Pet Rabbit

 

Some children in our neighborhood likes to drop by our place after school just to see the rabbits and they usually end up buying a pet rabbit from us after badgering their parents endlessly. We make sure that before the rabbits leave our place, we give instructions to the new owners about feeding their pet rabbits the right kind of food so they will stay healthy. We also check first if the new owners have a cage or a hutch ready before we even release the rabbits to the them. Having a pet rabbit to take care of is a good way for the children to learn about taking responsibility. We normally dispose the baby rabbits when they are already 1 1/2 to 2 months old. Some customers prefers to buy the ready-to-breed female rabbit because they want to start breeding right away. The money that we get from the sale of these baby pet rabbits are used to buy their next sack of rabbit pellets. So the rabbits are more or less self-sufficient in this way because they pay for their own keep. We only provide them their vegetables for roughage and water of course. My one and only niece took these pictures of these baby rabbits. I think they're all cute, don't you think so?

 

Sleeping with its legs up in the air!

Advantages in Small Backyard Rabbitry

There are many advantages in having a small backyard rabbitry. One of them is that you could voice out your problems to them and they will not judge you. So if you happen to get into a fight with your hubby, or you lost in an argument, or you had a difference of opinion, just simply walk away and go into the rabbitry. There you can talk to the rabbits until you are blue in the face! Explain your side of the story and omit your hubby's side of the story of course and that should help to make you feel like the winner. 

Seriously, this small backyard rabbitry is just one of my hobbies. We used to be able to raise pigs in the backyard back then when there were only a couple of houses here in the village. Now that the city has grown so fast, the local government has made an ordinance banning the raising of pigs in the city. This is because of the smell and the noise that is associated with a piggery. So if you want to raise some animals in your backyard in the city, go into rabbitry. They don't take up too much space unlike other small ruminants. They can stay confined in a small space but it should be adequate for them of course. They can eat all your vegetable trimmings too, so they are economical to feed as well. If you have a lawn and you are lazy to mow the grass, just release them there and they will do the work for you. If you have shrubberies around the property and you don't know where to throw these, just give it to them and they will solve the problem for you for free, they will eat them all within a matter of minutes. They are that efficient you see. If you have a small garden in the backyard like me, then you need not buy or use those chemical fertilizers because you already got "Green Gold" from the rabbits waste pellets. You can also use the rabbit's waste directly in the garden without burning the plants because these are considered as cold fertilizer and the best thing is, it is organic fertilizer. They are also a good source of protein with their lean white meat which is healthier than other kinds of meat. As long as you keep and maintain the sanitation in the rabbitry, the neighbors have no reason to complain. Since rabbits are not noisy, they can be kept in the backyard and the neighbors will not even know that you are raising them because they are really quiet by nature. They will not demand attention but they will still receive attention gratefully. Here are some pictures of the beauties in my small backyard rabbitry.

Slaughtering Meat Rabbits

It has been awhile since I made a post about my rabbitry so I thought I will update you on what is going on now with my rabbits. Well, we've been breeding my initial stocks of one Cinnamon doe and one Chinchilla doe since August of last year. We've even slaughtered some 10 meat rabbits during Christmas time when it was time for them to go into the pot. Luckily, we got more males among the litters and these were fattened for table food while we kept the females as replacement does. We are raising meat rabbits after all and that is the purpose for going into this rabbitry, to learn to be self sufficient in producing our own food. We had no hesitation in slaughtering the meat rabbits knowing that what we fed them were healthy vegetation minus the growth hormones and antibiotics that are normally being used in big factories for growing chicken broilers. Please stop reading if you are squeamish about this subject, it is not for the faint of heart.  

  


We slaughtered the meat rabbits in the most humane way possible and it was done very quickly so as not to make them suffer. Using a 1-inch pipe metal rod about 1.5 feet in length as a tool in holding the rabbit's head on the ground and with both feet on both sides of the pipe, we give a quick pull of the hind legs to snap the rabbit's head. It only takes seconds and it is the most painless way to slaughter them. It is now time to cut off the head and the front paws. Then we tie the hind legs with a rope and hang the carcass upside down so the blood will drip down to the bucket underneath the carcass. Then we start cutting the skin around the hind legs but being careful not to cut the inner flesh, just the skin. Then with a sharp knife or scissors, make a slit from the anus going upwards to cut the skin on each hind legs to open them up. Make a slit also from the anus down to the belly and the neck. Then just pull down the whole skin and it would all come off in one piece and this is dropped into the bucket as well. Once the skin is all out of the way, then we make a slit in the flesh of the belly section to bring out all the intestines, the heart and everything else that has to come out. Then it's just to wash the flesh off and it's ready for cooking. My nephews can now do the slaughtering and it's easy peasy for them now that they know how to do it all by themselves. 

Sexing the Rabbits

In the pictures above, these are all Chinchilla male rabbits. When the rabbits are 2 months old, we check their sex organs and separate the males from the females. It's easy to differentiate the males from the females because the male organ protrudes when you open it while the female has a slit.  One reason for the segregation is that by the time that they reach 4 months old, there is a possibility of interbreeding among the siblings and we try to prevent that from happening. So all the males from the same litter are placed in one cage while the females are placed in another cage. Another reason for the segregation is to decongest them so they will have enough space to play inside their cages. They should be able to run around their cages for their exercise.

We usually put 3-4 males or females in one cage but they should all come from the same litter. We do not mix different breeds in one cage so we do not get confused about their lineage because we now have 3 different breeds such as the Chinchilla, Cinnamon and the latest which is the New Zealand. Some children in the neighborhood likes to buy their pet rabbits from us and it's easier for us to pinpoint the lineage of the rabbits so we do not give a pair of siblings to the same customer. In the pictures above, these are all female rabbits from the same mother. What we do before we sell the rabbits to the children in the neighborhood is to ask their parents first if they are amenable to their children having pet rabbits. We also see to it that they must have a cage or a hutch ready before we release the rabbits to them. This is to ensure that the rabbits will have a good home when they leave our place.

Baby Rabbit Accident

I was on the phone talking with one of my sister-in-laws who lives in Isabela Province yesterday. She said that the electricity just came on that day after several days of having no electricity because of the typhoons. Isabela was badly hit by the previous two typhoons that ravaged the country one week after the other. Thank God that they are safe and sound in spite of the calamity that hit them and that is more important than worldly things. Other provinces are still submerged in water so the residents could not go back to their homes. It may take a couple of months before some residents could go back to their own homes. Anyway, while I was on the phone with my sister-in-law, I heard a loud crying sound from the rabbitry. Every body went to see what it was all about naturally. Everyone thought that a rat may have gotten inside the rabbitry and is biting the baby rabbits. That's because we've seen some rats around recently although the neighbor's cat has been catching them.

 Anyway, it turned out that one of the baby rabbits caught its foot on the door of the cage because it was not closed properly. The kit must have been jumping around as usual when the accident happened. This caused the baby rabbit to cry out loud. After extricating the leg that was caught on the door, the baby rabbit was OK, no limp so far. It's just that the experience must have stressed the baby rabbit and the others as well. In fact, the black buck is having diarrhea today and I am attributing this to the stress that they all experienced yesterday. We're keeping a close watch on him and we're restricting his diet until his stool goes back to normal. All the other rabbits are doing okay so far and the baby rabbits are growing very fast. They really could eat a lot of greens specially the vines and leaves of sweet potatoes that we feed them. I just cleaned out their cages and after one hour, they made a lot of poop again. They're a regular poop machine but I like it because I could use their manure for the garden.  

Weaning the Rabbits

The baby rabbits are now 7 weeks old since yesterday, October 06,2011.  We were going to separate the baby rabbits from their mothers yesterday but I was still feeling sick so we had to postpone it. The litters can actually stay all together in the same cage where they were born until they are almost 3 months old. This will help them to keep each other warm since it is getting cold here in the mountains. Late this afternoon, we finally separated the baby rabbits from their mothers. We first removed the two does from their individual cages and placed them in their new cages that were reserved for them. By leaving the baby rabbits alone in their cage and just taking out their mother, this will reduce the stress on the baby rabbits. Then we removed the two smallest rabbits among the litters and these went with their mothers in their new cage as well. They will stay with their mothers for a few days so they can get some more milk and this will also help the mother does from suffering because of a swollen breast. After a week, we will remove the two baby rabbits from their mother  and will put them back with the rest of the litters. We have not sexed the baby rabbits yet as of this writing. We'll do that when they turn 2 months old so they will not be too stressed because of this separation from their mother.  We also took this time to use the small handy butane flame torch to burn off the furs that were sticking on the wire cages of the newly weaned rabbits. After cleaning the cages, we gave them a new feeding bowl and new drinking water bottle.  Then before we left, we fed them some pellets and greens to distract them from the stress of being transferred to a new cage.They were happily munching away when we closed the rabbitry for the day.

 

Breeding Stock Cinnamon/Chinchilla: 2nd litter

This is the first time for the black Chinchilla buck to be used and these are his off springs. We used the broken-back Chinchilla buck to mate with the two original does. This time, we thought we'd use the black Chinchilla buck since he is almost 9 months old by October 02, 2011. We first took the Cinnamon doe and put her inside the cage of the black buck. As soon as she was in the cage, the buck mounted her but the doe was not having any of that.  She took her own sweet time before she let the buck to ride her. Then she made a pee! This means that the semen of the buck must have been washed away. We had to wait for about 30 minutes until the buck served her twice again before we removed the doe and put her back in her own cage.

 

We did the same thing with the white Chinchilla but she was also not in the mood. She just kept on running around in circles going 'round and 'round the buck and jumping every time she sees the buck coming towards her. She was very aggressive this morning but apparently, she was not in the mood this evening. It looked like she was ready to fight with the buck and she would put him in a corner and the buck would just lie down. Finally, the buck got a chance and was able to service her twice before we took her out. When she was finally in her own cage with her litters, she was still running around in circles. It must be that she didn't want any of her litters messing with her at that time and she wasn't ready to feed them yet. Anyway,the pictures here are the result of that re-breeding process.