For us, August can be very hot and humid. Recently, we have had an unseasonable cool stretch. It has been cloudy and not really humid. We decided that this would be a good time to butcher our rabbits. I apologize for not having more pictures of the processing itself. We were concerned about rain popping up and we were trying to hurry.
Several of our rabbits already got a lot older than we usually let them get. There were two age groups of rabbits that we processed. They were about 3 and 5 months of age. We have found that the best time to butcher them is around the 3 month mark. At this age, they are relatively easy to process and have much less fat that needs to be removed. When they get way over the 3 month mark, it can be very difficult and could require a lot of effort when trying to remove the fur. Very often, we let our rabbits get older than 3 months because we like to bake them.
In all, we were able to process 14 rabbits. The total weight was around 50 pounds after processing. As I said in a previous post, we had butchered two different kinds of meat rabbits this time, which are Californian and New Zealand. We did notice that that the New Zealand rabbits yielded more weight after being processed than the Californians. It should be noted that the New Zealand rabbits did eat more and did seem to get bigger faster.
I have come to the conclusion that both are viable options for those who are looking to add rabbits to their homestead. Both will provide you with an adequate source of protein that will multiply very fast. We have raised Californians for many years now, and the only reason that we tried New Zealand rabbits was as an experiment to see how they would compare to each other. I believe that we will eventually switch over to the New Zealand breed just for the fact that they will get bigger quicker.
Thanks for reading!