Rabbit breeding Archives - That Homestead

What About Their Legs!?

This is a question I get so often that I decided to dedicate a post to it. “What happens to their little legs when you move the rabbit tractors around?” Well…not what I assumed would happen.

I wish that my entire life was on video so that you could see the ridiculous events that unfold around me. Just last week I feel off of my A-frame ladder onto my extension ladder from my roof swatting at a wasp…all the while being yelled at by my wife from the kitchen window because of my lack of safety. Just a quick snapshot of my life for you.

Back to topic. So there I was, trying to answer this question. I thought “I’ll lift the tractor up higher so that I can see the rabbits better and keeps their legs above the ground. Don’t. Just…stop it.

Have you ever seen a mouse squeeze through a tiny spot while you stood there in amazement and stupification? Me too, but with a rabbit. So now I’m holding up a rabbit tractor with one hand above my head while crouching on the ground and trying to grab an escaped bunny with the other. Lucky for me, Kristi was outside. She ran over to catch it and the little bugger moused back IN to the tractor.

Oy.

So to answer your question, don’t worry about their little bunny legs. Just drag the dang thing slowly and they will be fine. Whatever you don’t, don’t pick it up high enough for an escape. You will regret it.

Side note: don’t swat at wasps while leaning over a poorly balanced ladder.

As always, start small, think big, and stay healthy!

6 Easy Ways to be More Sustainable

Homesteading is for everyone! As a brand new homesteader, I would like to pass on how easy it is to get started. When you look on Youtube or other blogs, it is easy to get overwhelmed. Some of these people are running full time farms while you barely know how to keep a cactus alive on your countertop. Don’t fret. I started the same way. In this blog, I want to show you 6 ways to start off a small homestead. The cool thing is, that some of these things can be done from an apartment! Who knew!? All you have to remember is not to think too big. goals are great, but you also have to be realistic. If you go out and get 6 pigs, a cow, a goat, chickens, rabbits, and 400 linear feet of beans, you might fail. Start small and expand accordingly.

Aquaponics. Although I have not tried this yet, I plan on it this winter. If you don’t know what it is, start here. This is a great demo on a small scale aquaponics system. If I were you, I would steal his idea and run with it. I plan on building a small countertop version for my herbs. well, I should say, my wife’s herbs. Is there anything cooler than fresh herbs that are also helping to keep a fish alive? I don’t know, but probably not. This is one of those small scale sustainable practices that would be great if you had an apartment.
Chickens. I have not started my chicken farm yet, but it is next on the list for this year. I have never head chickens, but I know people with less know-how than my left foot that haven’t killed their egg chickens yet. This makes me hopeful that the endeavor will not be too out of reach. If you go to Far North International, you can find some pretty small, fairly cheap chicken coupes to get started. I have seen people in very suburban areas raise chickens for eggs with small coupes like these. If you are a little more handy and would like to do it on a larger scale like I’m planning on, there are many other ways to get started. This guy is one of my favorite homesteaders, and that link is a good start for a detachable chicken tractor/ coupe. I’m going to satellite for a second to tell you that he is one of my favorite homesteading YouTubers. Only watch if you don’t mind someone being way smarter than you. He has so many great ideas and explains them all very well in his videos. There are a few cool things about raising egg chickens. Eating fresh eggs (of course), selling extra eggs, you can feed chickens your table scraps, you can compost chicken manure, chickens eat ticks and other bugs, and they are just funny as the day is long to watch.
Rabbits. Obviously my favorite. This was the beginning of my homestead obsession. I don’t even remember what got me into it, but these guys have the lock down on information on getting started. It is not very in depth, but is a perfect overview on what obstacles you are up against and when they will happen. I would personally recommend that everyone start with meat rabbits on their homestead. They are so easy. All I do right now is go out every morning, fill up the water bottles, and put food in the feeders. That, of course is the bare minimum, but it’s all you HAVE to do. once your rabbitry is up and running it pretty much runs itself, other that any unforeseen hurdles. But if you are alive, hurdles will happen…so you might as well also have fresh healthy meat for your family. Obviously there will be more work involved the larger your rabbitry gets, or during harvest times.
Garden. I have always found this one easy, but I have always had a garden growing up. Don’t get me wrong, there have been a few years where I have produced nothing from my garden due to disease and weather. Lucky for you, you obviously read blogs and peruse the internet for information, so when it comes to disease and weather issues, you’ll be ahead of it.
Recycling. I live in Michigan, so this may be a little more state specific for the purposes that I am going after. I hate recycling at the road. I have one of the tiniest bins every created to hold an entire weeks worth of plastics, paper, cardboard, metal, etc. I have to PAY for the tiniest bin in the world. Why am I paying to recycle? I refuse. No pun intended. In Michigan, we have scrap yards galore. All of my metal is sorted, cleaned, and taken in. They pay ME for my garbage. Many places will take plastics for money as well. As for paper and cardboard, we compost a lot of it. Whatever we don’t compost, we burn. The only thing that gets thrown away is meat scraps, which can be fed to come animals if you have pigs or chickens. Bango jango, I will not ever pay anyone to recycle anything. Ever.
Composting. Composting is a great way to be sustainable at your homestead. It and recycling really go hand in hand, as it is just another form of recycling. We put all of our green garbage in our compost pile. There are a lot of different ways to compost. You can get worm bins, compost bins, or just put it all in a big pile like I do. I will eventually get into worm composting, but for now My way is working just fine.

I hope that these 6 tips helped you gather a few ideas on getting started toward sustainability. After all, that is the key to homesteading. The beauty is that most of this can be done with little or no property. It is a great feeling to know that your home is running clean, and it is my pleasure to help you in your journey to sustainability. Don’t forget to subscribe so that you don’t miss new blog posts!

Save Money Feeding Your Rabbits

My 1942 Farmall A. It makes mowing lawn fun.

I was mowing my lawn yesterday and had a bit of a light bulb moment. The rabbit I have in the pasture tractor hardly eats any pellets. I move him every day and he eats the grass down to nothing wherever he is….so why couldn’t I use the piles of cut grass in my yard? I took a handful out and the two rabbits I have in hanging cages went crazy for it.

Here at That Homestead, we’re always trying to find ways to spend less money. If i feed grass to my breeders, I will have about 7 months of free food per year. I free feed my rabbits, so that adds up fast depending on how many breeding rabbits you have at once.

Along with feeding fresh grass through the summer, I’ve been looking into drying the grass clippings like hay and feeding it through the winter. From what I can tell it has the same fiber that hay does. The nice thing about the pellets is that they still get all of the nutrients that they might lack from eating just dry grass.

Breeding Rabbits

Yes it’s a little odd. I know. But it’s a necessary step in producing more rabbits. Lucky for us, “breeding like rabbits” is all too true.

Step 1: Always take the female to the male. Females are more territorial, and males have less of an attention span. Sounds a little like real life for humans too. Anyway….if you take the male to the female, he will spend more time smelling around than bumping uglies. Always always always take the female to the male.

Step 2: Light a candle, put on some mood music, and watch it all unf…oh, never mind. It’s already done. It will not take much time out of your day to make sure that you get a successful breeding. When I bred mine, I watched the buck knock out two quick ones within a minute, watched for a couple of minutes, and then witnessed a third go-round. There are a lot of different ways to check for a successful breeding, but I like this hands off approach. Make sure they have three tries and you’re probably good to go.

Between 10-14 days you can palpate the females to check for pregnancy. I haven’t figured out how to do it yet, so watch all of the same YouTube videos I watched and see if you can. I waited the 29 days and woke up to exponentially more rabbits than I had the night before. Sometimes the suspense is half the fun.

The males can breed once a day successfully. I can attest since both of my does had kits and they were bred one day after the other. The only thing I noticed was that the male had a little harder time focusing on the task at hand. Maybe I’ll get him some Gatorade next time…

You can apparently re-breed the females 2-3 weeks after birth. I will keep you posted on how this plays out. I plan on breeding on week 2 to the exact day to see how it goes. I’ll be looking for ease of breeding, wellness of mama, and wellness/number of kits comparatively in the next litter.

If you have any other questions or comments please feel free!