Heath: We've only three rabbits for now... We're looking for a better breeder so we can fill out the herd. The source we previously used might be questionable. As for numbers... as time goes on, I'll get a better feel for how many rabbits are required to keep around for a steady supply of meat. I'm learning as I go for now.

Olan: I'm east of Baton Rouge by ~45 minutes. We've been feeding them quite a bit of fresh and dry grass/hay out of the yard. One of the rabbits who's still tame enough to let out of the hutch without a pen definitely tends to gravitate to the clover when we let him graze. I plan to experiment with setting up some kind of pen to graze them in... we'll see how that goes. I've been considering crossing Californians with NZ Whites also. I'd love to hear more about that!

Phil: Heat is bad here too... we took to putting frozen two liter bottles in the cages for a while. They really enjoyed that... I think the worst of the heat is starting to let up here now, but I can tell the heat of the summers in the deep south will be rough on a herd. I think we'll limit breeding to spring and fall.

Well you are close of to be our neighbor. Our farm is near Wiggins, MS The heat definetly plays a factor. This is our first year of starting the farm. We are getting our stock built up. We let one of the rabbits live in a ground hutch and he dug a huge burrow on his own to stay cool. He never tried to get out. Good luck with your adventures and we will keep in touch.

Congrats on choosing meat rabbits; it's an excellent choice for lean, healthy, low fat/low cholesterol protein. I've been breeding meat rabbits for 37 years and plan to continue for as long as my body will allow it Just a comment - raising rabbits is anything but inexpensive. Something you'll learn after you've been in it about a year Feed costs have been rising rapidly over the past 5 years and this summer's drought will probably double it. Also, consider that a dressed rabbit (hide removed & gutted)is only 50-60% of its live weight and of that 50% that remains, about half is bone. A 10 week old 5 pound fryer will yield about 1.5 pounds of actual meat. Not trying to discourage you - but to share what i've learned so you dont set unrealistic expectations. Good luck; its a lot of fun and a lot of work, but its worth it for homegrown all natural healthy protein.

Anna:

Yes, I've kept detailed records of my feed conversion rate. Since i've been at this for 37 years (almost 38 in a couple months), I've had to just to stay out of the red.

10 years ago, rabbits could be raised inexpensively. However, since the USA has begun exporting 80% of the grain grown in this country, feed went sky high. I dont use/cant afford the top of the line feed, but I do use a good quality feed. Currently, it's $21.00 a bag. 3 years ago it was $18.00 a bag and 3 years before that it was $15.00 a bag. In the year 2000 it was $11.99 a bag. Because of the massive drought the country had this year, feed costs are expected to nearly double. I belong to a meat rabbit forum and some members have already seen a drastic increase. One girl's feed went from $18.99 a bag to $25.99 a bag last month alone.

People look at the numbers and think - well, why is a $2 or $3 dollar price hike so horrible. If you are buying only 1 bag of feed, its not. My herd, which is raised EXCLUSIVELY for home use (no meat ever leaves this house) uses 20 bags a month. When it was $11.99 a bag, I could feed my herd on $240.00 a month. At its current cost of $21.00 a bag, it's costing me $420.00 a month. A HUGE difference.

Non pregnant/non nursing does and bucks dont eat much. But once a doe has a litter, they need to be on full feed and eat a LOT and once the kits (babies) start eating solids, they eat like machines 24/7 up until butcher weight.

I have thousands of pages of data analyzed every which way and the increase in cost has been extreme. Many people are getting out of the hobby of raising meat rabbits because of it.

It used to be a cost effective way to grow lean healthy meat. Currently, it's one of the most expensive animals to feed.

With everything factored in, One pound of cleaned, butchered, BONELESS rabbit meat costs approximately $7.00 worth of feed. I'm sure next month that will be MUCH more when the drought prices are input.

When people talk about how raising rabbits is cheap, well, sure, feeding an adult rabbit 1 cup of pellets a day is cheap, or at least it used to be. But the cost of feeding a nursing mother and her growing kits is NOT cheap. As I said before, a 5 pound rabbit will yield about 2.75 of meat and bones once processed. Of that, about half is meat. Most people calculate the cost to raise that 5 pound rabbit, which is not realistic since 75% of it wont be eaten. When you calculate the cost of the edible part of a rabbit - it's scary.

Anonymous --- Awesome data! But I want more.

When the industry does their feed:meat, they weigh the carcasses with no feathers (for chickens, so I'd say no skin for rabbits) and with the entrails out, but with bones in. Do you have an idea of how many pounds of feed you give your rabbits per pound of meat, bone in?

I'm guessing, from your data, that it would be $3.50 per pound if you include the bones. If your bags of feed are 50 pound bags, then my math is showing that your bone-in feed:meat would be 8.3:1. (Feel free to correct me if I'm off base!)

The best feed conversion rate I've come up with for our pastured chickens is about 5:1, but when I provide unlimited feed, I'm at more like 5.6:1. When we feed moderately high quality feed, we spent about $18 per 50 pound bag on broiler feed this spring. In which case, your rabbits would be more expensive per pound than our chickens. But my math might be off!

In reply to your last question, the number of rabbits i'm feeding varies. I have 16 does and 3 bucks and generally. I follow a one day breed back schedule which means the does are bred the day after the kindle (deliver) a litter. So at all times my does are pregnant, have an unweaned litter with them and have an older litter in the grow out pen. When she's due to kindle again, the oldest litter gets butchered, the litter that was in with her gets moved to the growout pen and the newborns are born in her cage. The cycle repeats year round.

On average, I have about 150 fryers 7-8 weeks old at any given time that are on full feed, and since the does are always pregnant and nursing, they are also always on free feed. The only controlled feed animals in my herd are the 3 bucks.

Hope that helps.

-Also, I remember being asked if I knew how much food a rabbit eats to get to butcher weight. Kits average a 4:1 feed ratio. It's nearly impossible to improve on that's only obtained by culling to have the best of the best in your herd. I've seen rabbitries open and close within a year because they are at a 5:1, 6:1 or even 7:1 ration.

Lets say 4:1. That means it takes a kit (growing baby rabbit) 4 pounds of food to gain one pound of body weight. This equals 20 pounds of food to equal a 5 pound butcher weight. If a 50 pound bag of feed is $20.00 (which is cheap - it's a lot more now), then that comes out to be .40 cents a pound. .40 cents a pound * the 20 pounds it takes to grow a kit to butcher weight is $8.00 worth of food. This is assuming they hit butcher weight at 8 weeks, after 8 weeks the feed ratio is HORRIBLE - more like 9:1. So you've invested $8.00 into a 5 pound rabbit. After dress out the rabbit will be about 2.75 pounds and once the bone is removed, you'll have about 1.375 pounsd of food - which is 19 ounces. You have 19 ounces of pure meat and it took $8.00 to grow it - so rabbit costs almost $8.00 a pound to grow That does not include the cost of the feed for the breeding stock, which must be factored in because without the breeding stock, there are no babies and without food, there is no breeding stock. It also doesn't factor in equipment, supplies, supplements, hay, etc. and the biggie - TIME.

Lisa L.

..you mentioned about allergies to eggs..my nephews have allergies to eggs and my brother is allergies to all poultry so yes, it is possible.

Nice job on going this route..been wanting to try it for a while! Keep up the good work!

@ smallblockfuelie_gmail.com

In my situation, growing my rabbits food is really not an option. i live on a 1/4 acre lot at a 4 way intersection in the middle of suburbia. The zoning laws are very strict and garden sizes are severely restricted for anyone having less than 2 acres of land. I grow a small veggie garden in the summer and have some berry bushes, but that's all that zoning will allow - in fact, i'm actually over the allowance by several feet. Beyond that, I live in Connecticut which means the only absolute frost free months are June through September. Only 4 months a year - which is a very short growing season. Last year, we received a snowstorm of 27" of snow 2 days before halloween! and we were still getting frost as of May 21st.

The limited garden size combined with the short growing season makes offsetting feed cost not possible.

I do give them some scraps - such as the garden plants that are done producing and all my rose bush and raspberry bush trimmings - but it's not enough to make a noticeable difference in cost.

@Ant

"I gotta ask too... what the hell are you feeding 150 grown rabbits to each month." Comment by Ant — Fri May 3 18:23:25 2013"

I don't have 150 GROWN rabbits each month. My post said "On average, I have about 150 fryers 7-8 weeks old at any given time that are on full feed" 7-8 week old rabbits are not full grown.

Lets say I have 150 8 week old rabbits @ 5 pounds each. Remove the hide and guts and each rabbit is down to about 3.25 pounds. Of that 3.25 pounds left, 35-40% is bone (including the head). Remove the bone and what's left is just over 2 pounds of rabbit.

We have to be real - we don't EAT the hide, we don't EAT the guts, we don't EAT the bone, so we have to base our figures on the actual edible portion.

Cleaned and deboned, those 150 rabbits that were 5 pounds each are down to 150 rabbits that are a slight bit over 2 pounds each of MEAT only.

That's 300 pounds of meat. Divide that by 30 days in a month and it comes out to 10 pounds of meat a day.

My biggest dog, weighing in at 160 pounds, eats 4 lbs 12oz a day. My smaller dog, weighing in at 125 pounds, eats 3 lbs 5oz a day. I have 9 cats that eat a total of 2 lbs 8oz a day.

That's a total of 10.56 pounds of meat i'm feeding to my pets a day or 316 pounds a month and 150 rabbits a month yields about 300 pounds.

My pets eat more than I grow, which is fine, because I don't feed rabbit every day anyhow.

Now factor in the humans, say a family of 6, who would eat 2 rabbits in a meal, and if it were 2 days per week, that's 4 rabbits per week or 16 rabbits a month. Now the 300 pounds I grew for my pets (even though I need 316 pounds) is down to 268 pounds of meat.

For those who say your meat is $1 a pound, either you are getting food ridiculously cheap or you are not doing the math right. Remember you MUST include the feed and the cost of the feed that the ADULTS eat in with the costs to raise the kits because the adults are the reason you are getting kits and their maintenance needs to be factored in.

In June, it will be my 37th year in raising rabbits and my records go back 3 decades and are very accurate. With rising feed costs, I've seen a 500% increase in the cost of raising rabbits. The feed I pay $21.99 a bag for now cost me $12.99 a bag only 8 years ago.

I don't leave out any expense; my numbers are real.

Thank you for this very detailed information on raising rabbits! I had been looking into it for my family, but it seems like its too expensive, given the going cost of feed plus time involved. You may have saved me from a costly misadventure. Thank you for your valuable input.

To the guy who can't eat eggs, you may want to look into duck eggs as a palatable alternative. I've heard some breeds of ducks can outlay chickens, too!