Part of being a self-sufficient homestead is producing your own food right?
As Spring approaches we are getting excited for our garden to get producing. While we love our veggies and herbs we are definitely big meat eaters here. We have chickens which are a great option but all of our girls are in the prime of laying so they won’t be meat and we are nowhere near being close to ready to raise a cow or even pigs so we decided on rabbits to start.
If you search the internet for the best type of rabbits to raise for meat a decent size list will pop up. We noticed that New Zealand Whites and Californians usually graced the tops of those lists. We decided to go with New Zealand Whites, mostly because they are a top choice and they aren’t quite as cutesy fluffy adorable as some of the other breeds :/. Sounds bad but we, especially Chris, think rabbits are super adorable. Kind of makes it hard to get them ready for the dinner table right? One of the females is a New Zealand mix…so she isn’t all white but she will do. It should give us some variety in the pelts we intend to use!
Chris built some awesome hutches for them and we started with 1 buck and 2 does. We are expecting to get another doe within the next week or 2. Did you know you can get like 300+ pounds of meat per year with 3 does and a buck? Looks like we will be eating rabbit for every meal. Rabbit soup, Rabbit stew, BBQ Rabbit, Rabbit burgers? ehhh…maybe not.
Here are the hutches. We have a 2nd set that matches. Oh and Bill guarding “his” rabbits. He immediately deemed them under his protection. š
The first 2 are the does and the one on the right is our buck. We bred them already and we are expecting our first litter near the end of the month.
There you have it our first step in raising our own meat. I’ll keep everyone updated. In the meantime anyone have some good rabbit recipes they want to share?
*S
The Johnson Homestead 
Sweet! We’re looking into raising meat and we’re definitely considering rabbits. I’m afraid I will fall in love with them though! Will you be butchering them yourselves? Do you plan to sell the meat or is this just for your own use? We’re on a farm, so everything we do has to be with a profit in mind.
Great blog by the way!
They are pretty cute…we came up with the plan that I would do all the feeding and interacting with them so the hubby would have an easier time processing when the time came. Not sure if that will really make a difference in getting attached or not.:/ We do plan on butchering them ourselves, from our research it looks pretty easy. We butchered our own deer this year…so I feel like rabbit will be a breeze haha. We have not decided on selling the meat or not. I’m not sure what that would entail but we are definitely looking for alternate sources of income. Our goal is to be self-sufficient so one day we will start selling our own meat. Thank you for checking us out! appreciate it š