# rabbits for meat: cost effective?



## knuckledragger

Will I be saving money by raising rabbits for meat? Or is it just cheaper to buy chicken on sale at the store?


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## wolffeathers

Probably still cheaper to buy chicken on sale at the store. 

Home raised rabbit tastes better and is one of the most economical of the home raised meats.


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## bowbuild

When you factor in caging and time, you better love rabbit....


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## LoneStrChic23

I feel I got what I paid for with my meat rabbits...A better tasting, healthier product than store bought chicken. 

Now, my start up cost were cheaper than most..... I watched CL for cages...bought a nice 3 hole cage for $20 & it just needed cleaning & new j clamps (whatever they are called) on one door.

Hung out & posted want ads on Freecycle....ended up getting 1 24" x 24" cage with stand, j feeder & water bottle for free one week, 3 weeks later I got a 30" x 30" cage for free & I build a grow out cage for fryers out of scrap around my house. So my only new purchases were 1 cage, water bottles & mesh bottom j feeders. 

My only regret was paying for pedigreed stock when my goal was only meat rabbits, especially when I liked my cross bred kits so much better.....and buying them sight unseen from out of state, won't do that again.... The pedigrees did help though when I decided to sell everything but one pet... 

I think if your thrifty, shop around & don't buy the first thing you see, you can get started for a reasonable amount, and keep your numbers small so your feed bill doesn't go through the roof.


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## Macybaby

Cost wise, I don't think it's a way to save money if you compare it to the cheap poultry you can buy in the store. But I don't think that tastes much like chicken either.

I care about the quality of my food, and it is cheaper for me to raise the quality of meat I want vs. buying the same quality in the store, but you won't find that on sale at Walmart.

And you have to be honest with yourself on how much rabbit you will actually eat. I've come to the realization that we never ate a lot of poultry, so raising rabbit to replace poultry has not caused us to eat a lot of rabbit. 

I try to have kits when I have green grass, and spend time each day cutting greens for the rabbits to help keep down the cost of pellets. I'm still not sure if it's cheaper to raise rabbits instead of buying dog food. . .


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## Wisconsin Ann

If you're going to feed store bought pellets, I don't' see any way you can save money over buying the chicken you get at the store for $.99 a lb or less. But, as was mentioned earlier, you know there's nothing added to you rabbit meat. Even that 15% added water irritates me a LOT...I'm buying MEAT not water..sheesh....

It's like asking if you'll save money growing your own chickens...the answer is no as long as you have to buy feed.


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## oregon woodsmok

Not a fair comparison rabbit to chicken.

If you want to price compare the fairest comparison is to center cut pork loin chops. Or maybe to boneless pork loin. Rabbit is more like that little white medallion of pork in the best chops. It's nothing like chicken.

If you raise rabbits you will get a lot of meat. It is very dense meat and it doesn't take much of it to make a serving that will fill you up. I love rabbit. I don't eat enough of it to justify the expense of keeping rabbits.


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## oregon woodsmok

I should add that you get good feed conversion with rabbits. Lots of growth for the feed that they eat.

Cornish X chickens probably get better feed conversion, so fewer pounds of feed per pound of chicken on the table. That does not apply to chickens in general.

Pigs have really good feed conversion if you are trying to get the cheapest meat on the table.


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## laughaha

Honestly it depends on how you feed/raise them and how fast you want your fryers on the table. I butcher at about 4 months old. I could butcher alot younger, but I prefer them to be a bit bigger. 

About 1/2 of my rabbits diet is hay- at $2/bale it's much cheaper than feed and they prefer it. I also free-feed pellets and give them fresh greens whenever possible. They also get slices of frozen watermelon at noonish on really hot days. Could I raise them cheaper? Yup. Do I like the quality I'm getting? Oh yeah!

Rabbit tastes MUCH better than grocery store chicken......No comparison


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## BackfourtyMI.

Yep, chicken on sale at the grocery store is cheaper but Home raised Rabbits taste better!! Plus you know where it came from, what it ate, how it was treated & how it was taken care of to get to your freezer.
rabbit taste like Sweet chicken to me, we love it.


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## Renne

Come on folks, the reason we raise the majority of our own food is to have quality! Dr. Oz says to NEVER eat chicken from the store unless it it organic. ALL other chicken is raised in packed housing necessitating the use of a form of arsnic to control parasites and low level of antibiotics to control the spread of disease.These houses contain 50-100 thousand birds and disease can wipe out a house in a matter of days if infections are not kept in check. We don't raise chickens nor rabbits to save a few cents at the grocery store---- we raise chickens and rabbits because we know our meat is untainted be the numerous chemicals the larger producers have to use to raise such large quantities in limited space. You can't compare apples to oranges. We raise our organic chickens cheaper than the organicsat the store and we raise our rabbits cheaper than the store and our rabbits are fresh not frozen for who knows how long at the store. It is about your health and independence from large factory farms. Who wants to buy beef that has a 15% solution of water and flavoring added?? They have to add flavoring because the way they raise the meat doesn't allow the natural flavoring to develope. Don't always look at the cost-- there are many other benefits than saving money. Yes I know these are hard times-- My wife & I are also experiencing them, but we won't buy meat nor many veggies from the store as long as we can raise them ourselves.


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## Macybaby

One way to keep costs down - butcher on time!

I should have butchered weeks ago - but due to getting the garden in and DH injuring himself, I finally got to it today.

These rabbits had the most fat of any that I've done, but they were also the oldest (4 and 5 months old). I have another 7 more that are 3 months old that need to head off to camp too, but after doing ten I'm going to take a break and do them later this week.


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## salmonslayer91

if a person were to allow for a little rabbit yard and have constant hay (cheap) and also free feed pellets would the conversion of input equal that of the output? what im getting at is could confined or controlled free ranging aid in the process while in growing out pen?


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## Fat Man

If there was enough to eat in the rabbit yard it could bring down cost.


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## MaggieJ

Generally speaking, in areas with good cheap alfalfa or clover hay, it is possible to reduce your feed costs by feeding hay and gathered greens (weeds etc.). BUT, the fewer pellets the rabbits eat, the more slowly they will reach butchering size. I no longer feed pellets at all and my rabbits need about 14-16 weeks to reach butchering weight. I don't mind this at all because I prefer the flavour and I don't mind having roasters instead of fryers. But some people want their rabbit meat very young and melt-in-the-mouth tender... and that generally means butchering no later than 12 weeks.


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## SquashNut

Now that pellets are getting Upwards of $15 for 50 pounds, we are raisng them on any thing else we can find cheaper. Including our lawn grass. And plantings of grain, peas some safe veggies, we bought the seeds and didn't like after all ect.
Time I have, money not so much. But you have to remember that carbs and protien are what produces meat.
I read some where they also need a certain amount of calcium so they can produce their skeliton. For that you can give them some oyster shell sprinckled on their food. Not so much that you cause bladder stones though.


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## MaggieJ

I should have mentioned that we do feed small amounts of whole grain for carbs. We also supply a trace mineral/salt block, because they need it if they are not getting pellets. The green feed, for the most part, is very high in calcium - more than sufficient without supplements. Might be a different story in winter, however, when the amount of greens fed is less. I'll have to look into that. Sorry if this is thread drift, but once you start talking about alternatives to all pellets, you need to consider the components you are replacing and how they fit together.


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## SquashNut

That's good to know about the calcium in weeds/greens. I think that would be some thing you'd have to be carefull with.


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## rabbitgeek

Other consideration is that when raising your own rabbits for meat, you control the harvest. 

Your meat is "on the hoof" so you don't have to refrigerate or freeze it for storage. 

There is a doctor teaching people in Haiti to raise rabbits for self sufficiency. 

Have a good day!


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## Wisconsin Ann

Maggie, Alfalfa is very high in calcium. One of the reasons that you don't feed excessive alfalfa hay to horses is that the high calcium can cause an imbalance with phosphorus..and THAT causes the body to stop absorbing nutrients from food. (chicks are HORRIBLE with this...chick raisers have to feed excess phosphorus just to get enough into the chick...and then the chick poos it out..which causes problems with run off in the waterways..sigh)

Anyway. If you feed a high alfalfa hay, your buns are most likely gett9ng all the calcium they need.


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## MaggieJ

You're right, Ann... and with a bit more thought I'd have realized that the alfalfa hay gives them sufficient calcium in the winter.


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## SquashNut

MaggieJ said:


> You're right, Ann... and with a bit more thought I'd have realized that the alfalfa hay gives them sufficient calcium in the winter.


I don't feed alfalfa hay in the summer. I currently am giving them soaked feild peas and greens, All Stock and a little pellets. But is what you are saying is true then what I read wasn't right.


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## Wisconsin Ann

SN, most of the greens that we all feed the rabbits are also eaten by humans (and certainly fed to dairy cows, or horses) so most of them you can find the nutrient list online somewhere. Dandelion greens, mustard greens, etc. will be on most of the "alternative" food diet sites. 

Alfalfa is probably THE most researched forage in the world. both for humans (sprouts) and horses and cattle. They even have it's DNA mapped for specific regions. (living with a Dairy Forage Research person has it's perks).


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## Macybaby

I cut greens every day for mine - when I have greens that is. Clover, dandelion, burdock (when small) plantain, mallow, nettles, sunflower and then I top off the bucket with a mix of grass/alfalfa/bindweed from the hay field. Right now I only cut one five gallon bucket, but if I have a lot of rabbits, I'll cut two. I'll also give them elm, willow and apple branches for treats. We've got elm that grow like weeds and the rabbits love the thin branches. 

I don't let my husband spray certain areas of the yard so I can harvest greens. The first time I showed him what I cut, his response was "they eat that s..t?" In the winter I keep feeders full of hay (from the same field) for them along with pellets. They get a few sunflower seeds for treats now and then too.

When I start having some greens in the garden, I'll give them a few of those too. they also have pellets, but they much prefer the greens and I go through a lot less pellets in the warmer months.


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## cshaw07

SquashNut said:


> I don't feed alfalfa hay in the summer. I currently am giving them soaked feild peas and greens, All Stock and a little pellets. But is what you are saying is true then what I read wasn't right.


what is all stock?? how much is it?


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## SquashNut

Our "all stock" is grain minerals vit and mollasses in a pellet, It is only 14 % though.


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## cshaw07

what is the cost like compared to the pellets? i probably wouldnt feed that to my breeders, but if i 50/50'd it with pellets for my fryers... I may be able to save some cash...


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## SquashNut

We are paying $10 for the All Stock and $15 for rabbit pellets. So I cann't tell you if it will work for you.
But we use it over COB becuase COB is only 9% protien.
A mix of it with your does so they are just getting a few tablespoons of the AS seems to keep them in good shape, and the mollasses has alot of good trace minerals in it.


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## cshaw07

that sounds good to me, and the $5 difference can make quite a difference if your buying a lot of it. thank you


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## bowbuild

I as well use all stock from tractor supply. I found that feeding them (fyers) adds weight and sweetness to the meat. Use to work well for bear hunting till they banned it!


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## cshaw07

Do you buy the producers pride brand? all the all stock at our TSC is 12% protein


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## SquashNut

The al stock we buy Is Country Acres brand.


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## Macybaby

The all stock at Campbell's was the same protein content, but only about 50 cents cheaper for a 50lb bag. 

Didn't check with Tractor supply, but we've had real inconsistent quality of the feed we've bought from them in the past, with cat, horse and chicken feed. I don't think they even carry rabbit though.


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## Pony

To me, the cost of raising my own meat is worth it, because I think the long-term cost of eating the factory produced "meat" from the store is unacceptable.

My rabbits and chickens do get some pelleted feed, but the Spring and Summer are great for raising meat to be frozen or canned for Winter because there is an abundance of green food and bugs for the birds.


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## SaratogaNZW

Of course it has been said time and again: Chicken at the store, wrapped in styrofoam and plastic, bought in bulk, is of course cheaper, than raising a rabbit in the beginning.
However its just not the same, not a good comparison.
If you want to BUY the high protien, low fat, natural, organic meat of the same quality you can raise yourself, heres a link for reference.
No its NOT me, I only can suggest it as a market price for whole processed rabbit fryers and roasters. (yes, $20-$30 each...)
http://www.homegrowncow.com/cake/farms/profile/?Name=/golden-premier-farms
Their even up in Squashnuts neck of the woods =)


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