Real Homestead Survivalist

by Ed simms & Lee Baker

Table of Contents

1. About The Homestead Survivalist Series

2. Ron & Jenny Jenkins Talk About Their Rabbit Business

3. The Rabbit Barn

4. Waterers & Feeders

5. Feeding & Care

6. Breeding

7. Rabbit Butchering

8. How to Sell Rabbit Meat

9. Recipes for Rabbit

10. How to Sell Live Rabbits

11. Fertilizer

12. Conclusion

1. About The Homestead Survivalist Series

It's no myth that we are living in a very unique time in the USA and the entire world.

If your are ready to take action to protect you and your loved ones from many possible

dangers of: financial collapse, food shortages, neighborhood crime, and an unstable

US government who many US citizens do not trust, the "Real Homestead Survivalist"

Series on Amazon Kindle will help benefit you in many ways.

Our team of writers go in-depth with each Homesteader Survivalist that we interview and

write based on what is revealed to us.  Every new book in this series will show you ways which you can apply their tips and techniques.  Book topics range from growing your own food to protecting your family.

Please be sure to try a free sample of all the "Real Homestead Survivalist" books on Amazon for your Kindle.

Sincerely,

Ed Simms & Lee Baker

2. Ron & Jenny Jenkins Talk About Their Rabbit Business

Our rabbit farming business could be done at any location. A lot of owners make use of backyards, sheds and old barns as sites for raising rabbit (rabbit pens or rabbit warrens).

With the situation of meat and the turmoil in the economy, this is an excellent time to go into the rabbit business. A rabbit business is the best one I know that can put good food on your table and some money in your pocket with little investment involved. You can make profits in several ways. For example, the urine can be sold for use in the laboratory and the manure sold for making fertilizer or growing worms. The feet as well can be sold for making charms for attracting good luck. Nevertheless, meat product is the most important by far.

The rest of these chapters explain how you can get started on a small budget. You will not need those expensive items the so-called experts tell you to get. I will try as much as possible to discuss all you need to know in a new operation and to point out those pitfalls any novice could fall into which are not discussed in books/guides on this subject. Experience they say remains the best teacher.

3. The Rabbit Barn

The Rabbit farming business can be done at any location. A lot of owners make use of backyards, sheds and old barns as sites for raising them (rabbit pens or rabbit warrens).

It’s inside a barn that was purposely built for rabbits by me (by a trial and error method) that I keep my herd. It’s a 16 by 24 feet structure made from used materials costing less than $200. The roof is 12 feet high at the center, sloping down to 8 feet on the sides. Since rabbits thrive best in partial darkness, I cut only 3 small windows in the walls not lower than 4 feet above the floor. On the back side facing south, I ran a hinged board of ten inches width along the length of the building approximately 4 feet from ground level. I raise the flap and prop it open during summer time. A Dutch door added to the opposite wall carries in its lower section a thirty-six-inch fan for moving the air up and out.

The building floor is dirty, which is necessary for absorption of urine and suppression of odors and to make cleaning the floor much easier. If you use any other type of surface, you have to wash it every day which is so much work.

In the Deep South here in Alabama, you do not need any heat in such a shelter if you control the breeding times. If you need any supplemental warmth, you can use a homemade type of a drip stove which burns used motor oil. This is sufficient to ensure that the temperature remains above the freezing point. It is easy to obtain this fuel and it is inexpensive.

My building shelters 3 bucks (male) and 15 does (female). Only two mates are what you really need, and the old one, after it has seen better days, will soon become sausage. You can get the animals' pellet feed at any store dealing in farm supply and keep it in garbage cans so that it can be protected against rats and other unwanted animals.

A butchering table sits in the barn’s front corner. It is made from a 1 inch by 6 inch lumber of double thickness, 36-inch wide and 48-inch long. It gently slopes to a chute made of wood at one end, to allow all remains to collect inside a big bucket for chicken feed, used as togs or buried for fertilizer.

You must provide pens before getting your first stock. You should allow each one of your rabbits 2 feet by 3 feet space and a height of 2 feet, a room big enough for exercising and rearing the young. You can build larger cage units to house those feeders which are due for the market. Regardless of your cage size, you must raise the cage off the ground and high enough to allow easy raking or shoveling out of the manure.

Even if you have to use lumber to build your pens, the cost of buying it will be considerably less than the cost of those commercial hutches. You can use the regular 2 by 4's to make good uprights and mount the bottom wire on 2 by 2’s. A 1/2 inch mesh hardware cloth is preferred for making the bottom wire because most of the manure can easily fall through it. The flooring certainly will be used heavily therefore you should roll it completely around the 2 by 2's and nail it securely.

You must use a top cover for your pen because rabbits (the younger rabbits in particular) can climb. You could put together this and the external walls of your own hutch from 1-inch-mesh- chicken- wire or very narrowly spaced boards. Ensure a large-sized-opening is left for your  wooden door and make it larger than the size of the nesting box so that you will be able to reach all the interior parts. You can make your ideal hinges from pieces of old plastic hose split along its length.

If your solid cage is made as long as your building length but you have the intention of dividing it, I advise you to use wood instead of wire for the interior walls. Deposits of urine will rust your wire dividers, and the rabbits will work together on the netting and break through it. It is a lot more satisfactory to have a 1 by 4 partition with narrow spaces between boards. Even though the wood will be chewed by those little beasties, they get sick when they do therefore the habit will generally not present much problem.

In case you have double-decker pens, ensure that the top of the lower level is covered with a metal roof and slopes down by a minimum of 6 inches while the upper tier is raised by 6 inches above this roof covering. The space between will be used to sweep down the debris that fall on the top pens and prevent foul odors from reaching underneath.

Do not damp your herd's quarters with water from the hose as this will cause foul odors and create a mess which is not good for your rabbits.

Ensure that outside cages have a water-proof roof and make sure that you cover the lower part of the exterior with tar paper during winter to absorb the wind. Because litters must be born indoors when the temperature drops below the freezing point, make sure you make appropriate adjustment of your breeding schedules. Nevertheless, open-air pens are good for half-grown rabbits, bucks and the ones that are being reserved for market.

4. Waterers & Feeders

Automatic feeders (commercial type) make room for the bunnies to eat and spill excessively. The waterers (apart from the teat style) make the wires rust and their flimsiness make the liquid to slop about. The container described below can serve both purposes and save you some trouble and expense.

Look for a no. 2-1/2 or a big juice can and also a pair of tin snips. At about an inch from the seam, start cutting downward until you are 2-3 inches from the bottom, halfway around the wall and straight back up on the other side. The upright section of metal should be left some inches wide, for attachment to the wood or wire of the cage.

Get the sharp edges rolled and pounded with a hammer till they become so smooth that they cannot catch the rabbits' fur. Devices like that will last longer if you paint and dry them thoroughly before using them. Make sure the containers are not fastened too tightly to the pen. To empty and clean them, just tip them up sideways. And don't try to use watering gadgets or plastic feeding! Use only wood ear metal around rabbits.

5. Feeding & Care

Right from the start, avoid the "Oh, they're cute animals!" attitude toward your young rabbits. See them as livestock and not pets (very good livestock indeed-the most clean and disease-free).

You will discover that each rabbit possesses its own temperament. You’ll find some of them easy to handle and others not. When lifting a rabbit, use the scruff of its neck to hold it take it weight by placing your other hand under its rear. You may hurt the rabbit if you use any other technique and get scratched by its big hind feet.

It’s on the feet area that domestic rabbits usually have health problems. Treat any open wounds on their pads with a swab of cotton soaked in Campho–Phenique (which you can get from a drugstore). After a few applications, the trouble should have been cleared up. You can deal with soreness the same way, but it’s better to put a flat board or an extra straw in the pen to take the animal’s feet off the wire.

Rabbits are disturbed by flies in the summer but you can use fly strips to control them. You can get fly strips from your local home supply or grocery store. Never use sprays on rabbits; their breathing will be affected and they may eventually die.

The bunnies should be fed with pellets, about 3 ounces daily for each of them. Also give them lots of clean water. Optionally you may add small quantity of lettuce, hay or cabbage leaf occasionally. Don’t feed them lots of greens because their digestive systems cannot handle so much vegetation in confinement. Rabbits are nocturnal animals, meaning that they often eat at night therefore it is important they don’t miss their evening feeding.

Rabbit feeding is a controversial issue. Harlan H. D. Attfield is a representative of Peace Corps who is specialized in inexpensive rabbit-raising operations for developing countries. He recommends that the animals should be given grain in the morning and be allowed to eat as much greens as they can overnight.  More detail on the analysis of the rabbits' “nutritional requirements” can be found in (The Homesteader's Handbook to Raising Small Livestock.)

Allow all members of your herd to have access to a roll of rabbit salt, which you can obtain from a feed dealer (costs 10 cents or so). Attach this mineral supplement to their cage so they can lick it whenever they like. It lasts about 3 months. If there are insufficient minerals in their diet, this may encourage the does to eat up their young ones.

6. Breeding

Now that the pens and fittings are ready, it's time to make a choice of your initial rabbit stock. It’s easy to do this without being a member of any clubs or falling foolishly for the first rabbit advert you come across.

It’s absolutely unnecessary to buy from afar; if you do however, don't ship your purchase by air freight. Airlines do not have the equipment for handling livestock.

The best thing to do is to go with your burlap bags to the nearest producer, and make your selection from his younger stock, even if it means feeding the rabbits for about 6 months after when they would have matured. You need to give them time to get used to their new home and you.

It is the meat animals you are after and not show rabbits, so bloodlines are absolutely meaningless. Search for those that have heavy bones, broad heads, large pads/feet and light color. Check if there’s canker in their ears and raw sores on their pads. The live weight of a 3 month-old rabbit is expectedly 4-5 pounds.

Depending on the number of pens you have, you as a beginner should start with 1 buck and 2-3 does. You cannot use your naked eye to determine the sex of a young rabbit therefore do the following to know whether it’s a doe or a buck: It’s better to be sure than depend on seller’s information. Grab the rabbit’s neck scruff with one hand and run your other hand slowly down its belly. If you feel the area is very smooth, then you are holding a doe. But if elongated tassels are felt close to its body, then you have a buck. It’s possible to buy your stock at the weight price of the dealer’s market. An unregistered full-blooded rabbit is only $10 or less and that is if it’s of breeding age. Prices may have increased since the time this article was written.

At about 6 months of age, a female is ready to breed. She should be put her into the buck's pen for service but not the other way round. You may be surprised to see the male fall over for a couple of seconds after service but this behavior is normal and you must not remove the doe immediately for that reason. Give the pair about 15 minutes to mate so that you can be sure.

Keep a record of the date the mating takes place on a cardboard piece mounted on the front side of the doe's cage. Also take note of the buck you used (in case you have more bucks) because the same buck should not be allowed to serve more than 1 time in every 4 days. I also advise that you keep track of the performance of each animal so you can identify the more productive ones among them.

Twenty-five days after breeding, provide a bunny box to the doe. I suggest a nesting container of about 12in x 18in x 4in, with a solid bottom. You can make one from crates which have been disposed by a supermarket or grocery. The doe will use her own fur to line the babies' bed because she’s got lots of them, but you assist her by providing some hay or straw as supplement to ease the job. About 30-32 days after conception, she will have got her first litter. The USDA's Agriculture Information Bulletin, number 358 (Selecting and Raising Rabbits) recommends that you inspect the litter a day after its birth and remove any deformed or dead young. Allow the babies to stay with their mother till they are weaned (about 8 weeks) after when they will have become the size of a fryer.

If you rebreed a doe not long after her young are weaned, she will produce 4 litters every year. A lot of people who grow rabbits in their backyards schedule mating for 6 weeks after kindling, but this period is cut to 2-3 weeks by commercial operations. Since you can breed female rabbits whether they are in heat or not, it is up to you to determine the time. Pushing your breeding stock too hard will lead to the production of undersized young, small litters and a short life span of the animals. My does are bred 4 times every year and this gives me 8-10 healthy babies at once.

After producing for a good 5-year span, I advise that the female be replaced with younger stock. If you get only 2-3 young from her in 2 consecutive breedings, you should slaughter her immediately because it’s not cost effective feeding non–producers.

7. Rabbit Butchering

How to kill and dress the rabbit:

This part of the business you may not like but soon you will become used to it. Perhaps after you’ve killed the first hundred or thereabout you won’t spend more than 10 minutes.

Use your left hand to grip the rabbit's hind legs securely and allow the head to drop downward. Then hit the animal fairly hard across the back of its skull using a stick or a hammer handle or other similar object. Alternatively, you can shoot downward with a .22 at that same area. Slit its throat and let the head point downward until it is drained of blood, perhaps in 5 minutes.

While on the butchering table, pull the rabbit’s hide at the back center away from the carcass then insert a knit to cut a 3-inch gash in the skin. Insert the fingers of your two hands and pull the hide hard enough is till it reaches the pads and head. This skinning method which is usually used on wild rabbits is rarely recommended by homesteaders because they want to save their own rabbit pelts for comforts, mittens and so on. Please refer to any good documentation on rabbit production for skinning methods that you can use to produce a one-piece pelt that is appropriate for tanning. Use a hammer and a knife to cut the head, the lower legs and tail off. Then you will get a clean carcass.

After pulling up the belly midline, slip in your knife very carefully to avoid cutting the innards. Let the knife slide the forward and come out around the neck cavity. Then perform the same action toward the rear. To remove the bowel, bend the hind legs backward and then break them away from the spine. This will open the carcass completely. Bring out the light pink lungs, kidneys and heart and keep them safe for pet food. Also take the liver out carefully. You must cut out the gull (an elongated dark area which you can see on the back of the organ) and throw it away. Remove the guts, throw them away, and keep the parts you need in a cool water bucket.

Caution: Sometimes wild rabbits develop a disease called tularemia, characterized by spots on the liver, but which very unlikely attacks domestic stock. Nevertheless this disease could occur and in such a case you must destroy the whole carcass because it is dangerous to human. You could be infected by disorder when you handle animals that are infected, therefore I advise that you either wear some rubber gloves or ensure that there are no cuts on your hands while butchering a rabbit.

To cut the carcass, you should cut the front legs with just a knife because they are held in place by only muscles. The hind legs possess a ball-and socket joint which you can severe with a knife and a hammer. Split the back into 3 equal pieces to get 7 pieces of good meat containing very little bone. Submerge all the parts inside cool water so as to do away with the animal heat (a 2-gallon bucket can contain the edible portions of 3 rabbits) and you're done!

If you want to store your clean-cut rabbit, transfer the meat into a freezer bag and the pet food into another bag and the liver should be put inside a different container, except if you want to sell it together with the meat. Three bunnies’ livers combined with onions are an excellent meal. If you intend to sell the feet, as charms for good luck for example, allow them to soak overnight in strong salt water and hang them out for drying with the toes up. You will make 10-15 cents from each.

8. How to Sell Rabbit Meat

Rabbit is seen as a delicacy in Europe and it’s a good source of money too but it's not widely consumed in the USA, meaning that you will likely have to create a market of your own. Mount notices on bulletin boards and try classified ads: something like "Buy grain rabbit, all white meat, pan ready," should work. Include your price and phone number.

Keep your price 20 cents a pound lower that of lean ground beef and sell at less than a dollar generally. Allow your customers to weigh your frozen rabbit and let them figure out the charge themselves. You should always sell less than the nearest quarter pound. Buyers are very unbelieving nowadays. Proving that you are honest make receptive and you take advantage of this by ensuring that their next orders coincide with your own dressing schedule. Another option is to collect your customers’ phone numbers and call them 7 days before the time you will kill.

Once you start, advertising directly to them would help you get enough customers and keep you busy. Get ready to sell in 6 lots to them after they made their first orders because many people have some sort of freezers nowadays. Encourage them to buy in bulk from you by making them an offer of free pet food. You can now you why you salvaged the innards!

Also consider trade by barter. If you discover your meat wholesaler or butcher likes rabbit, then swop beef or pork with him pound for pound. Never mind the comparative prices because you can never lose!

9. Recipes for Rabbit

An easy way of building business is serving rabbit at company dinners. But first you must learn how to cook it. The suggestions that follow should provide you some ideas. Take note of the fact that rabbits have no real fat of their own, therefore many of these recipes require that you add some fat. The best is Bacon. Other than that, anything that can be done with store-bought meat can as well be done with your own home-raised rabbit.

Pan Frying

The meat should be parboiled for about twenty minutes with some sliced onion and a dash of sage. Take out the pieces and get them fried in vegetable oil or bacon grease.

Shaking & Baking

Do the same as with chicken, but the meat should be cooked under light foil.

Baking

Parboil the entire rabbit in twenty minutes. Get it wrapped inside bacon strips and then in loose foil. Bake it for about 1 hour. Oven temperature was not mentioned by Mr. Bell, but about 350 Fahrenheit is okay.

Stewing

The meat should be boiled off the bone and vegetables cut up. Continue stewing them with the boned rabbit till the ingredients are done. Although stewed rabbit is stringy, it is good.

Sausage

Boil the meat till it becomes very tender and then remove it from the bones and grind it with a home food grinder. Mix this with a pound of sausage you bought from the store and make the combination into patties and get them fried.

10. How to Sell Live Rabbits

Make a hand-printed sign and put it in your feed dealer's business place; this will probably help you to sell some live rabbits to other beginners for their breeding stock. Also check your state laws on trade in Easter bunnies. If you are not allowed to sell them as pets, you can remove that word from your advert and offer "Easter bunnies: live (enter price here), dressed (enter price here)." You may not want to sell pets at all, except you have some friends that you know their homes quite well. Small children of a family who have no long time responsibility of domestic animals are likely to overfeed and maul the hapless Easter bunny to death, or just love them for a day and then neglect them. It is far more humane to slaughter them for food.

11. Fertilizer

Unlike chicken droppings, rabbit manure will not burn plants and can be applied directly to any vegetable or flower. Sprinkling a little lime under the pens will suppress the odor and also add a desired ingredient to this fertilizer.

You can get 5 cents a pound or more for any manure that is not used on your own garden. Worm farmers and rose growers pay the most money for the product. If you saved your heavy feedbags, you will find out they are ideal containers for selling and transporting the rabbit droppings.

If you know some of your customers who are flower growers, try to give them a twenty-five pound bag of fertilizer together with a big meat order. Remember, you have built your business on good will.

12. Conclusion

Let us summarize the gains from 1 two–and–a–half fryer: In addition to meat, you have got about 6 ounces of pet food from the animal, the beginning of a liver-and-onion dinner for your family and then the feet, supposing you get a market for them. In its lifetime, this same rabbit has also produced 20 pounds of top grade fertilizer or thereabout which is worth a minimum of a nickel a pound. Using the current prices (late ‘73), you’ve made $3 from that $1.00 bunny. I don’t know other livestock that can do as much.

As I am writing this, I’m expecting my 15 does and 3 bucks to bear 400 rabbits in the coming season. That means over 1,000 pounds of good white meat for me (much more than what we used in our own kitchen). It’s certain that pellet feed has become expensive now but I’m still expecting to make a few dollars from just 1 hour of work every day. That is obviously not bad for a rabbit–raising business!

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