build a nesting box.

I built two and things have gone far better.

Sheila was bred again and they were all stillborn. Immediately after the nest batch was born she began eating the legs off them. Yup, she joined Oreo in the freezer. Too bad I did not listen to lesson number one sooner. 

Betty Boo, Sheila's sister, seems to like the box and stays to nurse longer. It keeps the babies warm as you can pile up a deep layer of bedding for them to snuggle under. I've only had one baby be dragged out of the box into the open area because it was still hanging on nursing. That was with Betty Boo's first batch. I caught it in time and put it back. I fluff the bedding twice a day at least and this helps it to keep from getting packed down as my two does love to check on babies hopping into the nesting box and compacting it.

Before Betty Boo kindled, my husband begged me to give up and quit spending money and time on raising rabbits. You can't blame him as no success in two years is a bit much. I hadn't put a lot of effort into it and I knew it. That changed and I began researching in earnest. I spent a lot of time in thought. Then when Betty Boo had ten kittens and only one died at birth being left on the wire section of the cage and died from cold, I was armed with information and a plan. What a good mama she is. With this second batch she is even more of an amazing mom. She is sticking around and Ive kept two of her offspring.

Lessons five through eleven will be in the next blog coming soon.