Questions to Ask Yourself Before Getting into Meat Rabbits

Are you ready to start your journey into raising meat rabbits?

Meat rabbit eating pellets — Before you commit to meat rabbits, there are some helpful questions you should ask yourself.

Are you ready to hop right in and start raising your own sustainable, humane, cost-effective meat?

That’s great!

But not so fast!

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Before You Buy Meat Rabbits, Ask Yourself These Questions
Why do you want to raise meat rabbits? What are your goals?
Have you eaten rabbit meat before? Will your family eat rabbit?
How will you house your rabbits?
How will you house rabbit grow outs?
Are you able to harvest and butcher your meat rabbits?
If you’re not butchering yourself, do you have a plan for slaughtering and butchering?
Other things to consider

Before You Buy Meat Rabbits, Ask Yourself These Questions

Young champagne d'argent meat rabbits — Two top things to know are if you like rabbit meat, and if you can do the deed if necessary!

This handful of questions will reveal a lot about how ready you are to start raising meat rabbits.

It will also help you to be honest with yourself and determine whether this is really a worthwhile endeavor for you and your family.

It only takes a few minutes to answer these few questions. But taking that time will get you off on the right start.

Why do you want to raise meat rabbits? What are your goals?

Californian meat rabbit — Get clear on your own goals. That will be helpful in guiding decisions like which breed, or how important breed is to you.

First, ask yourself why you want to raise meat rabbits. There isn’t a right or wrong answer here, but understanding your why will tell you if it is an attainable goal.

Do you want to provide affordable meat for your family?
Are you more interested, or also interested, in showing rabbits?
Do you want to be able to sell some rabbits and breeding stock to either make money or just help pay for feed?
How much of your home food supply do you want to feed to meat rabbits?
Do you have other goals for your rabbit meat, like feeding dogs or other pets?
How much meat do you need?

Addressing goals like these will help guide you in things like selecting the breed of meat rabbit, choosing housing, and planning for how many litters you’ll need per year.

Have you eaten rabbit meat before? Will your family eat rabbit?

Ground rabbit meat — It's expected that there might be some hesitation eating a new, less mainstream meat like rabbit.

This is a big one. A simple one, but a big one.

There is no use establishing a meat rabbit supply if you/or your family won’t eat it (or use it, if you are trying to feed dogs or other pets -- some people keep meat rabbits solely for pet food).

Homemade rabbit sausage — Favorite preparations are one way to get more comfortable with eating rabbit meat.

One of the very first things you should do is to try eating some fresh rabbit. Find a source. Try out a great recipe. And if it turns out no one likes rabbit, or you can’t bring yourself to eat it, you should consider a different meat option.

How will you house your rabbits?

White New Zealand meat rabbit — Things will go more smoothly if you decide on how you want to house your rabbits before you start.

You must have proper housing in place before you ever bring a single rabbit home. It simply will not do to get your rabbits and then scramble to find cages, hutches, or housing.

There are no guarantees that there will be cages available near you. You might need to order or build them, and that can sometimes take weeks.

Take some time to research some options (there are several good ones, and different ways to make rabbits work on your property, no matter what that property is).

Decide what is best for you and your property setup. Build or buy your housing. Then you are ready to bring meat rabbits home!

How will you house rabbit grow outs?

Growing meat rabbit kits — Litters will quickly raise your housing requirements. Plan ahead before you breed!

You also need a plan for housing the grow outs. It may seem like a future problem, and you can allow some time to address it, but at least learn about the needs and come up with a plan.

Then, put that plan into action long before you attempt to breed your first meat rabbit.

Meat rabbit litters are large (6 to 12 per litter!). Rabbits have a fast, quick gestation (just about one month!). Those grow outs will need housing within six weeks of birth.

So while there is time, it goes faster than you think. And there are space considerations you need to take into account, too.

Are you able to harvest and butcher your meat rabbits?

Butchering a meat rabbit carcass — If you won't process your rabbits yourself, you'll need to identify someone who will.

This is another piece of the puzzle that is too often overlooked by prospective meat rabbit raisers. They get through all the buying, breeding, and growing…and then find out they can’t actually “do the deed".

This becomes a problem because now you have an overabundance of rabbits with nothing to do with them. You’re counting on that meat, but you can’t get it on the table.

Meat rabbit ground meat and sausage — There are many ways to use rabbit meat.

To be sure, there is a learning curve for all of us. Every one of us, as meat rabbit growers and harvesters, has to come to terms with what it really means to raise our own meat and get it on the table.

So, where above it is suggested to buy and taste the meat, it might be an even smarter thing to do to buy a live meat rabbit that you can process to eat. That will tell you almost all of what you need to know.

If you’re not butchering yourself, do you have a plan for slaughtering and butchering?

Cubed rabbit meat — Before you breed, if you are not going to be processing yourself, check to see if there are processors near you who handle rabbits.

If you know you can’t process your meat rabbits yourself, that’s fine. Many homesteaders grow meat of all types -- beef, chicken, pork, poultry, turkeys -- and they never process their own meat. There’s nothing wrong with that.

As long as you have a processing option.

If you don’t plan to process and butcher your own meat rabbits, you need to ask a few other questions:

Is there a local slaughterhouse or processor that will process rabbits? (Many slaughterhouses do not do rabbits, even though they do large animals -- there is also licensing and regulation involved, which might prohibit them from processing rabbits. Know that answer)
If there is no slaughter facility, is there a local grower who might process your rabbits for a fee?
Is this affordable?
Is this legal or acceptable for that person?
Can a mobile butcher come to your house or farm and process the rabbits for you?

For sure, there are options to raise meat rabbits without processing and slaughtering your animals yourself. But this is definitely a question to ask before you have 20 rabbits running around, ready for the freezer!

Other things to consider

A growing meat rabbit — Breeds and numbers are two of the first things to decide when you decide to keep meat rabbits.

The questions above cover the most pressing and important things you need to consider before you bring meat rabbits home. In closing, here are a few other things you might want to think about, after you’ve reconciled yourself with the questions above:

What breeds of meat rabbits do you want to keep
What breeds are available near you
How many breeding rabbits should you start with
How quickly do you want to get started breeding (age of rabbits you’ll buy)
What will your feed plan or program be

Raising meat rabbits is an excellent way to sustainably put affordable food on your table; food that you know was raised right, and that you know what went into it. But before you get too far into the process, you need to take the time to settle some things first.

Considering the questions and points highlighted here will set you on a good path to humane, productive meat rabbit raising and providing more of your own food for you and yours.