# New To Rabbits



## King (Jun 25, 2015)

Well the kids convened me to get them some meat rabbits to breed & process. I finally gave in so here I am. I don't even know what kind they are yet & already made a mistake & brought sick rabbits home so I'm not of to a very good start. Well just wanted to say hi so now back to reading.


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## Hens and Roos (Jun 25, 2015)

Welcome , sorry to hear you are having problems right away!  are all the rabbits sick- what symptoms are you seeing with them?


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## samssimonsays (Jun 25, 2015)

WELCOME! I am so sorry someone sold you that! If you look on the ARBA website (American Rabbit Breeders Association) You can google breeders in your area, and google breeds in your area as well but ARBA folks are usually very helpful and willing to help kids get started into rabbits with HEALTHY animals as well as quality. I don't know a single reputable breeder who would sell a sick animal. It does happen where they can get sick shortly after as nothing is 100% but NEVER sell any animal that could be sick at the time of purchase. I was in the same situation as you. They kept replacing my rabbits until I finally just said enough is enough and found someone else thanks to my local fair with ARBA members helping me. I've been a member and hooked ever since


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## Ridgetop (Jun 25, 2015)

Welcome to the site.  Everyone here is friendly and will do what they can to help you.

What is wrong with the rabbits you bought?  Some illnesses are easy to treat, some diseased rabbits you have to kill and dispose of the carcasses.  Post pix and we will help you decide if they are the best for meat. 

You can eat any rabbit, there is nothing wrong with cross breds, but some breeds are too small to bother with butchering so you want larger breeds.  Stay away from giant breeds though, they are not efficient at feed to meat conversion and grow slowly.  The best breeds are around 12 lbs as adults and convert feed to meat fast.  You should have 4-5 lb fryer weight by 8 weeks or so.  Standard conversion is 200 lbs feed for a trio (2 does and 1 buck) to raise a litter of 8 apiece (total of 16 fryers) every 3 months.  This is a generalized estimate and you can breed for better conversion once you get started.  You want rabbits that are not bony on the back and butts.  Ideally the best meat breeders are show stock because the show standard on meat rabbits is entirely geared to meat production and placement of muscle meat on the skeleton.  Main meat breeds are New Zealands and Californians, there are a lot of other meat breeds and they all share the same standard of perfection.  If there are any county fairs around, you can often buy good breeding stock cheaply from the kids who enter meat pens (3 rabbit fryers that are as identical in type and weight as possible) in the fair and are not able to auction their pens.  Check sex since you can be stuck with all bucks or does.  Also buy at least 2 pens from different people because the pens are usually chosen from the same litter.  Choose what you want to start your rabbit adventure and butcher the rest.  Also go to some rabbit shows - the show season in hot areas is mostly in the fall through spring - and look at what is available.  Usually exhibitors will bring stock to the show to sell.  Buying younger stock is cheaper, and easier to acclimate the rabbit to your facilities.  I prefer buying stock that is about 3 to 4 months old.  Rabbits are sexually mature at 6-8 months.  They should be bred at that time to raise litters.  A rabbit will give good litters for 2-3 years, then she will start missing or producing gradually smaller litters.  This is when you should cull her.  If the rabbit doesn't give you litters regularly, mother them properly, or if the amount of kits routinely number below 6, cull her.  You should be raising a litter of 6-8 fryers at least every 3 months.  If you buy an older show doe (over 8 months), she may refuse to breed and you may pay a lot for one with a show record.  I never buy any does over 8 months old because you can have trouble getting a virgin doe of that age to breed.  If you buy a doe of that age, make sure you have a buck at least 6 months old to breed her to!  If you talk to the various show people they will help you with understanding what you are looking for in meat type.  Don't buy anything with fancy fur since there is no market in pelts.  Even if you want to tan them yourself, a good pelt must be from a mature rabbit.  Baby pelts (fryer age) don't tan well.  Don't get a wool breed or long haired breed since a percentage of their feed will go into growing wool instead of putting meat on the carcass and the wool is messy when you butcher.

Hope this helps.  Rabbits are a fun and simple way to raise meat for your family.  The meat is higher in protein, lower in fat and cholesterol than chicken, and easier to digest.  It can be cooked in any way that you cook chicken except because it has no skin, you need to use methods that will prevent it from drying out. 

Looking forward to your reply.


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## Bunnylady (Jun 25, 2015)

Ridgetop said:


> Ideally the best meat breeders are show stock because the show standard on meat rabbits is entirely geared to meat production



Ummmm, this isn't entirely true. People who have lots of experience with commercial meat production will tell you that show rabbits aren't the best producers. The specific part they have a problem with is the loin area. The show rabbits tend to be shorter in this area, with a more compact body type. The does that are said to be the best producers are longer in the loin area, with a greater amount of space between the ribcage and the pelvis. On average, longer bodied does tend to have larger litters, raise more kits to slaughter age, and deal with the stresses associated with breeding better. I don't know how the dressout ratios compare, but for sheer number of rabbits to put on  the table, the longer bodied does are superior to those that garner blue ribbons at shows.


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## samssimonsays (Jun 25, 2015)

This is all excellent information! I will definitely be keeping this in mind when the time comes and I am ready to start a meat breed!  

And I have seen in any breed, if they are excellent on the show table, they are usually horrid mothers  All of my best does are awful moms!  It is not always the case but when showing and raising for type it always seems to be the case. Sometimes I think meat breeds would be easier than fancy breeds. But they all have their draw backs. When we have more land I hope to raise meat not just cull my non shows for meat. Right now pet market is booming so I don't need to worry about that but it is nice to know there is a back up


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## King (Jun 25, 2015)

I do believe I bought coccidia infested young rabbits. The first sign was the first one fell over dead & blotted. Then the second one hours later. I actually decided on treating for coccidia after returning to the store & found pooppy butts. My place is now in lock down. Nothing in or out right now with the only new one that is left is in quarantine until I think it is over. I have no hard feelings towards the store but the breeder that sold to them. I don't think mine came from that farm but got sick bad husbandry.

In  honhonesty it is my fault since I knew better not to quarantine to start with. I let a person that had more experience talk me out of it since it was late & I was tied & didn't want to build a new cage that night. Laziness bites you in the butt. I'll post pictures when I get a chance.


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## furandfeathers (Jun 26, 2015)

Welcome. I started almost the same way with Rabbits. You will be able to learn a lot here.


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## Ridgetop (Jun 27, 2015)

With regard to show rabbits, I disagree.  I believe in meat rabbits it is all in what the breeder is looking for and the strictness with which you cull.  If today's rmeat animals are losing body length then it is because the breeders are choosing shorter bodies to compensate for poor rise - a shorter body will make the rise look higher.  My husband showed for years and bred wonderful champions.  Those champions produced between 8 to 12 kits and raised at least 8 - 10 per litter.  I culled anything that did not raise her entire litter.  If she was an older doe who routinely raised great babies, I kept her an extra year.  Also I had them all on an intensive system.  I bred the does back when the kits were 6 weeks old and removed the doe from the litter to another pen 2 weeks before she kindled again.  Most of my breeders were sold after 2 years.  I would breed them for fair meat pens and sell them cheap or give them to the 4-H kids.  They usually did not want to breed more than a few times so an older experienced doe was perfect for them.  We did not show any doe after 8 months which meant she had to finish her Ch. by then.  By 10 months if the does were not breeding well and raising successful litters, they were culled. The does got 2 tries and if no good healthy litters were raised, gone. 

Granted, this was about 20 years ago, but the principles are the same today.  My husband was one of the top NZW show breeders then.  We use the same principles on all our livestock since then, and have had minimal breeding or management problems with any species.  Culling heavily is the answer.  I will say that breeding the best animals to the best animals did not always produce the best animals.  We have eaten entire litters produced by Champion parents.  They taste as good as their non-champion produced relatives LOL!   We also found that breeding top bloodlines from different barns did not always nick either.  We bought several beautiful rabbits from a top barn but when they were bred to our top animals we had developed from other bloodlines, we got garbage.  (More rabbit and dumplings!)  They did produce champions for us when bred to each other but we didn't want to have 2 separate bloodlines so we sold that line and they produced very nice animals for their next owners. 

My advice for newcomers is:
1.  Go to shows and talk to breeders and judges (after the class) about what they look for in a meat rabbit - DON'T buy from a pet store
2.  Buy the best stock you can whether you want to show or not (the standard tells you where the meat is)
3.  BUY YOUNGER HEALTHY ANIMALS from known local breeders with reputations to maintain (they are usually interested in helping newbies)
4.  When you butcher, check the rabbits for TYPE AND WEIGHT based on the standard (especially if you are keeping future breeding stock (often a good breeder will come over and help you cull your first few litters to show you what to look for)
5.  Buy a scale and WEIGH your fryers and occasionally your breeders - too many people tend to lose size when choosing type
6.  CULL HEAVILY - YOU CAN ALWAYS REPEAT THE BREEDING
7.  Quarantine new animals - NEVER TAKE IN A STRAY OR "GIFT"  
8.  DESTROY SICK ANIMALS if they don't respond to treatment in a few days before they infect the entire barn
9.  NEVER DO OUTSIDE BREEDINGS - RABBIT SYPHILIS IS HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS AND GOES DORMANT UNTIL ALL OF A SUDDEN YOUR ENTIRE BARN IS INFECTED (this happened to me when I bought a          champion Holland Lop (very expensive too) from a top breeder from out of state - that is another story.)
10.  CULL - CULL - CULL!!!  Do it at 8 weeks and again at 3 months and again at 6 months.  The secret to great breeding and show stock is heavy culling.  If my husband says "this rabbit is nice but . . . " I throw it in the butcher pen.  If he loves it, we check it 3 times before it stays in the barn as a breeder.

Follow these guidelines and with a lot of info from rabbit books on housing etc. you should be off to a great start.  Raising meat rabbits is one of the most rewarding breeding experiences and wonderful for kids because by the time the child starts to get bored the babies are born, then it is time to breed again and another round starts.  If you intersperse this with a few shows where the child can enter his or her own 3 month old home bred rabbits, it is a wonderful, inexpensive hobby for the family.  Talk to the old guys and gals who have been in it for years and they will give you all kinds of great tips and info on husbandry.  The retired breeders are a great resource since they like to share all the info they have learned in their many years raising rabbits.  I learned so much just sitting with those older mentors and listening as they talked among themselves about problems past and present.  Add to this the fact that you can supply your family with meat and it is a win-win!

Have a lot of fun - oh! and don't forget to spray the cages with bleach water before you put any new stock in them.


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## King (Jun 27, 2015)

This is one of my first two





& this is the other one





This is the sick one.


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## King (Jun 28, 2015)

Good news I hope. Bunny is still sick with lose stool but she was eating this evening. That is the first I've seen her eat since putting her in quarantine.


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## samssimonsays (Jun 29, 2015)

I hope this is a sign that she is turning around!


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## King (Jun 29, 2015)

Well I found three pellets under her pen today so to me that seems to be a good sign. She is starting to eat more. 

She still has some lose tho so we shall see.

Anyone have an idea how long she should stay by herself after everything looks normal?


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## samssimonsays (Jun 29, 2015)

I wouldn't put her with anyone else unless she's been treated with antibiotics. Other at all really. Once mine turn 12 weeks they stay separate.


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## King (Jun 29, 2015)

She is on Sulmet for coccidia. She will have her own pin. I just wasn't to be able to put her back in the shed with the others. Not to soon tho.


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## samssimonsays (Jun 29, 2015)

Oh! Sorry I missunderstood! I'd wait until she's finished the treatment.


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## King (Jun 29, 2015)

She has another 3 weeks on it. Another thread it was suggested 30 days.


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## samssimonsays (Jun 30, 2015)

I usually lean towards being more careful due to how nasty Cocci is. When mine had it 3 years ago, The first baby French lop I bought brought it in with her and it killed 15 of my 20 babies before the meds started working. Now if there is a chance for it everything gets put on lock down in my barn. I had a scare this year that it could have been that or a virus running through and the vet clarified that it was NOT Cocci thankfully but couldn't figure out what it was. I took everyone out of their cages daily and sanitized them all as well as their food and water dishes and medicated them. My barn is on lock down still even though they were not sick with anything contagious and it was most likely just the type of hay I got that time was too rich for the babies tummies. Sadly I lost 3 of them before their systems returned to normal BUT I did save the rest of them with gas relief and steam rolled oats. Their systems are compromised now though from being on antibiotics until the results came back on what was happening so nothing is coming into my barn for another month until their immune systems and guts are back on track fully.


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## King (Jun 30, 2015)

I'm really wanting to get started & I need a buck to do that so I'm going to try to find somewhere that they all cone from the same place & get both does & a buck so I can go ahead & breed while keeping then in quarantine in a different location.


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## samssimonsays (Jun 30, 2015)

That sounds like a great plan   Good luck! It is super fun and rewarding.


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## Ridgetop (Jun 30, 2015)

Are these very young rabbits?  How much do they weigh?  They seem small for meat rabbits, but if they are young that might be why.  It is hard to tell what breed they are.  If you got them from a pet store, they might be cross breds.  The main thing is how large they will be when grown.  The ideal meat breeds average around 12 lbs (more or less) as adults with the females weighing a little more than males.  Like I said, if these are just for meat production, breed is not a big consideration, as long as the adult breeding stock averages around 11 to 12 lbs.  Any rabbit is edible and we started with cross bred rabbits from a commercial barn.  My husband switched to New Zealand Whites after about a year because he liked the consistency.  If you are just starting out, these will give you a chance to learn about breeding and kindling without a large initial outlay on purebred rabbits.  Rabbits are the one species that do not have to be born from registered parents to be registered.  If the breed is a recognizable purebred one, and the rabbit's ancestry can be traced by the breeder for 3 generations, the rabbit can be registered.  Many breeders do not register all their rabbits, preferring to save money by only registering their champions after they have won the required number of "legs".  Registration is required to receive the championship certificate from ARBA.  Since your rabbits are not necessarily purebred and you are only interested in breeding meat at this time, just make sure they reach the right weight.  If they mature to an adult weight of less than 10-12 lbs, I would replace them with purebred stock.  The slightly smaller rabbits will eat as much and give you less meat in proportion to what it costs you to keep the parents and litters than a New Zealand or California.  There are other good meat breeds too, I mention these because they are 2 of the most common.

Has the sick rabbit recovered?  If so, you can plan to breed your meat rabbits when the does reach 6 to 7 months.  make sure to note the date of breeding since gestation is only 30 days.  Put the nest box in the cage several days before the due date with shavings in the bottom and straw on top.  The mother will keep busy building a nest.  Be sure not to place the box on top of the area where her poop gathers under the cage.  Rabbits establish a particular area where they like to poop and will poop in the nest box if it is put in that spot.  It the mother poops in the box, just move the box to the opposite corner of the cage.  Once the babies are born (you can check by sticking a finger into the clump of fur in the box - if it is warm there are bunnies.  Make sure to remove the box from the cage to check for dead babies since they will decompose and it will kill the litter.  The mother will not care that you remove the nest box and replace it. 

Good luck and enjoy!


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## King (Jul 1, 2015)

I don't know the age of any of them. I bought them from the farm store. 

The sick one is young. They told me about 8 weeks & she was about the same size as the ones that was supposed to be NZW the same age. I haven't weighed any of them but to compare size the little one is about the size of an adult wild cotto Cotton Tail where I live. The bigger ones are three to for times that size. Out of my first trio the buck got killed so we cooked him & it feed my 5 person family.

I do believe the sick one had recovered. It has quite the apatite now & poop is back to balls. It still has 3 more weeks on the Sulmet treatment.

Thanks for all the great information.


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## Bunnylady (Jul 1, 2015)

Glad to hear that your bunny is better! 

In fairness to the person they came from, it may be that they aren't having problems in their rabbitry, and thus are not aware that there may be something going on. Rabbits don't take stress well, and the move from their home rabbitry, to the store, to your place, with different feeds and everything else, may have stressed them enough to allow a latent problem to grow to the level of actual illness. (Of course, it's also possible that the breeder is fully aware of the problem, and is just crossing their fingers that the bunnies don't die before they are old enough to sell.)

The breed standard for the Californian calls for a mature weight of 8 to 10 1/2 lbs; there are several other commercial breeds that run about that size. The New Zealand is slightly larger; its standard calls for a weight between 9 and 12 lbs, with the ideal weight of 10 lbs for bucks and 11 lbs for does. There is a strictly commercial breed, the Altex, that runs a good bit larger than that (up to 20 lbs), but generally, the best meat producers are of moderate size; really large rabbits tend to produce a carcass with a bit less meat and more waste (bone and offal). Of course, if you are just putting meat on your own table, a few percentage points one way or the other won't make a significant difference. If you get right down to it, you can eat any rabbit; I once knew a guy who showed Netherland Dwarfs that ate his culls (single serving size?), but the most efficient at converting feed to food for you are in the 8 to 12 lb. range.


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## King (Jul 1, 2015)

I'm guessing the latter. All the rabbits at the store were sick also in every cage.

One died while I was trying to convince the lady at the store they were all sick.


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## HomesteaderWife (Jul 1, 2015)

Best of luck in getting your buns to feeling better. Coccidia is a nasty thing, and I've just seen it in dogs and chickens. Don't feel bad, I am newer to rabbits as well and we are having some trouble with our doe this morning.

Keep us posted, and again, I hope they all feel better.


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## King (Jul 1, 2015)

HomesteaderWife said:


> Best of luck in getting your buns to feeling better. Coccidia is a nasty thing, and I've just seen it in dogs and chickens. Don't feel bad, I am newer to rabbits as well and we are having some trouble with our doe this morning.
> 
> Keep us posted, and again, I hope they all feel better.



Thanks. What is going on with yours?


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## Ridgetop (Jul 1, 2015)

If you need a buck, check with some 4-H or FFA clubs.  If there is a rabbit program it is usually run by someone who knows rabbits.  They could give you a lot of help and will know where to get a good healthy buck.  I always like to encourage checking our the youth organizations since they don't always have the access to selling their animals outside the annual fair.


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## HomesteaderWife (Jul 1, 2015)

King said:


> Thanks. What is going on with yours?



Well, we got a female that was supposedly bred. I didn't notice her getting any bigger or teats swelling up. But she gave birth to a single baby at some time early this morning- just one. It didn't survive. So... =/


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## Ridgetop (Jul 1, 2015)

She may have reabsorbed part of the litter due to the stress of relocating. Hopefully you have a buck, so immediately breed her.  Rabbits are most fertile in the first 3 days after they kindle.  Since she only had one kit and it died, it will not stress her to be bred immediately.  She will be very receptive to the buck at this time too.  You will not notice many outward signs of pregnancy with rabbits.  Sometimes the does will get a little cranky, more often they get cranky if they are not bred!  Some does will prepare their nest box very industriously - very cute to see them carrying around pieces of straw which they will arrange and rearrange over and over.  Others completely ignore the box until one morning you have a beautiful nest full of healthy kits!  Breeding rabbits is a lot of fun. 

Rebreed your doe and in 30 days you should have a great litter of kits.  Can't wait to hear about your first litter.


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## King (Jul 3, 2015)

Well the Bunny that was sick is still doing well. She is eating & drinking like crazy. 

Well not knowing where to go to look for rabbits I have l limited choices. I ended up buying a buck of breeding age that is now  quarantine for 30 days. And I am getting 7 more that are 2 months and 3 months old that will be going into quarantine by their self for 30 days. So looks like I'm still 30 days from getting started. 

Now the dilemma. Who gets taken care of first. Recovered bunny that I knew was sick but not showing symptoms now. Or the buck that I know nothing about but looks healthy. Or the 7 that I am getting from the mother in law of the state official that is in charge of controlling animal disease in our state & his wife has the same job but working for the federal government.


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