# Raise Or Hunt?



## big rockpile (Feb 24, 2003)

Ok right now I am raising Rabbits for Meat and use Manure for Garden. Two Does supply plenty of meat.

I'm considering getting Registered Beagles. Thinking of hunting and selling Pups and Trained Pups.

I enjoy Hunting and Eating Wild Rabbits. Our season runs from October1- February15.

big rockpile


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## driftwood (Jun 29, 2013)

whatever you want to do,,life is short......maybe do some of both...
i loved and raised beagles years ago,,,,never mad any money though....
seen fire from my gun barrel daylight and dark so many times,,you couldn't count......


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## Farmer Willy (Aug 7, 2005)

I've merged the two. I have two California rabbits running around my place the last few months. One I turned loose, the other was an escapee. They have outlived hawk, owls, coyote, barn cats and my little useless dog. They have tunneled under my shed, hunkered under parked cars and wiggled into wood piles. I like pulling up to the house in the evening and seeing them working on clover or playing under the swing in the front yard.
Wonder what the chances are of them breeding with the local cottontails this spring.


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## Micheal (Jan 28, 2009)

Humm, going from something that takes maybe 5-15 minutes a day and little money - caring for 2 does and a buck - to something that takes hours and hours of work training, caring for, showing, registering, etc. not to mention the money involved.

Hard choice? Not for me........


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## simi-steading (Sep 27, 2012)

What kind of market do you have for the dogs? Around here, not many people hunt rabbits with dogs.. only a couple hunt **** or bear with dogs...


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## Chuck R. (Apr 24, 2008)

simi-steading said:


> What kind of market do you have for the dogs? Around here, not many people hunt rabbits with dogs.. only a couple hunt **** or bear with dogs...


Same here, we were just discussing the other day how few people we've seen running rabbits with Beagles, and KS is lousy with rabbits. When I was growing up my friends dad raised Beagles and it was fantastic hunting over them. 
It almost seems like most of the small game hunting has fallen by the wayside, squirrels, rabbits, *****. A friend of mine is heavily into Drahthaars, and he's thinking of getting a couple Beagles for rabbits. Hopefully he will.

Chuck


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## secuono (Sep 28, 2011)

How's the market?
Here, they sit for sale for months upon months. No one wants to buy anything for a fair price. Genetics, health, training, none mean anything if it ain't cheap....
=/


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## MichaelZ (May 21, 2013)

Actually, you only need one good beagle. Train them to run rabbits, and they will bring them around to you in a circle after you kick them up. Wait and watch - then blast them. Cottontails, that is. As a teen, I had good beagle and got more than 10 rabbits over my Christmas break from school one year. You might spend a day, but if you have lots of good area to hunt (like public and private land), you can get 2 or 3 rabbits fairly easy. It is fun hunting I will say - listening to your beagle yelping and baying and then watching. Kicking them out initially is a bit of work, but if you can still do that, give it a try. The one bad thing about beagles is that they must be tied up - if you let them run free they will get into all kinds of trouble killing neighbors chickens and it won't be long before they get run over as they are running rabbits or some other animal. So their life only becomes happy when they get out on the hunt. Also, make sure you have enough rabbits so they do not get bored and start running deer. A deer running beagle is quite a frustration. I used a 20 ga shotgun with #6 shot as many if not most of my shots were at running rabbits. Also, I used field loads and not magnums - magnums could mess them up bad.


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## big rockpile (Feb 24, 2003)

Ok like my wife said around here it is a 80 mile drive to get into Rabbits. I use to run Beagles when we lived in Grain Farming area but there I could limit on Rabbits in half hour kicking Brush Piles.

big rockpile


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## EDDIE BUCK (Jul 17, 2005)

MichaelZ said:


> Actually, you only need one good beagle. Train them to run rabbits, and they will bring them around to you in a circle after you kick them up. Wait and watch - then blast them. Cottontails, that is. As a teen, I had good beagle and got more than 10 rabbits over my Christmas break from school one year. You might spend a day, but if you have lots of good area to hunt (like public and private land), you can get 2 or 3 rabbits fairly easy. It is fun hunting I will say - listening to your beagle yelping and baying and then watching. Kicking them out initially is a bit of work, but if you can still do that, give it a try. The one bad thing about beagles is that they must be tied up - if you let them run free they will get into all kinds of trouble killing neighbors chickens and it won't be long before they get run over as they are running rabbits or some other animal. So their life only becomes happy when they get out on the hunt. Also, make sure you have enough rabbits so they do not get bored and start running deer. A deer running beagle is quite a frustration. I used a 20 ga shotgun with #6 shot as many if not most of my shots were at running rabbits. Also, I used field loads and not magnums - magnums could mess them up bad.


Absolutely right.Around here there are more deer than rabbits.Letting a pup run loose will pretty much guarantee you a deer dog. Then a dead dog from getting run over on the highway.Five years ago I raised four pups.Two died from chasing deer across a road.One from heart worms and the other never ran diddly squat,so I sent him to meet his maker. Until I can afford to fence in about five acres,no raising beagles for me.I do love hearing them run however. check this video out. http://www.folkstreams.net/film,197


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## Farmer Willy (Aug 7, 2005)

big rockpile said:


> Ok like my wife said around here it is a 80 mile drive to get into Rabbits. I use to run Beagles when we lived in Grain Farming area but there I could limit on Rabbits in half hour kicking Brush Piles.
> 
> big rockpile


 
I guess that's your answer then. Not much point in raising the dogs if you got nothing to train them on and nobody around there would have rabbits to hunt if you did sell them a dog.


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## K-9 (Jul 27, 2007)

Beagles are fun if that is what you are looking for, but from an economic standpoint if you want rabbit meat raising them makes a lot more sense.

Lets break it down to dollars and cents, 50lbs of rabbit pellets costs 11.79 here and lasts about a 2 months feeding 4 rabbits, 50 lb of dog food costs 28 dollars and lasts about a week (we raise German Shepard Dogs and currently have 3 females and 2 males) but lets say you get 2 weeks out of a bag because obviously beagles are smaller and eat less but you would probably have more that 5 beagles if you are hunting and raising pups. Plus all you have to do with the rabbits is feed them water them and put the girls in with the boys at the appropriate time. With the dogs you have to clean kennels every day, the rabbits once a week or less, a rabbit cage costs about 10 dollars to build a decent kennel is 200 plus dollars per dog. The side benefit of the rabbit manure is it fertilizes your garden, I don't know what dog manure is good for. So for 10 dollars per rabbit for a cage and about 140 dollars a year in feed, you can have all the rabbit you want to eat, if you have extras you can offset some of your cost by selling the extras. I don't know about there but here people will stand in line to buy bunnies at 5 to 8 dollars a piece around Easter time. 

You said you would have to drive 80 miles to get into rabbits so when you are training pups you would need to make that drive at least every other day, my Toyota pick up gets right at 24 mpg on the road so lets say your vehicle does the same so that is 7 gallons of gas a trip at least 3 days a week so 21 gallons of gas a week at 2.50 a gallon so a little over 50 dollars a week in gas. So right now you are looking at a 200 dollar plus per dog start up for housing, lets say you have 6 dogs so that is 1200 dollars for a kennel area, then a cost of 14 dollars a week for food so that is 728 dollars a year in food and 50 dollars a week in fuel when you have puppies on the ground training and less per week for exercising your breeding dogs, so lets just say 1000 dollars per year in fuel traveling back and forth for training. So now we are 1728 dollars a year for the dogs just in expendable costs. Now I don't know how much AKC registered beagles bring there but here they are about 100 dollars a piece so you would have to sell 17 puppies a year to break even on your expendable costs, but since it costs to register the litters lets throw 4 more puppies in there to cover that cost so now we are at 21 puppies, now there are vet costs associated with a kennel operation so lets say that comes to a conservative 500 dollars a year we are now at 26 puppies to cover expendable costs and haven't even started to recoup startup costs. In addition to that you would need to factor in the time you spend caring for the dogs and litters as well as the training plus the initial cost of your dogs (assuming you don't already have them which sounds like you don't.

So I am really not sure under these circumstances that this is a viable business opportunity. If you just want to rabbit hunt, it would probably be more cost effective to just get you a couple of beagles to hunt with and if you want to breed them and sell a few puppies to help offset expenses that would be fine but doing it as a business just doesn't sound feasible with your current location and the hunting opportunities it presents. If you decide to go forward with it I wish you loads of success, I wasn't trying to be negative just realistic.


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