I am really, really enjoying my rabbit raising project and I am so glad you are too. One of the big reasons why is precisely as you said - it seems relatively easy to meet their requirements for a very pleasant existence.
9 out of 10 people I meet respond the same as the locals you mention, who "comment that they couldn’t bring themselves to butcher domesticated animals, because they “pity” them." I raise chickens as well and most people never say such a thing in response to the birds. But the rabbits because they are "cute" bring out this hypocrisy in the extreme. I always respond with "Oh. Are you a vegetarian?" and they always say "No" but that they prefer to get their meat at the store. And I say something like "Oh, you prefer it when they are tortured first with horrible lives?" Lol It would be annoying if I didn't truly enjoy the silver lining of making people examine their embarrassing hypocrisy. But yes there is definite taboo about rabbit meat here. And people dont seem to understand its a domesticated meat source. They think it will be "game-y" with stringy, sparse meat...
I anticipate that the ease of care, relatively low and economical energy inputs for feed, small space requirements and valuable utility as fertilizer producers is going to make rabbit meat popular in the coming years as the polycrisis continues. I think it's smart to be getting ahead of the game now!
Really excited to hear more! We have a lot of wild rabbits - I'm excited to see how this goes as I've always been intrigued by keeping rabbits. I'd love to learn about your chicken coop work as well
I got really good results with sweet potatoes by soaking it in a slurry of forest soil + water (just massage it to release the organisms into the water). I soaked the leaves for 15 minutes - I got nearly double the yield by soaking it.
Excited to see how you go with rabbits in the long run. Totally relate to caring for a herbivore completely changing the way you view "weedy" vegetation. Every plant is useful if you find a way to use it.
Yeah, I'd imagine two years down the road the update on tropical rabbit ranching is gonna sound quite different - given they make it through the rainy season!
If not, maybe we'll try monitor lizards next? Our pond seems to be ideal habitat. Maybe we breed rabbits to feed to the lizards 😁
breeding rabbits to feed to lizards in a captive environment where they don't have a chance to run and escape is inhumane. Maybe not as much as factory farming, but don't kid yourself.
You seem to appreciate nature and the loveliness of these rabbits. Please don't eat them. Go vegan. You can do it. And sooner or later, many if not most of us will have to.
Generally, I try not to judge everything by human standards, since they are sometimes rather arbitrary and vary wildly from culture to culture and over time - so as long as I'm not feeding fellow humans to monitor lizards, the label "inhumane" seems rather irrelevant.
That eating animals is "wrong" for humans is a *very recent* belief, and one that was historically limited to certain religious groups on the Indian subcontinent. No human culture that has ever been recorded was vegetarian (let alone vegan), and we have been eating meat long before we became humans. In some important respects, eating meat allowed us to become the species we are now - so questioning *eating meat in general* seems at odds with evolutionary reality.
I understand your concerns, though, as I was a vegetarian myself for about three years when I was still living in Germany - mostly as a response to the unspeakable cruelty of factory farming, since there is little meat available that's from other sources.
Feeding one animal to another is just as cruel as any death of any member of that species, especially since we're talking about rabbits - a prey species that rarely lives into "ripe old age" in natural conditions. Compared to the life-long suffering of animals in factory farms, using other animals as animal feed seems negligible in terms of cruelty. Also, where does it stop? Is it "inhumane" or cruel to throw insects into our pond for the fish, or to feed worms to our chickens? What about those worms that were chopped up accidentally while digging garden beds for planting vegetables?
Also, just to clarify that right quick: the whole thing with the lizard farming was a joke, there's no way we'd ever do that. Much easier to eat the rabbits ourselves.
That being said, I appreciate your determination and missionary fervor, but I generally don't let strangers tell me what to eat - no offense! - especially since they usually know very little about the environment I'm embedded in. As a general rule of thumb, I eat whatever my environment provides abundantly, which in my case includes (among a great variety of plant foods) squirrels, tree screws, rats, snakes, frogs, eels, fish, snails, and insects.
In my opinion, there is absolutely no contradiction whatsoever in appreciating Nature and the many forms she takes (including squirrels, rabbits & chickens), and eating those creatures, whether they are plants, animals or fungi. Animals eating other animals *is* Nature.
Moreover, loving another being doesn't mean you can't consume it. I love all plants that I eat, and I love all the animals that I eat. I have the deepest reverence & respect for both of them. Eating itself is an act of love, since you let another being (plant, animal or fungus) become a part of your own body. It is a spiritually significant merger between two species, whatever kingdom they may come from.
There are many species of animals that directly subsist on the surplus plant foods we're growing. Rats are taking a large share of the cassava harvest, tree shrews, squirrels & monkeys regularly eat fruit from our garden. As population ecology teaches, an increase in food supply will lead to an increase in population, so if we wouldn't trap & shoot rodents they would take a larger and larger share of the food we plant every year, until there would be little left for us. If we don't reduce their numbers we simply wouldn't have plant food left for ourselves at some point. And since we don't have much land, competing with other animal species is pretty much inevitable. Just for reference, monkeys harvested almost the entire rambutan crop this year, squirrels ate all our longkong (it was a bad year for fruit so harvests were low generally), and in the upper half of our garden we never harvest cassava tubers, despite planting them all over the place - the rats and ground squirrels get to them when we're not looking. If we wouldn't trap some of them, they'd eat all the cassava there is - depriving us of an important plant staple in the process.
Seasonally, we eat a certain species of bug (Thai cockchafer), that descends in droves onto our fruit trees and devours their leaves. In collecting & eating them, we keep their numbers down, so our fruit trees don't suffer too much damage - organic pest control *plus* free quality protein, win-win!
A quick question: where do you get your food from? From the (super)market, or from the land? Do you have any direct experience with subsistence living, especially in the tropics? I don't mean this in a condescending way, it's just that my own experience shows that most people who hold opinions like yours depend for the vast majority of the food they eat on highly complex industrial food systems - and the cheap energy and six-continent supply chains that enable them.
I personally know many people who were vegetarian and became omnivore/flexitarian after they started trying to feed themselves off the land in a more sustainable fashion. There's so many opportunities that present themselves, plus it's pretty safe in terms of nutrition to simply have *at least some* animal protein in your diet. Let's remember that the real problem are factory farms.
I do agree that "most of us" (meaning the general global human population, right?) will have to eat a lot less meat, but that's in large part due to the fact that the human species has expanded beyond every reasonable ecological limit, and is now in overshoot. Since crucial resources are running out, civilizational collapse is pretty much inevitable now. As soon as resource scarcity ramps up the entire food system is gonna fall apart, including (thankfully) factory farms, which might be among the earliest victims. In a situation where food shortages are looming it simply makes more sense to get those calories directly to people. But this whole thought experiment is mostly limited to city folks (more than 50 percent of the world's population now) or others that are dependent on industrial food system to provide the bulk of their calories (together easily +90 percent of all humans). It says very little to nothing about people living off the land. Those people have eaten a variety of animals, and will continue to do so indefinitely - environmental conditions permitted.
As far as I can tell, the article you shared does not include insects as "meat," even though they are also animal protein. I know that eating insects is kind of a wild card for many vegans/vegetarians, but the differences are *of degree,* not of kind.
Chimps eat quite a lot of insects, and if they would somehow evolve to be more proficient group hunters they'd undoubtedly also eat more other meat.
I do understand the reason for vegetarianism/veganism for those who depend on the dominant culture, but I simply can't see any convincing argument against eating meat in general. I hope this makes sense to you and you are able to understand my perspective.
We are considering rabbits too, in addition to our already overwhelming zoo. Mostly for our daughter but i am also curious about a small meat animal that doesnt need any grain. The goats are great but too big to slaughter for a small family without adding to our already packed small fridge.
I have a neighbour that keeps some rabbits free ranging around the house. The cats often eat the babies and they say the males sometimes fight and kill each other. So the population is still small, despite the amount of space and vegetation they have access to.
I am really, really enjoying my rabbit raising project and I am so glad you are too. One of the big reasons why is precisely as you said - it seems relatively easy to meet their requirements for a very pleasant existence.
9 out of 10 people I meet respond the same as the locals you mention, who "comment that they couldn’t bring themselves to butcher domesticated animals, because they “pity” them." I raise chickens as well and most people never say such a thing in response to the birds. But the rabbits because they are "cute" bring out this hypocrisy in the extreme. I always respond with "Oh. Are you a vegetarian?" and they always say "No" but that they prefer to get their meat at the store. And I say something like "Oh, you prefer it when they are tortured first with horrible lives?" Lol It would be annoying if I didn't truly enjoy the silver lining of making people examine their embarrassing hypocrisy. But yes there is definite taboo about rabbit meat here. And people dont seem to understand its a domesticated meat source. They think it will be "game-y" with stringy, sparse meat...
I anticipate that the ease of care, relatively low and economical energy inputs for feed, small space requirements and valuable utility as fertilizer producers is going to make rabbit meat popular in the coming years as the polycrisis continues. I think it's smart to be getting ahead of the game now!
Really excited to hear more! We have a lot of wild rabbits - I'm excited to see how this goes as I've always been intrigued by keeping rabbits. I'd love to learn about your chicken coop work as well
I got really good results with sweet potatoes by soaking it in a slurry of forest soil + water (just massage it to release the organisms into the water). I soaked the leaves for 15 minutes - I got nearly double the yield by soaking it.
Excited to see how you go with rabbits in the long run. Totally relate to caring for a herbivore completely changing the way you view "weedy" vegetation. Every plant is useful if you find a way to use it.
Yeah, I'd imagine two years down the road the update on tropical rabbit ranching is gonna sound quite different - given they make it through the rainy season!
If not, maybe we'll try monitor lizards next? Our pond seems to be ideal habitat. Maybe we breed rabbits to feed to the lizards 😁
breeding rabbits to feed to lizards in a captive environment where they don't have a chance to run and escape is inhumane. Maybe not as much as factory farming, but don't kid yourself.
You seem to appreciate nature and the loveliness of these rabbits. Please don't eat them. Go vegan. You can do it. And sooner or later, many if not most of us will have to.
Did you know chimps, one of our closest relatives, only have 9 meat-eating days on average? https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-to-eat-like-a-chimpanzee/#:~:text=Three%20percent%20of%20the%20average,probably%20gets%20less%20than%20this
Zoos also do not generally feed chimps meat.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Generally, I try not to judge everything by human standards, since they are sometimes rather arbitrary and vary wildly from culture to culture and over time - so as long as I'm not feeding fellow humans to monitor lizards, the label "inhumane" seems rather irrelevant.
That eating animals is "wrong" for humans is a *very recent* belief, and one that was historically limited to certain religious groups on the Indian subcontinent. No human culture that has ever been recorded was vegetarian (let alone vegan), and we have been eating meat long before we became humans. In some important respects, eating meat allowed us to become the species we are now - so questioning *eating meat in general* seems at odds with evolutionary reality.
I understand your concerns, though, as I was a vegetarian myself for about three years when I was still living in Germany - mostly as a response to the unspeakable cruelty of factory farming, since there is little meat available that's from other sources.
Feeding one animal to another is just as cruel as any death of any member of that species, especially since we're talking about rabbits - a prey species that rarely lives into "ripe old age" in natural conditions. Compared to the life-long suffering of animals in factory farms, using other animals as animal feed seems negligible in terms of cruelty. Also, where does it stop? Is it "inhumane" or cruel to throw insects into our pond for the fish, or to feed worms to our chickens? What about those worms that were chopped up accidentally while digging garden beds for planting vegetables?
Also, just to clarify that right quick: the whole thing with the lizard farming was a joke, there's no way we'd ever do that. Much easier to eat the rabbits ourselves.
That being said, I appreciate your determination and missionary fervor, but I generally don't let strangers tell me what to eat - no offense! - especially since they usually know very little about the environment I'm embedded in. As a general rule of thumb, I eat whatever my environment provides abundantly, which in my case includes (among a great variety of plant foods) squirrels, tree screws, rats, snakes, frogs, eels, fish, snails, and insects.
In my opinion, there is absolutely no contradiction whatsoever in appreciating Nature and the many forms she takes (including squirrels, rabbits & chickens), and eating those creatures, whether they are plants, animals or fungi. Animals eating other animals *is* Nature.
Moreover, loving another being doesn't mean you can't consume it. I love all plants that I eat, and I love all the animals that I eat. I have the deepest reverence & respect for both of them. Eating itself is an act of love, since you let another being (plant, animal or fungus) become a part of your own body. It is a spiritually significant merger between two species, whatever kingdom they may come from.
There are many species of animals that directly subsist on the surplus plant foods we're growing. Rats are taking a large share of the cassava harvest, tree shrews, squirrels & monkeys regularly eat fruit from our garden. As population ecology teaches, an increase in food supply will lead to an increase in population, so if we wouldn't trap & shoot rodents they would take a larger and larger share of the food we plant every year, until there would be little left for us. If we don't reduce their numbers we simply wouldn't have plant food left for ourselves at some point. And since we don't have much land, competing with other animal species is pretty much inevitable. Just for reference, monkeys harvested almost the entire rambutan crop this year, squirrels ate all our longkong (it was a bad year for fruit so harvests were low generally), and in the upper half of our garden we never harvest cassava tubers, despite planting them all over the place - the rats and ground squirrels get to them when we're not looking. If we wouldn't trap some of them, they'd eat all the cassava there is - depriving us of an important plant staple in the process.
Seasonally, we eat a certain species of bug (Thai cockchafer), that descends in droves onto our fruit trees and devours their leaves. In collecting & eating them, we keep their numbers down, so our fruit trees don't suffer too much damage - organic pest control *plus* free quality protein, win-win!
A quick question: where do you get your food from? From the (super)market, or from the land? Do you have any direct experience with subsistence living, especially in the tropics? I don't mean this in a condescending way, it's just that my own experience shows that most people who hold opinions like yours depend for the vast majority of the food they eat on highly complex industrial food systems - and the cheap energy and six-continent supply chains that enable them.
I personally know many people who were vegetarian and became omnivore/flexitarian after they started trying to feed themselves off the land in a more sustainable fashion. There's so many opportunities that present themselves, plus it's pretty safe in terms of nutrition to simply have *at least some* animal protein in your diet. Let's remember that the real problem are factory farms.
I do agree that "most of us" (meaning the general global human population, right?) will have to eat a lot less meat, but that's in large part due to the fact that the human species has expanded beyond every reasonable ecological limit, and is now in overshoot. Since crucial resources are running out, civilizational collapse is pretty much inevitable now. As soon as resource scarcity ramps up the entire food system is gonna fall apart, including (thankfully) factory farms, which might be among the earliest victims. In a situation where food shortages are looming it simply makes more sense to get those calories directly to people. But this whole thought experiment is mostly limited to city folks (more than 50 percent of the world's population now) or others that are dependent on industrial food system to provide the bulk of their calories (together easily +90 percent of all humans). It says very little to nothing about people living off the land. Those people have eaten a variety of animals, and will continue to do so indefinitely - environmental conditions permitted.
As far as I can tell, the article you shared does not include insects as "meat," even though they are also animal protein. I know that eating insects is kind of a wild card for many vegans/vegetarians, but the differences are *of degree,* not of kind.
Chimps eat quite a lot of insects, and if they would somehow evolve to be more proficient group hunters they'd undoubtedly also eat more other meat.
I do understand the reason for vegetarianism/veganism for those who depend on the dominant culture, but I simply can't see any convincing argument against eating meat in general. I hope this makes sense to you and you are able to understand my perspective.
We are considering rabbits too, in addition to our already overwhelming zoo. Mostly for our daughter but i am also curious about a small meat animal that doesnt need any grain. The goats are great but too big to slaughter for a small family without adding to our already packed small fridge.
I have a neighbour that keeps some rabbits free ranging around the house. The cats often eat the babies and they say the males sometimes fight and kill each other. So the population is still small, despite the amount of space and vegetation they have access to.