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abbits have been our prepping focus this week. As mentioned, we got two American Chinchilla does. We’re glad we have them and really feel like they will be a positive addition to our family and our preps. The kids enjoy holding them, and while they understand they’re not just pets, we feel it’s okay for them to bond with the mothers of our future litters. We’re starting to slowly introduce fresh grass, clover, and dandelions to them to get their guts use to it. Our goal is to pasture them in the backyard (under a “rabbit tractor” to keep them safe and contained) as much as possible, especially during the summer; then during the winter grow greens for them. We’ll continue to feed them pellets daily to supplement, and round out, their natural diet.
I’m looking forward to watching Sarah’s gardening journal grow and expand. While a journal isn’t a new concept and it’s a very simple idea, I’m not sure I’d have thought about it in reference to a garden. I think it will be very valuable, and interesting, to track our progress over the years. Sarah will also be keeping a rabbit journal, recording: breeding, litter size, butchering, diet, any health problems, and other pertinent information.
Even though we have our rabbits we don’t have our full rabbit hutch completed yet (so they’re still in the garage). Ryan and I are building it in the backyard on the north side of the house. We figured the north side would work best because it gets less sunlight, so we don’t grow anything there, and it’ll be cooler; rabbits deal better with cool temperatures than hot. Plus it will allow us to see the rabbits through the kitchen window so it’ll be easy to watch them and ensure their comfort and safety.
Even though we won’t be able to breed and butcher our rabbits anytime soon, one advantage of rabbits that we’ll be able to take advantage of almost immediately is their manure. Rabbit manure is some of the best stuff you can get to fertilize your garden. It can be put straight onto the garden, without having to be composted first (it’s not “hot”), even around plants you will be harvesting soon. Rise and Shine Rabbitry, has a great post on the uses of rabbit manure. Between the front and back yards we have a lot of garden space to cover. I’ll start by putting it around individual plants, then as we get more spread it all through the garden. When we get a good layer everywhere it’ll either be time to start over or share it with some of our neighbors who also garden. Maybe we’ll arrange a trade with them, their old garden and vegetable scraps for rabbit manure.
What did you do?
(Monday: Be Sure You Have Alternate Routes)
It’s hard to ever get too much manure. We have 44 rabbits on our small farm (only about 12 adults) who produce about a 5 gallon bucket of pellets a week. To capture the pellets easier, we built a “pellet slide” out of some salvaged corrugated tin. Fastening one side 2′ higher than the other causes the pellets to just roll down into a bucket with a few holes in it. Without the holes, the urine is captured and makes a smelly “hot” tea that I don’t want to put directly in the garden. I put that in the compost pile and it really heated up.
We’ve used the pellets as the only fertilizer amendment in the garden this year and everything is doing great. We side dressed the tomatoes with pellets this last week. The pellets seem to take 2-3 weeks to break down when mixed into the top inch of soil. Nature’s “slow-release” fertilizer.
This is the first year that we’ve used the rabbit pellets, but so far I’m sold. It will take a year or more to get a layer of pellets over our whole acre garden, so right now I’m focusing on putting them in the planting rows, and if and when we get a surplus, I’ll rake it into an unplanted area.
Between the chickens, compost, worms, and rabbits, we hope to get the garden to a paradise in the next couple of years.
Best of luck with your rabbits, they’ve brought great joy and homestead benefits to us.
I really like your idea of catching the manure, and at the same time separating the urine out.
This is only our second real year of gardening, but the thing I’ve really learned (that I guess I should have known before) is it’s all about the soil–everything depends on having good soil. So we’ve added compost from the nearby facility, and made our own compost (also a learning experience). We’re looking forward to having our own continuous source of high quality fertilizer to add to the soil. You’re right you can’t have too much, especially if you’re seeing it break down in 2-3 weeks, that means you could add more after that again.
That’s awesome that you have your homestead. We’re still here in suburbia, looking and hoping for a place in the country but haven’t made the move yet. For now we’re practicing with the space we have, and building any structures in a way that they will be movable when it’s time.
This weekend we got 5 rabbits harvested that were waiting for a bit. They were 5 months old, so they should make at least 2 meals each and maybe 3. We usually harvest them at 3 months but we just got busy and did not get to them. We are waiting on a litter from a new mom due any day too. I raised my rabbits part colony style and we just cleared out the pen so now it needs cleaned out this week for new kits to go in to grow out. I am moving them in at about 8 weeks old to grow for a month or 2.
You frame for you hutch looks great by the way. Smart thinking to keep them out of the sun as much possible.
Have a great weekend.
That’s one of the advantages we see to having rabbits in a collapse, you can butcher them as you need — including waiting until you’re ready. It’s not like a deer where all of the sudden you have 75 pounds of meat to deal with. But we are excited to learn more about the rabbits, watch them grow, and have them as part of our preps. Hopefully the hutch gets all done this weekend!
I will have to ask around and see if anyone we know has rabbits. I could add the pellets to my composters at the end of the season when I put in the soil from my tomato planters. That should give me plenty of nutrients to work with!