Free Meat (?)

[Felix]

Rabbits.

- they breed like rabbits.
- they are silent and don't need much space - I guess you can even do this in an apartment
- kill em with this: http://www.therabbitwringer.com/
- high-quality meat (organic!)
- just feed them your vegetable leftovers and collect weeds (free)

Kill and dissect them yourself.

Make stuff out of the pelt and sell.

They did that in possum living.
What do you think?

[chenda]

Alternatively you could use roadkill, which is completely free

[borisborisboris]

Yeah I remember that from Possum Living. Interesting idea; some objections:

-too cute
-waste products and associated odors
-if in an apartment, is your landlord okay with this?
-if in a house, are your township / neighbors okay with this?
-what if they breed too quickly?
-how healthy is the meat compared to just going vegetarian? compared to hunting wild game (deer are plentiful around here)?

[Felix]

Rabbits poop little dry balls if you feed them right. They produce little odor if you clean their place regularly.

Pet keeping regulations need to be considered, yes. And the cute factor is difficult.

Sure, you can go vegetarian to avoid it completely. This is for those who still want to eat meat. Healthwise there's wild debate.

I'd have less reservation keeping rabbits than hunting deer, but that may vary.

You can feed them beer, play classical music and massage them daily for Kobe-rabbits.

[workathome]

My Grandma (great depression era) said she could write a cook book about different ways to cook rabbit, lol. Apparently it was a really big protein source.

[jacob]

I vastly prefer rabbits over chicken. They're not as foul. They're easier to dress/clean. Also according to North American legend, they lay multicolored eggs on a seasonal basis! They taste approximately the same (rabbit is a bit "stronger"/gamier). You definitely need to clean the cages frequently. I don't see as many problems keeping a rabbit as, say, keeping a cat or a dog in an apartment. Just don't advertise that you're eating them. Some cities will have ordinances against "home-slaughter".

[Sclass]

Hi Felix,

Just wanted to toss in, rabbits don't breed like rabbits unless they are fed high quality food. I raised them for meat as a kid. We went cheap first feeding the rabbits grass, veggie tops, and trimmings from the garden. They didn't breed much. My dad and mom who had ag backgrounds took us to the big feedlot in town and got us 100lbs of the green pellets for rabbits. Boom - baby rabbit litters one after another.

Had the same experience with egg laying after moving to commercial chicken food instead of feral chicken scratch out a living fare. With kitchen trash we got some eggs, but the laying frequency doubled with scraps, commercial mash, pellets and bugs picked from the garden.

So it isn't quite free meat.

Free is the feral pig and chicken behind my pals place in Kauai. And even that may get hunted out if you hit it too hard. They were pretty prolific.

Road kill, right on Chenda that is free. But I'm not sure it is legal just to pick up the deer carcass off the road. I'll google DFG in my area.

[Felix]

So I guess they would need some form of protein supplement to start breeding. Hmm .... Grow algae maybe? Then I could add a hydroponics setup ... Pretty soon I'll need a biosphere.

[slimicy]

Would they eat worms? You could get a nice cycle going with a worm farm/compost pile where you feed the worms to the rabbits and the rabbit droppings back to the worms.

[Sclass]

Not too sure it was protein that did it. Could have been.

What I know is the rabbit pellets were mostly alfalfa with vitamins and minerals mixed in. It was a commercial feed for making rabbits multiply (I take it people were feeding them to breed not for chocolate eggs). Pets or meat who knows. But, in the end the commercial pellets got the baby bunnies coming. We raised and sold some to buy more feed and ate others as they got bigger. Dad slaughtered seldomly because we refused to eat our pets.

I recall telling my mom FREE EGGS! While bringing in baskets of chicken eggs. She corrected me by saying thhe mash and pellets weren't free.

We also had possums, racoons, feral cats, crows and neighborhood dogs coming by for chicken and egg dinners. We fought them off in a variety of ways...none of which were free.

In my moms old age she told me the animals...rabbits, chickens, quail and goat were all to make my disabled sister happy. She claimed it actually cost us money to keep them.

[SimpleLife]

I wonder, given the ammount of time required (cleaning their hutch, feeding them, skinning them, etc) and the cost of high quality food, do you really save money on meat? I ask because I'm about to build a rabbit hutch so I can breed rabbits for food. I eat maybe $20-30 of meat a month, probably less.

[Sclass]

I think it depends on what you want to do. If you just want to save money period, I think there is lower hanging fruit out there. As suggested above, I like my local farmers market for produce rather than growing it. For me personally it is easier to make money other ways and conserve it by driving an older car or using high deductible insurance. That buys a lot of organic food.

But...I do miss my moms garden and livestock. It was fun. It also seemed more environmentally correct. When she saw food being thrown out at catered events she would rescue it for our chickens and rabbits. We had names for the animals. My late sister lived a short but happy life filled with purpose caring for the little farm. And as many of the poultry farmers here know, the eggs are delicious...not like the supermarket eggs.

We tried tanning rabbit skin and failed. We sold pet rabbits. I could have done without watching my dad club bunnies as a four year old...yuck, the sound is burned into my brain.

Dressing wasn't too bad. It was just an extra step. To get an idea, watch YouTube. I recently dressed a duck (skinned not plucked) in 15 min and I was taking my time. I always worry about nicking my hand so I go slow. I put it up the with scaling a big fish. Just another small step leading to a special meal.

[riparian]

They don't have much fat, unless domesticated rabbits do?

Why grow rabbits when the world grows them for you?

[21stCenturyKid]

Here is a resource I found for butchering a rabbit: http://pinterest.com/pin/112660428148725691/

[Riggerjack]

All the islands in Puget sound are over run by feral rabbits released by parents who had too much of the pet rabbit in their urban or suburban homes. The cotton tail type. So docile our cats bring them home. There's no alarm clock to match the screams of a rabbit getting carried thru a pet door.
If you want free meat, trap it or hunt it. Raising it, as mentioned above, ain't free.
Local lore around here has people starving on rabbit, too low in fats for maintaining an active life, inducing a downward spiral among local pioneers. That doesn't seem like an issue for modern diets, but I thought it worth mentioning.