Ongoing rabbit project

[secuono]

I find it easy to butcher a large fowl chicken, it's the medium, small and tiny chickens that you should never bother with before the egg even hatches, lol.
You can skin them, feathers and all or go the slow route and pluck them.

 

[SuburbanFarmChic]

It's not that hard to off a rooster. Especially one that crows at 4:30 AM. Every AM.


It's the mess and stink and feathers. I think this time I'm just going to gut, skin and then debone. If I can avoid the feather pulling I'll be thrilled.


Also as my husband puts it, defeathering a chicken smells a little bit like chicken poop soup. It tends to put me off of chicken meat for several days. Not an issue with anything else I've ever butchered.

 

[autumnprairie]

ok I will skin my chihckens the skin isn't good for me anyway Thanks guys

 

[SuburbanFarmChic]

Updating with the current news.

While a warm winter we hadn't bred for a while. We had one litter born last Saturday that was 8 kits and 7 were alive. This was the first time doe that was a little older and we were worried she wouldn't take. She was bred earlier when we first got her and nothing so I left her penned with the buck for 24hrs and we got 8 kits. Not bad for a first timer. She made a great nest and only the runt was still born. I'll check on everybody again later today and hopefully they're all doing well.

Finding I can sell the buns on the fryer into roaster size for about $20 butchered. That works for me!! Just bred crazy orange doe and my replacement doe that was from the Sept litter to see how she does.

 

[SuburbanFarmChic]

Updating this.


Melody (the one that had 8 kits in the last post) went a little psycho and killed them all. I had to move her to a new hutch due to wind damage so I figured it might be the cause and gave her another chance. She offed all of her next litter (which was only 3 again) so she went in the freezer. Found uterine and ovarian cycts when I butchered her.

Raspberry had another litter eh - 3 weeks ago. Had 7, one was still born. She kept all six until this week and we lost one to an accidental kick I think when she freaked a bit when we mowed the yard the first time. I did a necropsy on it and it had blood in the intestines so I think when she jumped she kicked it. It was one of the rew in the litter. Remaining are 1 Rew, 3 Harlequin and 1 sandy orange. Probably keeping one of the harlequin. The white is sold when it is ready to go.


Flopsy's babies did well and we just sold all but 2 of that litter at Chickenstock.


Replacement girl, which my day care child may have named Mr. Naughtygrass, didn't take on her first breeding but is due in a little over a week on her second try and is futzing around with nest stuff so I'm hopeful. I haven't had time to palpate her.

And my big news is that yesterday I was given a FG doe and her entire litter of 9 kits for a birthday present. EIGHT of the babies are girls. The doe is sandy color, most of the babies are wild coloring but one looks like a silver fox rabbit. Really hoping that is a girl. Because I want to keep it though I have a disproportionate chance of it being the lone boy. Going to spend the day building some bigger cages. These puppies are HUGE.

I wish there was a butcher around here that did rabbits, just to open up my avenues for sales. I know I can do under 1000 here w/o being certified, etc. I still like to have those pretty little USDA stickers on the packages in case anyone comes asking questions. It just makes life easier.

 

[SuburbanFarmChic]

Sold 2 of the FG babies. I'm seriously considering keeping the lone male to breed back. We shall see.

 

[SuburbanFarmChic]

Our doe out of crazy bad mama just had her first litter. I was REALLY nervous about this because her mom was kind of terrible but for her first litter she built a great little nest, pulled fur, had them all IN the nest on a cold night and all were alive as of an hour ago with full bellies. She had them last night or this morning so I wanted to make sure she was feeding them. She had seven in all. Six are pink like they will be white and 1 is brown like it will be wild bunny color like her. Buck was a REW NZ and also incidentally is her father but I didn't want to worry about bringing in another buck if she was going to be a fail. All these will probably be terminal.

Oh and I guess she gets to keep her name of Mr. Naughtygrass and not Mrs. Freezerbound.


Mr NaughtyGrass being a name from the same child that called our meat whether BBQ-Cut and you had to make a scissors motion with your hands when you said Cut. Yes, every time. But he also likes to wrap baling twine around his legs until he can't walk and then fall over, make a gargling noise and flop around. He's pretending he's a cooking chicken. Uh.. right. This will go over SO well at preschool.


Anyway back to rabbits. Wooo yaa they are all doing well. I massively need to make bigger cages for some. It's a work in progress that is more work than progress. But so far everyone is doing well.