Living in the suburbs has its benefits. We can ride our bikes or walk to the library and the cute little coffee shop across the street. My husband, who is a volunteer firefighter, can get to the fire hall within seconds of a call coming through on his pager (having been on the needing end of one of those calls recently makes me appreciate a quick response time during those scary moments when minutes and seconds make all the difference).
I don’t completely hate the ‘burbs, and I imagine I’ll miss those advantages when we move out to the country (2 years from this month!).
There are some drawbacks, though. The lack of privacy being one. How I pine for privacy. Freedom, also. Here in New York, we pay astronomical property taxes for our half acre. Yet, we have very little freedom to do what I like on the property that *WE* pay for, that *WE* pay taxes on. I know I’m likely preaching to the choir.
One of our goals as a family to become as self-sufficient as possible. And with 7 mouths to feed, a huge part of self-sufficiency is putting food in those bellies. Unfortunately here, we have to have 3 acres in order to have anything “other than traditional household pets” as per the town ordinances. ::sigh:: No chickens. No goats (even though some of them would be smaller than my 95 lbs lab).
And then the light-bulb moment. Rabbits. Rabbits are household pets (for some people).
But….I’ve never tasted rabbit.
And….I’ve never butchered an animal.
And….truth be told, as much as I love this idea of self-sufficiency, I’m feeling a little queasy about raising a cute fluffy bunny, feeding it greens from the lawn, seeing my kids play with the babies, oohing and awwwing when a new litter is born and WHAM….lights out. Rabbit stew, anyone?
Yikes.
But here’s the thing: I eat meat, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. And I’m also keenly aware of how animals are treated when raised by the big business meat producers. Watch Food Inc. if you’re not familiar with what I’m referring to.
If I’m doing the raising, I can ensure that my animals are raised well, fed foods that nourish them, and treated with the dignity that a creature of God deserves. And when it comes time for the butchering, I can ensure that it’s done quickly and humanely.
If I can do this, then I can ensure that my family is eating food that was raised as God intended. Naturally, and humanely. Two words that can’t really be used to describe most of our food industry these days where GMO’s and harsh chemical sprays are harder to avoid than they should be.
These are the reasons we’re considering meat rabbits (or any livestock). I have lots of questions. My main purpose in writing this post is to ask if any of YOU have raised rabbits. Pros? Cons? Concerns? What to look for? And good resources that I can check out?
I will update as this progresses.
I’ve been enjoying the posts on meat rabbits over at The Elliot Homestead while I do my research.
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Interesting question… I’ve never eaten rabbit, and I don’t think I could go there. But I hear it tastes just like chicken!
Where are you in NY? I live north of Albany, in Saratoga County. We live in a “right to farm” area. I never knew exactly what this meant, but I wonder if it means we don’t have the same restrictions you have. We only have cats, but several people on our road have chickens, and one house has two sheep I see out “mowing” the grass.
I’ve also heard that it tastes like chicken. They say the same thing about frog legs, though. And I’m totally not going THERE. lol! Hubby and I are still contemplating the rabbits, though it’s looking like getting beehives set up is going to take priority for this Summer. We’ll see!
I’m in Western New York. A very agricultural area. I’m surrounded by farmland. But there’s no “right to farm” or anything around here. I’ll have to look into that and maybe try to raise more awareness in this area. I know I have several neighbors who’d love to have a suburban homestead type set-up. But then there’s also some folks who are much more concerned with having uniform manicured lawns and they show up in crowds to complain when they find out that someone has some laying hens. ::sigh::
I would suggest that you first find rabbit in the grocery store and make a stew for the family and see if you like it. It is a lot like chicken, the dark meat chicken. How we deal with this is that the adult rabbits, the mamas and papas, are the pets. They don’t get killed and when they die they are buried as pets. The children each have one they consider theirs and are “attached” to. The babies are so cute and fun to play with when young but the grow and become less exciting and the chores of feeding and cleaning poop trays get to where when harvest time comes everyone is sort of ok with it being time for them to go. Now processing them is my job and it is not easy and certainly not fun but you steel yourself and just do it!
Of course things may not be the same in our family as we don’t actually eat the rabbit ourselves. For religious reasons rabbit is dog food and not people food. I guess it might be harder or different eating them but we do not find that with the chickens which we do eat as long as we process several at one time and end up not having a clue which is which.
Anyway that is our experience with rabbits. It works at our little farmstead.
Another animal to consider: a lot of people keep quail as pets and they can produce eggs and meat very efficiently. Look up cortunix quail which can be easily kept in hutches in the same way as rabbits.
Wow- Thank you so much for your response! Very helpful and informative. I will definitely look into the cortunix quail. That might be a slightly better fit for us. So much research to do…thanks!
My post on the decision to have meat rabbits is very much like yours! I have been there before you! If you would like to see my journey from the decision to get meat rabbits to stew, which is coming up in a few weeks, visit my urban homestead. https://wp.me/p5TkqA-4B I think it might help you in your decision. We don’t have the restrictions you have. A good question I have for you is; Is you backyard got a privacy fence? Because a cage for a buck and a doe does not attract too much attention but you will have to have a LARGE cage for the babies to grow to 12 wks in before you can butcher them. I am doing a post on the grow out cage I built today so if you visit my homestead and it is not up yet try back. Hope it helps.
Thanks, Anne-Marie! I’ll be sure to go over and check out your post. We’re still undecided about the meat rabbits. We started beekeeping this year, so that’s taking up a bit of our time (and money!). It’s looking like rabbits will wait until next Spring if/when we decide to start raising them.