#rabbit breeder

[bunposting]

Eating me continues to be Sirius' favorite activity.

[mulberryfox]

Next up in farm chat is picking your hold back stock!

TW: Animal death, meat animal, animal farming

This is Arizona, an 8 week old satin x silver doe. She is my hold back doe out of her litter of 5, and I want to talk about some of the reasons why she’s staying!

The traits I am looking for:

1. Nice, smooth shoulders. I don’t want to see low shoulders, or any pronounced semi-arch type.

2. Nice width throughout. I don’t want thin, narrow rabbits who lack muscling over their topline, or appear to be long and lean.

3. Large size. Because silvers are a slightly smaller breed, I want to make sure I am retaining the heaviest, fastest growing offspring. This doe is the largest by several ounces, and is almost a full pound larger than the smallest littermate.

4. Handleable. I am okay if a rabbit is a little bit squirrely, but I do not tolerate extreme fear or aggression. This whole litter is a little squirrely, but not bad.

5. Color, fur, and sex. I knew i would be retaining a doe from this litter, with the potential of retaining a buck. The only buck in litter is the smallest, and so it was easy to pick based on sex. The four does are all the same shade of fawn, with one being a booted broken and therefore less useful in my program right now as my bucks are both broken and I don’t want charlies. The buck is a better shade of red, but thats okay. All five have identical fur.

In the end, her size is what won her a longer term cage because this litter was surprisingly consistent on type. The other four will go on to help provide food for my family in about a month, and anything left over will go into our garden as fertilizer to bring us abundance in the summer.

[mulberryfox]

TW: meat animals, animal processing, animal death.

A part of coming back to Tumblr is so that I have an outlet for my homesteading/home farming projects. Because it’s winter and the midwest, not a whole lot is happening out in the garden, which means its rabbit content time!

Did you know, domestic rabbits actually handle the cold better than the heat? This can make them great alternative meat source on cold-climate homesteads, especially in the winter months! Rabbits are the most efficient small homestead meat source, because you can breed them yourselves, unlike Cornish cross chickens. Other breeds of chicken can be bred and hatched on farm, but yield smaller quantities of meat.

Rabbit manure is also great for your garden, and does not require any other processing to be garden ready, unlike most other manure types.

Pictured is Boris, one of my meat rabbit program herd bucks. His purpose is breeding, and when he is eventually retired (if he is ever retired!) he will be placed in a pet home thanks to his wonderful temperament, or passed on to another homesteader looking for a starter buck.

Reasons for retiring him would include: low rate of gain/production on his offspring, producing genetic ailments, sterility, or if he produces a son that is a significant improvement on his own faults. Boris is still a junior, meaning he is young and still developing. He is also a “mystery mutt”, so it is still up in the air on how he will finish out. Based on his current development, I am excited to see where he finishes at!

In a future post I will share some of the qualities he has that are useful in my herd, and I hope to introduce some of my other production (and show animals) soon!

[mockva]

[exoticghosts]

Can anyone point me to amchin breeders in the Maryland/Delaware/Pennsylvania area?? I'm looking to get a breeding trio

[bunposting]

Much to the dismay of Silver breeders everywhere, she's sticking around.

{don't mind how patchy she looks she's still molting out her baby coat}

[bunposting]

Me as an ace when I see anything about s-x:

Me as an ace when I finally witness my rabbits successfully breeding after almost a month of trying:

[bunposting]

Being a rabbit breeder be like

damn i wish rabbits bred like rabbits