Trying out our rabbits for the first time

Yesterday was “D” day (dinner day) at the farm for 3 of our 6 month old rabbits! It was the first time we’ve done the full process of processing from cage to table. After a goodly amount of researching all the various methods we got on with it. Darren helped me with the dispatching to make sure we got it right on the first try and so he could also learn how it’s done. Then he went off to his work in the city, leaving me to get the next steps done.

Rabbit Buddies, both from the same litter

Unlike the many youtube videos showing how to get the process finished in about 6 minutes per rabbit, I wanted to save the hides for later tanning. This slowed me down considerably as I was being careful to not damage the hides. I managed to mess up the first one so chucked it into the bin. The 2nd hide came away better though I was not completely happy with it, and the third hide went really well and I was very happy with it. I successfully cased the 2nd and third hides. After cleaning them, they were rolled and put into ziplocs in the freezer for later processing into leather.

Hopefully the next time we do this, the process will go way faster as we’ll have worked out the kinks. One of the problems I encountered was that I had hung the rabbits too high to comfortably reach for skinning. I had misjudged where they needed to be and it was deceptive since the rabbits are so long in body. I ended up having to stand on a block to reach them well enough to comfortably work, and I am not short at 5’10″. Nonetheless, my shoulders are sore today from reaching up for so long. Another issue I came across was my knife not holding its edge during the skinning. I will be looking into getting a specific knife for skinning along with the other equipment I will need to tan hides at home.

The meat after poaching.

Cleaning the rabbits was as easy as all the videos and tutorials suggested and very quick. I decided that I was rather tired after the process to that point so I’d make an easier recipe for dinner than the haggis I was going to make. I poached the jointed rabbits until the meat was tender and fell off the bones. It made the house smell great and had the side effect of creating some lovely broth for soups which was bagged and set into the freezer. I ended up making a tomato sauce with paremesan, mushrooms, onions, some fresh tomatoes, with basil and bay leaf then put a good amount of the poached rabbit into it. It turned out awesomely over the pasta! Today I will make the haggis and put that into the freezer for meals later this month.

Tomato Mushroom Rabbit Pasta with Roasted Sweet Potato

For the stats on the rabbits dressing out figures I was pleasantly surprised. We got almost 13lbs of meat total from the 3 we did. The starting live weights were: 6lb 10 oz, 7lb 12 oz, and 6lb 12 oz respectively and the dressed out weights came to 3lb 10 oz, 4lb 14 oz, and 4lb 4oz so 54.7%, 61.4%, and 62.9% I’m well happy with those results and will be testing out the effects of butchering at 7 months old (27 weeks) and also at 4 months old (18 weeks) to find out where is going to be the optimum time for butchering with the purpose of meat for our table. I’ll be testing out a different set of figures to see how long we need to grow them to get a good prime pelt since that will take a good deal longer. I’ll pick the nicest colours and let them grow out for tanned hides and be less concerned about their dressing out ratios.

I’ve been doing some research into multi-breed crossings for hybrid vigour and came across a study a farm did down in Australia using the New Zealands, Flemish Giants, and the Californian breeds. They had some interesting findings which I’m going to play with replicating with the 3 breeds of rabbits we have being the Flemish, New Zealands, and the American Blue to see if we can push our dressing out ratios a bit higher, while being able to cut down on the feeding costs somewhat. (The purebred Flemish rabbits eat more than the other ones do and they grow much larger.) Right now I’ve kept the 2 Flemish/New Zealand does from our first litter and plan to breed them with the American Blue buck and see where that takes us with our growth rates. It does mean that I have more rabbits for breeding stock than I originally thought I would, but only because I’m interested in trying to improve our lines to get better results for our table. We’re finding that keeping rabbits is just as addictive as keeping goats. You get one and inveritably you end up with many more, especially when we geek-out with it. The statistics and charts generating from the data we are collecting will prove to be alot of fun as well as help us track our progress.

I’m seriously looking into the whole concept of colour genetics as I’d like to get a consistent amount of Blue Flemish rabbits going and am looking for a self black Flemish buck or doe to use as breeding stock. Now there is a complicated subject, and I’ve got my hands full trying to figure out what specific colour profiles our current rabbits have. We’ll be guessing about the non-dominant genes since we can’t visibly see those, but as we breed more litters from our Flemish girls and New Zealand buck we’ll develop a chart of what colours they have thrown so should give us a not too bad picture of what we’ve got to work with.