We had another eight new baby rabbits born. These are a few days old so their eyes are not open yet but they are fat and healthy.
We use to keep around 25 adult breeders of several different breeds like registered flemish and giant chinchilla
that we would sell for a higher price to help pay for the feed and cost of the meat rabbits we where breeding to eat. We cut back this last year drastically and are now down to 3 adult girls with 2 males.
We will be holding back around 2 females from each new litter for future breeding and then the others will be eaten. We are going to get our numbers of breeders back up for production since the fodder is cutting the feed cost.
I built lots of these cages several years ago for holding our rabbits. They have worked out great but after several years some of them need the legs cut off and new ones installed.
We use to eat around 30 rabbits a month and I would like to get production back to close to that. With each female producing from 8 to 10 babies it should only take 6 adult females. We like to give them 4 weeks to rest after birthing before re breeding so they can have around two weeks on their own from the weened ones before the new ones are born. We will breed 3 on month and then 3 the next month. These are the ones from four weeks ago that will be ready to butcher in a couple more weeks.
Besides the meat they produce they also produce some of the best organic fertilizer for your garden that doesn't even have to be aged. Rabbit manure is one of few manures that can be used on a garden directly without aging or composting first. They also produce nice pelts if you grow them out a little larger for butchering or rabbit feet key chains for sale.