Raising Rabbits
A Small Thing That Means a Lot
by Emma Troyer of Plain City, OH
I never expected as a young girl that I would one day be raising rabbits to eat them. I had rabbits from the time I was very small, rabbits of all ilk, from lops and lionheads to dutch, free rabbits that people would leave with me and rabbits sought out from newspaper ads. But these were all strictly pets. The kind Italian man who sold produce to my parents would come to our farm and tease me about making “rabbit stew” with my little friends, and I would squeal and crow, no, never! Because they were little friends – not very talkative, of course, and having minimal imaginations. But friends and companions, nonetheless.
Once, a rabbit of mine was stolen. The kind Italian man, once he heard how badly I was upset by it, came the next day with two white meat rabbits he bought at an auction. They were ugly, with pink eyes and small white ears. But it was a noble gesture, and I stopped crying.
It seems I had a lot to learn about food and the nature and necessity of being a farmer before I could realize what a brilliantly useful animal a rabbit is. (Or more specifically, two rabbits.) Rabbits in our age have become house pets because they are docile and adorable, but they are much more valuable than this. They have more to offer than fluffy ears and a sweet temperament. Still, I had some general growing up to do before I could bring myself to eat one.
My husband shot two wild rabbits for me one snowy day, when we were not yet married but knew we would be. It tasted, as you’ve heard, like chicken. But beyond chicken. It was leaner, darker, and richer, with all the flavor of five chickens concentrated in its small body. Free meat from the woods. And not a wild animal that feeds on the corn and soy fields, either. These little darlings had lived their lives, of their own accord, on grass, twigs, and leaves. Grassy – that is how I’d describe the taste, and I mean that in the best way.
We started exploring how we could raise our own. And here came the reckoning of my feelings and my beliefs. I could easily eat a rabbit I had never known. I watched my love fire the shot, peel off the hide, and spill its entrails, and felt I had a proper reverence for its life, while having had a comfortable distance from it. But a rabbit we had raised from a baby – wouldn’t that be much harder? I had killed chickens and turkeys before, but they had never been given names. Nor does a fowl look at you with the same smooth dark eyes and innocently twitching nose.
But I am a farmer, one who eats meat and believes in it. I’ve never thought not to be. I know this will always cost me something.
Well, at least they’ll be more enjoyable to raise than chickens, I said. If I’m going to take care of something, it may as well be something cute. The rest. I figured, would come to me as I needed it.
We borrowed books from the library and read forums online. My husband built sturdy moveable shelters – luxury homes, really, to a rabbit – and we started looking around for good breeding stock. One evening in August we brought home four Champagne D’Argents with lovely salt-and-pepper coats.
As soon as they reached six months, the ideal age to begin breeding, we bred both the girls to one of the bucks. Rabbits are truly made to multiply, which makes sense when you consider that they are prey for so many other animals in the woods. At least they have a fair chance at keeping their numbers up. A female rabbit’s hormones do not cycle as do a cow’s or a dog’s or a human’s. She never comes into heat, but rather her eggs are released upon stimulation, meaning that anytime is a good time to have baby rabbits.
How do you know if breeding has been successful? Some folks will palpate, though I have read this can be too forceful and sometimes harm the babies. I can tell with our girls when they get closer to kindling just by observing how round and fluffy they get. And if you can’t tell, it really doesn’t take long to wait and see. Their gestation is 30 to 31 days, and unlike we humans, they are usually right on schedule.
Champagnes are said to be exceptionally good mamas. I can’t speak for all, but our girls have done a fine job. Their first litters came the first week of December and most of their growing up days were cold, cold, cold. I worried we might lose some of the babies to the cold nights when the temperature hung below zero degrees Fahrenheit, but their mamas kept them warm in their nests. Everyone survived.
We will not plan to have kits over the winter again, however, for other reasons. When the ground froze, it became difficult to keep our moveable shelters on a level area, and frozen mounds of grass and dirt made too many opportunities for escape under the sides, even with the strip of wire tacked on to keep them from digging underneath. Our simple set up of water dishes (which I much prefer to bottles) made for constantly frozen water, and nothing to be done about it but make constant trips outside with a warm water jug. I didn’t mind this, but in the mornings I was always met with very thirsty baby rabbits who then drank the dish dry all at once, making me feel guilty for their long night of nothing to drink
Foremost is that growing rabbits are a hungry lot, and when you have 13 of them, they eat a staggering amount of feed. Our eventual goal – about which we are giving ourselves grace, but a goal nonetheless – is to raise the fryers on forage alone. This seems to me an impossibility during our midwestern winters, when the world turns to brown. Even when the ground isn’t covered in snow, I can find very little of interest to give the youngsters, and certainly not enough to satisfy them. In green seasons, however, I can see this being possible, and I know of folks who do feed only forage. Look at the wild rabbits – they make do, and they don’t have kindly humans bringing them buckets of tree clippings and delicious garden weeds and wildflowers.
After 12 weeks, the young fryers’ black baby coats have evened out into the heathery gray of adulthood. They are about 5½ pounds on average, and now it is time.
We processed them on a cold Saturday in early March, when the warm insides of a latelyhopping rabbit felt good to my cold hands. The dispatching is the “least fun part,” as my husband described it. We used the crowbar method, which would sound dreadful were I to describe it in detail, but is swift and silent and not gory at all. Gory is a dreadful word, one I very much dislike and I loathe to use it here, except that the part where you cut off the rabbit’s head and it drops into the bucket is rather gory. But from that moment on, what you have is no longer something that looks like the little friend you’ve cared for these last three months. It’s no longer a living being, but merely a carcass, a task. And finally, a meal. It will nourish us, even keep us alive, in a primitive sense, and it is a gift. Worked for, but still a gift.
“But won’t it be too hard for you?” People have been asking me this whenever I tell them about our meat rabbits. Unless you are reared on a farm, death is not something people like to think about. It’s even more sobering to think about death coming by your own hand. “It won’t be a breeze, that’s sure,” I say. Killing anything is a sobering thing, and there is a reverence to the act when you are killing that animal for your own nourishment. If I eat meat, but refuse to accept the loss of life it requires, I am fooling myself and dishonoring the life. I would rather be there to see that life well cared for and then taken gently. And, yes – even be the one to take it. But I wouldn’t ever call it fun.
Processing a rabbit is much simpler than a chicken, to my mind. There are no feathers to deal with, very little blood, and none of the horrid, hot dead smell chickens have. Once dead, the rabbit is hung from a gambrel by its back legs. Using a very sharp pen knife, careful slices are made around the ankles, then across the pelvic area in a V, until you can slide your fingers underneath the skin and pull it loose. The hide then strips off much like a banana peel. As for the intestines, as long as you know where to make the cut to open the cavity, taking care of them is not too difficult either.
We saved the livers, hearts, and kidneys. Tiny as they are, they are rich meat and full of nutrients. Lungs and excess fat, though there isn’t much, are tossed to the hens.
By the fifth or sixth rabbit my husband had gotten quite fast, and we had found our groove. First I watched him and learned, then he guided me, then we fell into a rather inefficient but harmonious tandem of bringing the next rabbit in, him doing the knife work, and me taking the eviscerated rabbit to the kitchen to be cleaned.
Inside in our kitchen, I marveled at the tiny pink thimble-size hearts, the lifeblood of another being there in my palm. And I thought to myself: this is part of what dominion over every living thing, as God gave us in the garden, looks like here on this small farm. This is the farmer’s task. It is not a life without violence – whether you eat meat or not – but it is a life in which death’s purpose is to nourish life. Just like the decaying matter of the forest floor nourishes everything that grows within.
Later, on a warm spring morning, I came out to check the mama rabbits. It was 31 days for sweet Beatrice, and her nest was ready, so I felt sure we’d see babies today. And when I opened the lid, sure enough, there they were – a squirming bundle of black noses, feet, and ears in a pillow of gray fuzz. I left her alone to clean them up, even though I wanted to watch.
Ten babies, from two rabbits, in 31 days. In a few days, more kits will be born from Joan, our other doe. In 12 weeks, another day of solemnity mixed with joy and good work to do by my husband’s side. They will give us nearly 100 pounds of meat, God willing, if everyone makes it.
In between that time, I have a clear task to do. It looks like carting water and moving shelters. It doesn’t look glamorous, but to me it is high and noble, and full of the beauty that only necessity can impart. It feels inside like responsibility, honor, and simple delight. A small thing indeed, but one that means a lot.
