We’ve been raising rabbits for meat on our homestead now for a few years and we love how delicious and, at the same time, how economical it is! You too can raise the right amount of rabbit meat for your family quickly and easily.
On our homestead, we currently have two male and six female New Zealand and Californian rabbit breeders, but we sure didn’t start out that way. Our journey began with purchasing two males that ended up being females and one female that end up passing away before breeding age.
We wanted rabbit meat to be a sustainable meat source for our family that we could raise ourselves, but it seemed impossible at first.
After learning lots of valuable life lessons (which you can read about in this blog post and this one) we have finally found a system that works for our rabbitry, where we can produce enough rabbit meat for our family each year.
Let’s check it out…
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How Much Meat Can You Get From Your Rabbits?
Rabbits that you raise domestically can dress out with a few pounds of meat each, but it all depends on when you decide to butcher them. We choose to process our rabbits at about four months of age, which comes to about 3.5-4 lbs each bone-in.
That is about 2 lbs of rabbit meat from each rabbit or about one meal. We enjoy cooking our rabbit similar to bone-in chicken in recipes or with other dishes.
The amount of rabbit meat for your family will depend on how you like to prepare it and how often you eat it as well.
Related Post: 7 Meat Rabbit Books You Need To Read To Start Your Rabbitry
How Many Breeders Do You Need For Rabbit Meat For Your Family?
Let’s say you want to start with two female breeders and one male rabbit breeder. How much meat would that produce for your family in one year?
First, you need to consider that rabbits are pregnant for about 31 days. They produce on average 6-8 rabbits per litter. It takes about four additional months for those rabbits to reach butchering weight. So, in total, we are talking about five months until your first butcher day.
However, after you wean your baby rabbits you can rebreed the females. We choose to wean around 2 months and wait at least 10 days before rebreeding the mother. She not only deserves a rest but also, the chance to allow her milk to dry up.
Related Post: How Much Does It Really Cost To Raise Your Own Meat Rabbits?
With this model, your two females could each produce about four litters per year, which is about 28 kits each, and 56 total rabbits. At 2 lbs of meat each, that comes to 112 pounds of meat that year.
That could easily be enough rabbit meat for your family if you only have a couple of members and have other supplementary meat sources. After all, you don’t want to eat rabbit meat every single day of the year!
But, you also have to consider the losses, the false pregnancies, and the small litters. We have encountered all these problems at one point or another, which is why we choose to raise more than three breeding rabbits.
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How To Raise Meat Rabbits In A Systemized Process
For our family – currently myself, my husband, a one-year-old, and a baby on the way – we choose to raise much more meat than that per year. With six females and two males, we can produce a substantial amount of rabbit meat each year.
Our family used to breed our rabbits each at different times of the month and year. They were not all at breeding age yet, so when they reached six months old, we just bred them. However, this led to a lot of time tracking each mother’s records, constantly managing different life stages, and several small butchering days.
Related Post: How To Buy Meat Rabbit Breeders That Are Healthy And Productive
We knew there was a better way so we started experimenting. As soon as all six of our females reached six months old, we placed them all on the same breeding schedule.
Over the course of two weeks, we bred each female with one of the males. Then, we knew that all the babies would be born around the same time, could all be weaned at the same time, and then ultimately be butchered at the same time.
For those asking, yes, one male can service all those females. However, we choose to have two males in case one male gets sick and to ensure more successful litters (from our own personal experience).
By keeping all our females on the same schedule, we are also able to better calculate and keep track of how much meat we will be producing per year. On each butcher day we average about 65 lbs of meat. Doing this system three or four times a year gives us between 200 and 300 lbs of rabbit meat each year.
Another aspect to note is that we also sell our baby rabbits to others in the community, both as breeders and pets. We aim to sell about one rabbit per litter to help cover the feed cost, but of course, living remotely means we don’t always achieve this.
These numbers are rough estimates, and you can’t account for everything that may go wrong with your rabbitry because life happens. However, you too can raise enough rabbit meat for your family each year by following this same system.
Related Post: 6 Super Simple Ways To Make Money From Your Meat Rabbits Today
I hope that the system that works for our family can be something your family benefits from as well!
Raising rabbits for meat doesn’t have to be tiring, exhausting, or confusing. In fact, it can be one of the easiest ways to provide a high-quality meat source for your family. We certainly enjoy the delicious benefits it offers our family on the homestead!
Let me know in the comments below how you plan to produce rabbit meat for your family each year! I can’t wait to hear from you.
Kelsey at GoodPointGrandma
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Thanks for this,Kelsey!! I am adding those books to my list. We are building a new chicken coop this year and I am looking into whether we can add space to it for a rabbitry. This was perfect timing 🙂
Great to hear! Feel free to stop by to check out ours or ask me any questions you have. (:
I would love to come see! We will work on finding a time to do that 🙂