Breeding Rabbits?? Does it make money?

[cutechick2010]

Same issues as everyone has mentioned before. If you want SHOW rabbits, go do your research and find GOOD stock to start with. Breed with discrimination, using only the BEST. Spend money and time doing it right. If you just go out and breed the first cute little loppy bunnies you find and sell to pet stores etc, you are just contributing to pet overpopulation and a large portion of those rabbits will wind up in shelters, or even just dumped in the woods/on the side of the road. You might make money doing that for a while, until your local market is flooded. But is making money more important than the welfare of the animals you are selling?

BTW, everyone and their neighbor has mini lops. That is 3/4 of what is in the petstores, mini or holland lops.

 

[bossynbella]

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I have found around here the Holland Lop goes for alot more then the Mini lop. We have a two year old Holland Lop buck and have been looking for a doe for him for over a year. (He was given to my husbands mom because a older woman she worked with had bought him as a pet and her husband didn't like having him in the house. After the first winter of her having to walk to the barn every night after work to feed him she decided to find him a home so she just gave him away.) As far as finding him a doe it has been rough. We have gone to two rabbit shows and four swap meats and 3 auctions the cheapest Holland Lops where at the auction it was a group of 6 (unsexed) and they went for $10 each with no pedigree. So that was $60 for the whole group and I didn't have that much. otherwise singly the cheapest has been $40 for a pedigree doe. Finially I just bought a pair of Mini lops they went for $2.50 each! no pedigree but still cheap. The male got out and dissapeared shortly after we got them. Next spring we will breed the female with Obi-1 unless we find a Holland doe before then and see what we get. Sometimes mixes sell sometimes they don't we always have the option of giving extras to my DH's uncle who loves to eat rabbit, so we are able to play around a little more then if we had to have homes for every rabbit we produce.

Good luck. If I could I would sell you some of my 8 week old Siamese satins but I think you are just to far away.

 

[emvickrey]

DH decided he wanted to raise rabbits for meat for us. So we go to the auction and buy a bunch for practically nothing. WE bought 4 lion heads for $2 each and some I have no idea what breed they are for $3 each. We got 9 rabbits in all. The Lion Heads we have 1 buck and 3 does. His plan in that was Easter time. Now I have a problem with that because most of those little bunnies will end up dying or getting killed. Once the new wears off they get neglected then given away or let go or what ever they decide to do to get rid of them. Now my problem with raising them is they stink and go through the food like crazy. They take space that we don't have. We have 2 pregnant does right now and no place to put one of the bucks to get him out of the pen before the babies are born.
Another problem is I get to scoop up all the poop and keep them in water and feed and I didn't want rabbits. I scooped up 8 large scoops of rabbit pebbles yesterday alone. I do have to say I neglected to do it a few days but still. They poop alot and one of them always tries to pee on me. I wouldn't mind having one of the Lion Heads as a pet but it hasn't been handled and won't let me touch it and it needs groomed. It has mats in it's hair but there are 2 that don't have such long hair that will let me pet them.

they know me and will come up for a sniff but won't let me touch them. The ones in the ground pens will walk out of their door while i'm filling feeders and raking out poop and i just scoot them back in. They don't try to run away. One of our pregnant does was a pet and the boy got sent away for being bad and mom didn't want to take care of it anymore. So she gave cage and all away.

I would rather not raise rabbits, at least this many. I"m trying to sell some of them so it's not so much work and winter is coming. All those frozen waterers gives me nightmares. I have quail, Guinea and chickens to tend to and its all on me. He rarely helps. So if anybody near me wants any rabbits, i'll sell cheap. lol I would like to send about 5 to new homes.

 

[cutechick2010]

Quote:
Yes, and all these things are what people always find out AFTER they get into rabbits, it's a lot easier to get in than to get out. And if you don't find somewhere for your buck to go before your two does give birth, you will have two MORE litters in four weeks. Does are their most receptive to breeding within 72 hours of giving birth.

 

[emvickrey]

Quote:
Yes, and all these things are what people always find out AFTER they get into rabbits, it's a lot easier to get in than to get out. And if you don't find somewhere for your buck to go before your two does give birth, you will have two MORE litters in four weeks. Does are their most receptive to breeding within 72 hours of giving birth.

I thought that the buck would kill the babies if he was still in with them. Is that not true?

 

[bossynbella]

I have never tried leaving a buck in with a doe when she had babies. I have always heard that they will kill the babies too.
As far as all the chores. How many rabbits do you have and where are you keeping them? We have at the moment, with babies from four litters, 25 rabbits. We keep them outside during the better weather.They are mainly in wire cages (one is an old hospital crib that we used chicken wire and welded wire and made into a rabbit cage with a welded wire floor, it works great). All our adult rabbits are housed individually. Our younger rabbits we keep from weaning till we sell them, seperated by age and sex. Right now I have a Cage of 5 half siblings bucks together while there 7 female siblings are in a second cage. They are only 8 weeks old but I like knowing at a glance who is the boys and girls. We also have two litters that are 3 months old right now. 4 males housed together and two females housed together. We only have to scoop the poop from under the cages about once every three or four weeks. Then We just scoop it up and dump it over the compost pile, or the garden area and do a quick raking. The chickens love to peck around it and clean up whatever rabbit feed the rabbits manage to dump. They do eat alot though and Rabbit food isn't cheap. Almost $11 for a 44lb bag here. We supplement with corn we own acres of corn field so will just go grab four or five ears and break them in half and they get that at night, they love it and have it down to the cob by morning. This winter we plan to only have 5 or 6 rabbits, so they will spend the winter in the garage/chicken coop , still in cages with a ration of rabbit feed and some hay everyday. They do fine outside in the winter, We just don't like to be out in the cold and snow. I have found heat is a bigger problem for rabbits then cold is. They have a warm coat and the cold doesn't seem to bother them much.

This is what our rabbit area looks like. Not beautiful but it is functional.

 

[Pineywoods Peepers]

When I had rabbits we always made more money on selling cages than we did on the rabbits.

Rachel

 

[emvickrey]

Ours are close to our house and I try to keep the poop cleaned up because they smell. I need to get pics of our set up. But we have one long run that DH divided and made 2 enclosures. We have 1 buck and 2 does in each of those. Well we did. One of the bucks I managed to move out of one. Then we have a double rabbit hutch that is very old and i've been using it for chickens but now is back to a rabbit hutch again. Anyway, the one buck is in one side and there are 4 loin head bunnies and 3 of the others in the other side. Seven in all. They aren't big and don't mind each others company and there is only 1 buck in there. I don't have another cage to put anymore in right now. Wire has gone up so much it's awful. We need to separate the loin heads into their own pen and I would love to either sell 5 of the others or put them in the freezer. I also have a large chicken coop that is divided and has RIR in one side and EE in the other. 16 chickens total in that one. Then there is the silkie pen that holds 9, then the quail pens that hold 3 different breeds in 4 cages with a total of 23 quail. Then the tractor we was using for teenager chicks is now holding 6 guinea and a new double pen that is the grow pen for the guail is holding a buff orphington cockerel on one side and 30 quail chicks on the other. Then next to the rabbits is another pen and it's holding 8 buff orphingtons. One of those being a cockerel. I do have 1 pen in the quail section that is holidng 1 guinea for when the lady comes for the pnip testing. Then it will go back with the others and the silkie roo in the EE pen will go in it because i'm getting an ameracauna roo for them.

After everybody gets fed and watered their mess gets cleaned up and dumped. Takes me a few hours every morning and with the additional rabbit poop to clean up that I didn't want in the first place, it makes my chores unpleasent. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike rabbits. They are beautiful animals and I wouldn't mind a few but they are as much work as the quail cleaning up after. They make such a mess. And they poop as much as the rabbits do.

 

[emvickrey]

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We plan on selling cages as soon as we can invest in some wire. It keeps going up and up. DH has a big painting job he's working on somaybe we can get started now.

 

[Akane]

Most people seem to keep them all individually and that's the default answer you tend to get but further research turns up that there are some people who keep rabbits in at least pairs. A few do a complete colony with the buck and does together all the time in a very large space. Whether rabbits fight or will kill each others young (or their own in the case of bucks) seems to depend greatly on space. Which is true for a lot of animals. We try to keep them in a steadily decreasing amount of space and often separate due to show requirements or similar until it becomes generally accepted knowledge that you absolutely can't keep them together when the real answer is "it depends".