Rabbits offer many benefits to a small homestead or garden.
Many people raise rabbits for meat, but they also make some of the best manure for your garden.
If you've ever over fertilized your lawn or vegetable garden, you know that sinking feeling you get when you watch your beautiful plants shrivel up, burnt to a crisp.
Rabbit manures, although higher in nitrogen than poultry manures, won't burn your plants and it also contains large amounts of phosphorus, an important nutrient for flower and fruit formation.
Worms absolutely love it and will migrate to wherever you apply it, attracted by the organic matter. Chickens will scratch and spread the piles looking for worms and fly larva. Applied thick enough, it will act as a mulch and minimize the time a gardener spends weeding.
Return a few months later to where you added rabbit manure, dig under the pile and you'll see an explosion of soil life happening underneath.
New bunnies just 2 days old
Time released fertilizer pellets
Rabbit manure is natures own time released fertilizer and won't hurt your plants. You can literally plant right into it and your plants will thrive. I use it as fertilizer, sprinkling it on the surface of the soil and watering it in.
I find that no other fertilizer is needed throughout the entire season if I apply it in the spring, even for nutrient demanding crops like tomatoes and squashes.
I've used it on lettuce, potatoes, artichokes, peppers, cucumbers, squash; you name it. Every plant I've tried it with absolutely loves it.
Over time, the soil will change into a rich loam that allows more water to soak in and retains moisture longer, requiring less frequent watering, and it's full of micronutrients that support health plant growth.
N-P-K ofrabbit manure compared to other animals
Rabbit manure doesn't have much of a smell to it, making it more pleasant to work with and it loaded with trace minerals needed for healthy plants. Fewer pathogens it rabbit manure make it safe to use.
It can also be made into a tea and sprayed onto a larger area so it's a very efficient way to add fertility to your garden.
Rabbits need little space and are quiet
You can raise a herd of rabbits in a small backyard in the city and no one would even know they are there, making it an ideal livestock choice for people with small yards or urban landscapes.
They take so little room and you won't here a peep out of them unless something attacks them or scares them, like a dog. Then they will cry a short, blood-curling scream that will raise the hair up on the back of your neck. I swear, it sounds like a human baby screaming for it's life, but that rarely happens. For the most part they are very quiet animals.
Rabbits are sustainable
Rabbit meat is delicious and tastes very much like chicken, only it's much more sustainable. (Sorry vegetarians)
It's still considered a boutique product in the U.S. and processed rabbit meat can be prohibitively expensive so consumers are increasingly turning to rabbit farming as an alternative.
My family are first generation immigrants and eating rabbit meat was as popular as chicken when I was growing up and can be a substitute for any recipe requiring chicken, but the taste is where the similarities part ways.
For starters, you don't have to pluck them like a chicken eliminating the need to boil water to remove feathers. They make a nice hide that you can tan and make things from.
If you eat meat, it's good to know where it comes from and that it's not impregnated with antibiotics and hormones. Homegrown ensure you're eating safe, chemical-free meat.
Rabbit meat is more sustainable than eating beef and more productive. 3 does (females) and 1 buck (male) can produce in one year, the same amount of protein as one cow useing 20% of the food and water resources of a cow, on a fraction of the land a cow needs.
Rabbits and chickens stack well
Raising your cages up at least 18 inches off the ground accomplishes two things. First, it prevents fleas from infesting your rabbits. It seems that fleas can't jump that high so they stay off your rabbits. They'll love you for that. And secondly, it makes it easier to collect the manure dropping that fall from the cages.
As the manure collect under the cages, worms will begin accumulating in the manure piles. As you gather up and spread it on your garden, you'll be spreading worms everywhere at the same time. All good things, but there's and added benefit for chickens.
Chickens will soon discover that there's a feast under those cages waiting for them. From a distance you'll think your chickens are eating rabbit poop, gross! But a closer look and you'll see what they're really after, worms, and lots of them.
If you have a chicken run, it makes good sense to keep your rabbits inside the run so you can stack the two together. Not only will the chickens help spread the manure around, they will keep the fly count down by eating fly larva and worms will increase the omega-3 count in their eggs.
A quick shout out to @papa-pepper who did a great post on Steemit about chickens and rabbit tractors that you can click through to read about.
Do you raise rabbits?
Do you raise rabbits? Feel free to post pictures of your rabbits below and share your rabbit stories and thanks for reading my post.
Thanks for Upvoting and Following @luzcypher
I think if cages are big enough for them to move . it is better.
Yay! An article about raising rabbits! I have raised them in a variety of ways, from cages to pens on concrete, to a fenced half acre. It was unbelievably fun and I'd still be doing it if we hadn't moved back to the city for a bit. I put a hammock up for myself and we'd all laze in the shade together. Rabbits know how to lounge. :)
I believe the Romans would dig a pit, line it with bales of straw (they baled straw in Rome?) and give it to one pregnant doe. There's also a permaculture technique of keeping rabbits in the lower part of a greenhouse during the cooler months, with the plants on shelves above. A rabbit's body temperature is high (around 101F) and their ears radiate heat. The breath exchange benefits both. I'd like to try this method, but probably just with one rabbit or friendly sisters in the greenhouse to start because not everybody gets along and males are more likely to spray the walls. I'd also bury hardware cloth for that technique and have a cat door in the greenhouse with a run beyond to keep them from tearing up the floor or ever getting overheated.
My saddest rabbit story (don't worry, it's funny) was when I created a new pen on fresh grass and decided to see if anyone wanted to join me there for the afternoon. So, I put some carriers down and moved the first two that came running over. I repeated but only one more was immediately interested so off we went. Adding rabbit #3, I realized what I'd done. The two who were in the new pen already happened to be a mated pair in love. The female, Dora, had thought this was going to be their new pen alone, like a married couple getting their first house. The third rabbit I'd brought over, Diana, was her bitchy mother. I saw the look of joy and wonder on Dora's face turn to horror. It was too late to take Diana back because she was already busy asserting her authority. I paid much more careful attention to the delicate social fabric of the colony after that.
Thanks for giving me an excuse to tell rabbit stories. :)
Wow, that's so interesting. I would love to raise them in a more open rabbit run type situation. Have looked into it but haven't seen a system yet that seems to work for me. You should do a post on social fabric of the colony, that would be awesome. I saw a documentary about that once, can't remember the name of it. Thanks for your story, upvote and follow.
Here's a cool video of rabbits in an open pen.
good article, FOLLOW
Thanks for the follow, glad you liked it
I am thinking about rabbit hutches over my chicken run now!
cool, it works really well
That beautiful rabbits
thanks
We used to raise rabbits while we were still in the states. We have New Zealands mainly. Rabbits are an awesome animal to raise for all the reasons stated above. Thanks for posting
Thanks, and I love your username @gringalicious
Are you living in Mexico by chance?
I live in Chile where fortunately, the term gringo/ gringa is a term of endearment.
claro
This is what I would call a perfect article. Straightly insightful. Thanks.
Thanks
Good article. Now if I could convince my wife that eating Thumper wasn't such a bad idea. @gamgam
Thanks, thanks funny. Just tell her it's chicken and you're cooking tonight.
Interesting Article
Grandpa Had The
Big Brownish Colored
Rabbets
Glad you mentioned about the chickens helping keep the rabbit house clean. Our laying hens work the rabbit house pretty good. I made a solar powered swamp cooler for our rabbit house for the hot summer days, and that is where we find quite a few of our hens on a hot summer afternoon. Thank for the article. Glad to find others here with similar interests.
There's a lot of garndeners here it seems. Thanks for the comment