Rabbits

When we moved to the country, rabbits were one of those animals that were on the list, but far down the list. A lot of homesteaders keep rabbits as a source of meat, and obviously the hides can make some very warm clothing. I had no idea if I'd ever be able to actually kill a rabbit (although I have my dad that has no problem doing it).

Over the summer of 2016, I saw a post in a local buy and sell Facebook group about rabbits. The person had 9 rabbits that he had intended to breed for meat rabbits, but the wife got overly attached to them and he didn't want to continue to spend money on them if he wasn't going to eat them. He was giving everything away for free! There were already a dozen comments from people wanting to take them, but I went ahead and responded to be next in line. Boy was I surprised when he actually contacted me! Apparently the people before me either didn't show up, and the one that did had no interest in taking all of the rabbits. He had 3 rabbits left, and since the person hadn't taken them all, he still had all of the rabbit food, extra water bottles, and an indoor cage.

Each rabbit had their own hutch, and over the summer they sat beside the house, but I was worried about winter. It gets really windy here since we are on a hill, and I had no desire to keep rabbits in hutches. I had dreamed of a colony style setup where I could walk in and interact with the rabbits, and they weren't alone in small wire cages. Unfortunately we lost the black and white rabbit, Petey. We didn't know his age, but we found him dead one morning in his hutch.

We moved our ducks away from the small garage to give the rabbits that area. It has bird netting over the top, and chicken wire around the walls. The area itself is about 12 x 16 foot. We have a dog house stuffed with straw, and they have plenty of room to run around.

Rabbit count...

-1  black California Mix Buck (Summer 2016 about 10 months old) - Obsidian
-1 black California Mix Doe (Summer 2016 about 2 1/2 years old) - Dark Earth


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