# thoughts or experiences with flemish giants or FG crosses for meat?



## ohiogoatgirl (Mar 14, 2012)

any thoughts or experiences would be welcome. i am workin on gettin some meat breeds and was thinkin a FG or FG cross would be good. from what i see of their sizes on youtube videos compared to what i am seeing of my dutch kits they seem to be fairly good growth.
maybe a half FG-half NZ or cali? or a 1/4 FG? for the meatier build and larger litters (from the little i have been able to find on them).
thanks!


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## hemet dennis (Mar 14, 2012)

Flemish giants are to big boned to be good meat rabbits.


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## PinkFox (Mar 15, 2012)

flemish are big, but there anything but "meaty" all bone!
a flemish mix could work, (giant chins come to mind) or mixing in cali or newzealand, but then the question becomes Why? adding size just to add size without realy addimg meat seems silly to me and thats pretty much what ading FG would do...(great if your looking to get a bigger hide for tanning though!)

if you want good sized litters with great growth and nice meat to bone, id stick to new zealand, cali or a slightly smaller but still greatmeat bred florida whites...
if you want somehting a little more unuusal, chins, rex (standard not mini), champagne d'Argents ect

i personally decided to go with rex, i love the breed, they do make a nice meaty (though not as large or fast growing as the common meat breeds) and their fur is to die for (and i will be using the pelts so that played a part) there a good all around breed for me, i cna hopefully sell pet (and i would love to start showing too) and any that dont sell pet will make good fur/stew rabbits (prime pelt is older so they wontly make great fryers if i want good fur too)
however the origional plan was also more for rabbit meat for my dogs, so stewing rabbits would be fine meat for them...now ive decided i want to put some meat away for me too im thinking of adding a couple of Newzealand does to try and get some faster growth for some nice fryers.


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## brentr (Mar 15, 2012)

Most folks would express the same thoughts as Pink Fox - FG are not ideal meat breed.  And I agree for the most part.

However, I have a doe who is NZW x Giant Chin (when I bought her mother the seller offered to breed her for no charge.  Only buck she had was Giant Chin).  She is a bigger rabbit, but I just LOVE the litters she throws!  I breed her to a NZW buck and the resulting 3/4 NZ 1/4 Giant Chin offspring are great meat fryers.  I don't have any scientific data, but in comparing her litters to pure NZ litters, the kits are born a little bigger, gain weight faster, and butcher earlier.  I have this same doe bred to a Cali buck, so it will be interesting to see how her next litter goes.

So while I wouldn't have a giant breed purely for meat, my personal experience has been having a little giant breed in the family tree is OK.  Again, no scientific data, and the difference is not so great that I'm going to purposely try to keep the giant breed bloodline.  NZ and Cali are great all on their own for meat.


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