I'm really really happy to hear the rabbits are working out for you guys. I was similarly surprised with the ease of rabbits, but it wasn't until year 2 with rabbits on the ground that I began seeing problems with coccidia - but they were also sharing their space with chickens etc. (I say this in response to the reddit thread asking "why does no one know about this?" )
there are FB groups in many states here of large numbers of people specifically colony raising and feeding naturally. a good number of us do it, but disease management is the #1 challenge. keeping as sanitary conditions as possible and selecting for coccidia resistance is the way through this challenge - so at this point I am no longer bringing in new blood and am only breeding my own stock who have been exposed and survived - choosing new breeding stock from the litters at least once a year to allow for quick generation turnover.
I agree that the pellet industry has mind washed folks. the very first rabbit manual I read literally
said "ONLY feed pellets and keep in cages, if you deviate YOUR RABBITS WILL DIE" which makes no sense if you know that at some point in these animals relatively recent genetic history they were wild.
Yes anything in the legume family I try to feed in moderation. they do like it but too much does seem to cause problems.
I have done the same as you intend and cut down my chicken flock drastically. I do really like having my birds but they are so comparatively inefficient.
That other hate species you mentioned looks really interesting. I bet the meat is very different as the meat from our native wild rabbits vs the domestic is wildly different. our north American wild rabbits cannot breed with the European domestics either.
it sounds like a really cool experiment! congratulations on your success! your buns look very healthy and happy
I think for most organisms, once they get past a certain number then diseases and parasites start to exert a downward pressure on their numbers. In wild animals the limited food supply also has a pressure but for domestic animals that can be circumvented. So once your rabbits get past some number you might notice more dying from diseases, or more of the young do not make it to adulthood. That's the case for my goats. They just multiplied so fast in the beginning then reached a plateau, even though their foraging area seems huge and still abundant. Goats are especially sensitive to parasites and mine will not touch any leaf that has touched ground where there is goat manure. I have a simple wooden feeding rack to keep the branches at my waist height. David maybe you can try a feeding rack to keep their feed off the ground because feed mixing with manure seems like a perfect route for parasites to go from poop to mouth to stomach.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Let's see what the optimal number of rabbits will be for us, but I'd think no greater than 20 individuals in total.
Also, now I understand why every Southern Thai muslim who keeps goats makes the immense effort to build them a stilt house with a slated floor well above the ground! Cows & water buffaloes seem to have less of a problem with those conditions, but if goats are so susceptible to parasites it's best they don't stand around in their own shit, especially if the ground is wet & muddy in rainy season. (I'd love to try goats, but unfortunately our land is both too small and too steep for anything larger than rabbits...)
Making a basic bamboo lattice is pretty simple, so maybe we'll experiment with a raised outside area in the Rainy Season Retreat once we start having issues.
Yeah, I suspect that some sort of incident regarding disease is pretty much inevitable, especially since a friend from the Philippines said that it was the high humidity that was the main problem for his rabbits. I've heard similar things from others who kept rabbits in the tropics - I've even heard it said that you shouldn't give them any wet vegetation after a rain shower!
Luckily, for us there haven't been any problems so far, but maybe now I jinxed it?
Should the experiment fail in the long run, we might try guinea pigs next 😁
Finally able to read this, very interesting stuff. A few thoughts.
1) Is it more efficient or better to have the rabbits penned and bring the food to them, as it seems like you are doing (correct me if I am wrong)? Or could you potentially free range them. On that note, does the meat yield for rabbits exceed the equivalent in chicken eggs when that extra time investment is considered?
2) it is interesting to me that all tropical diets seem to be protein deficient as the main limiting factor. Do you plant any protein based crops to have as a staple of your diet?
And on that note, seconding the experimenting with guinea pigs. Would be very interesting to see how that turned out.
Hey friend, thanks for taking the time to read this.
1) We keep them in the Rainy Season Retreat only during peak rainy season, when it rains so often and so strong that it's questionable they would survive otherwise. It's more due to necessity than convenience, to be honest. During this time, we keep them penned and bring them food several times daily, because otherwise they'd be soaking wet all the time - they don't seem to have an instinctual fear of rain or humidity, but we don't want to take any chances. Leon from the Philippines reported heavy losses only due to humidity-induced disease.
But as soon as the rains stop, we'll "semi-free range" them again, in the large enclosures we tested successfully last dry season. We have one such larger range set up at all times, and whenever it is dry for a few days we take them out and let them run around there. But it's not always convenient, because they don't have sufficient shelter there - so when we're working on the other side of the garden and it starts raining, we have to sprint back, throw them in a basket and carry them to the safety of their Retreat. Let's see if we get any more smart ideas in the coming years.
I'd definitely say that the extra time investment will pay off eventually, because we do weeding anyway and walk past the bungalow several times daily even before we got our rabbits. It's not that much extra time effort, we simply collect feed when we do weeding, pile it up in a basket, and drop it off for the rabbit as soon as there's enough. I wouldn't even really consider it work, to be honest.
We're not even sure what the average meat yield will be over time, but I guess it compares favorably to our chickens, even if eggs are included.
2) Yes, carbohydrates are generally much, much easier to obtain than plant protein in the tropics - although, traditionally, wild "bush meat" was an easy & stable source of animal protein. Unfortunately, declining wildlife numbers have put a cap on how many wild animals you can harvest sustainably these days.
We have several high-protein crops (beans, tree legumes, certain nuts, even some protein-rich foliage), but none of them could serve as staple so far. More like seasonal additions. There's a few promising nut crops, but the trees will take a few more years before starting to fruit.
As so often, diversity seems to be key.
I really hope we will have an opportunity to find some guinea pigs soon. We'd love to try. If our land was less steep (or we could somehow gain access to more land), we would even experiment with goats or (in the future, when/if we have enough surplus food - environmental conditions permitted) with the small black pigs people traditionally raised throughout the region. According to Karn (whose parent's kept some when she was a child) they have an insatiable appetite, though - and you need to make sure the fence is strong enough at all times so they can't break out. But things like that are much easier to do on a community level - if it's just us two, I think rabbits & chicken are enough, hahaha.
1) this makes sense, I’m sure you made that clear and I simply missed it trying to read too hastily. And it sounds like you are being efficient having the rabbits capture a nutrient flow that you already are generating, permaculture at its finest!
Rather than buying a meat breed, why not just buy as much diversity of ‘common rabbit’ as you can and start your own breeding program for your conditions? I’d hate to see you spend money on something that could die right away, when they otherwise breed like, well, rabbits. I think you said you ate the bigger buck, but if you just keep the biggest of each generation and keep cycling through I’m sure you will have your own resilient meat breed in good time. All my knowledge is theoretical of course, so take it with a grain of salt!
2) You might be interested in Shane’s ‘Going to Seed’ podcast episode with Reville Saw. He is in Papau New Guinea but talks about various protein crops he is growing and their success in the tropical environment.
Do you raise ducks? It seems like it’d be easier than chickens with your wetter conditions, and I’ve heard they can forage their food more effectively. If you were interested in ducks, you might also consider Muscovy ducks? They are a South American species that is distinct from the two common domestic breeds, and are supposed to be really good for meat production while being incredibly hardly a self-sufficient.
Likewise, if you could get your hands on one, sheep are more resilient than goats and tropical hair sheep are supposed to be very vigorous in hot/humid conditions, and can still mostly browse for their food (though still need to graze as well). That could be a good community project when there is much more farmland available for grazing ruminants one day.
Enjoyed your thoughts and look forward to your response!
You're most welcome, I'm happy this was useful for you.
As for your earlier inquiry: our rabbits do indeed love Cannabis leaves, but the leaves contain only miniscule amounts of cannabinoids so I'd be surprised if it actually affected them. Also, it's a rather rare treat (not an everyday staple), which they nonetheless seem to cherish much more than most other foods we give them. We usually feed them larger fan leaves that we have to trim anyway - we either use them as human food or give them to the rabbits (or both). Cannabis leaves make an excellent vegetable!
When i was doing my mandatory military service many years ago, they demonstrated how to kill a rabbit in a jungle survival course. The guy simply used his hand to chop the back of the neck, then stuck a straw or pipe in between the fur and meat, blew on it and the air pressure separated them. The rabbit looked like a balloon!
Usually for meat breeds (or any highly productive breed, or milk breed), they need either more or higher quality (eg concentrated) feed. When I buy animals to start, i try to look for someone that has been rearing them for many generations in a similar way that I plan to raise them. Eg fed purely forage, no vaccines and antibiotics. That way you have the lengthy genetical selection done for you already.
Just this week we slaughtered a 5.8m python that ate our goat so thats A LOT of meat. We kept some in our small freezer, fed the dogs cats chickens ducks, and gave the rest to the indigenous people. I live in a Malay village so my neighbours cant eat it because they are Muslims. So your chickens seem like a good bait for edible snakes!
We do appreciate the omnivorous eating habits of the chickens and ducks because we often give them meat that we cant eat (eg slightly rotted but cooked meat). Dead goats, dead chickens, dead ducks that we cant eat gets turned into a readily edible form again (meat and eggs).
I think herbivores will become a big part of our diet when cheap fossil fuel and machinery runs out. No more cheap industrial grains and soy. Herbivore meat will become cheaper than chicken or pig, like it was before. Goat was the main meat in ancient China but now it is rarely eaten.
With the younger rabbits I can totally see how a karate chop to the neck could be enough, but for the larger ones I think I have to hone my Kung Fu skills a bit before I attempt this. I might try the rabbit-balloon thing, although I'm not sure it'll work with the rabbits we keep. I had to use all my strength to pull off the hide in some places!
We initially also wanted to get rabbits from somebody who has raised them in a more permacultural way, but in the end we gave up because there's only a handful of those people in the entire country (it seems). The people whom we got the rabbits from fed them GMO corn, salad (!) and morning glory from roadside ditches... Not the best start, but we're surprised that it worked this well!
Congrats on catching that python - 5.8m is a MASSIVE animal. The largest I've ever caught was around 3.5m, but with yours you could feed an entire village! Definitely jealous, python is my favorite bush meat!
I tend to think the same about the snake "problem" - if I exchange one or two newly hatched chicks for a good sized snake, it's well worth it in terms of calories and time spent. And when the snake eats eggs and you catch them in the act, you even get the egg back! Win-win!
We haven't tried feeding our chickens slightly bad meat yet, partly because whenever we have meat there's usually zero leftover, haha. But we might try this in the future. I'm a bit reluctant to boil animals that died from unknown causes, but only because we don't have an extra pot for stuff like that, so we'd have to use our cooking ware. Might make sense to invest in an extra pot for the future though.
Your thoughts about the importance of herbivores in the future is spot-on, in my opinion. All that rewilding farm land will make great habitat for herbivores as well, especially after the initial decline in human population eliminates the biggest threat for the survivors.
Закопуючи по периметру 40 м на глибину 70 см каміння а зверху роблячи щільне подвійне плетиво тину з ліщини, заповнюючи проміжки лозою верби. На кутах накладав довгі жерди з ліщини густо настилаючи сіно, солому чи гілки з листям, щоб робити затишні прохолодні кутки.
Так само в середині все обмежувалось невеликою хатинкою з щільно нашарованих гілок та каміння.
Зазвичай кролі виривали чималі нори в центрі і не намагалися прошмигнути під парканом впираючись в каміння.
Скільки їх там було, одиним богам відомо, але сприйнятливісь до міксоматозу була нижчою ніж у кролів в клітках.
Кормили ми їх нагортаючи накошену траву та сіно копицею, яку вони розтягували і яка слугувала і підстилкою і адсорбентом сечі та калу .
Крім цього давали кормові буряки, а взимку – трохи зерна вівсюгу та жита.
Хутро, використовували для здачі в кооператив, а також бабуся шила шапки-вушанки, які колись в УРСР носили всі.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, that's a very interesting setup! A rabbit enclosure like this probably lasts for generations! If we had more stones in our environment we might try something like that as well, but sadly large stones are too difficult to find in the mountains where we live...
Also, I really love the idea of rabbit hats with ears, but sadly it's a bit too hot for those where we live. Any attempts at hide tanning have been unsuccessful so far, due to the high humidity. Even professionally treated leather eventually starts rotting in this climate.
Great to hear the rabbits are working well for you. Have you considered planting any fodder banks for scaling up the operation? Can you see ways to house them safely without relying on industrial building materials?
Yes, we did - this year we've started planting "runoff barriers" from hibiscus, dense lines along the contour of the slope. They will serve as something like a fodder bank, while at the same time catching runoff and mulch that the chicken throw downhill, and (hopefully) creating low terraces over time as well.
Apart from that, we've diligently hurled ripe wild bananas into the fire break on the border of our land, the goal being a row of wild banana plants that act as a fire-proof wall (due to the water content), distract squirrels & monkeys, and provide a steady supply of banana leaves for the rapidly crowing rabbit clan.
If we took the time, we could easily construct them a palm-thatched bamboo hut - but there will be metal sheet around for decades to come, so it's worth compromising here IMO. (In a post-collapse scenario, I might even use salvaged metal sheets for fencing.) If we have to build a second Rainy Season Retreat we might actually build a small shelter, also because we want to experiment with a slightly elevated floor from bamboo slats and see if that makes harvesting manure any easier.
There's people selling meat rabbit breeds here in Thailand, but they currently still exceed our budget - I had no idea how expensive rabbits from breeders can be!
I'm really really happy to hear the rabbits are working out for you guys. I was similarly surprised with the ease of rabbits, but it wasn't until year 2 with rabbits on the ground that I began seeing problems with coccidia - but they were also sharing their space with chickens etc. (I say this in response to the reddit thread asking "why does no one know about this?" )
there are FB groups in many states here of large numbers of people specifically colony raising and feeding naturally. a good number of us do it, but disease management is the #1 challenge. keeping as sanitary conditions as possible and selecting for coccidia resistance is the way through this challenge - so at this point I am no longer bringing in new blood and am only breeding my own stock who have been exposed and survived - choosing new breeding stock from the litters at least once a year to allow for quick generation turnover.
I agree that the pellet industry has mind washed folks. the very first rabbit manual I read literally
said "ONLY feed pellets and keep in cages, if you deviate YOUR RABBITS WILL DIE" which makes no sense if you know that at some point in these animals relatively recent genetic history they were wild.
Yes anything in the legume family I try to feed in moderation. they do like it but too much does seem to cause problems.
I have done the same as you intend and cut down my chicken flock drastically. I do really like having my birds but they are so comparatively inefficient.
That other hate species you mentioned looks really interesting. I bet the meat is very different as the meat from our native wild rabbits vs the domestic is wildly different. our north American wild rabbits cannot breed with the European domestics either.
it sounds like a really cool experiment! congratulations on your success! your buns look very healthy and happy
I think for most organisms, once they get past a certain number then diseases and parasites start to exert a downward pressure on their numbers. In wild animals the limited food supply also has a pressure but for domestic animals that can be circumvented. So once your rabbits get past some number you might notice more dying from diseases, or more of the young do not make it to adulthood. That's the case for my goats. They just multiplied so fast in the beginning then reached a plateau, even though their foraging area seems huge and still abundant. Goats are especially sensitive to parasites and mine will not touch any leaf that has touched ground where there is goat manure. I have a simple wooden feeding rack to keep the branches at my waist height. David maybe you can try a feeding rack to keep their feed off the ground because feed mixing with manure seems like a perfect route for parasites to go from poop to mouth to stomach.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Let's see what the optimal number of rabbits will be for us, but I'd think no greater than 20 individuals in total.
Also, now I understand why every Southern Thai muslim who keeps goats makes the immense effort to build them a stilt house with a slated floor well above the ground! Cows & water buffaloes seem to have less of a problem with those conditions, but if goats are so susceptible to parasites it's best they don't stand around in their own shit, especially if the ground is wet & muddy in rainy season. (I'd love to try goats, but unfortunately our land is both too small and too steep for anything larger than rabbits...)
Making a basic bamboo lattice is pretty simple, so maybe we'll experiment with a raised outside area in the Rainy Season Retreat once we start having issues.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Yeah, I suspect that some sort of incident regarding disease is pretty much inevitable, especially since a friend from the Philippines said that it was the high humidity that was the main problem for his rabbits. I've heard similar things from others who kept rabbits in the tropics - I've even heard it said that you shouldn't give them any wet vegetation after a rain shower!
Luckily, for us there haven't been any problems so far, but maybe now I jinxed it?
Should the experiment fail in the long run, we might try guinea pigs next 😁
Man I’d love to do Guinea pig. Do you guys have the giant Cuy breed in Thailand?
To be honest, I haven't even started looking around - but thanks a lot for the cue! I'll keep my eyes and ears open for Cuy Guinea pigs!
David,
Finally able to read this, very interesting stuff. A few thoughts.
1) Is it more efficient or better to have the rabbits penned and bring the food to them, as it seems like you are doing (correct me if I am wrong)? Or could you potentially free range them. On that note, does the meat yield for rabbits exceed the equivalent in chicken eggs when that extra time investment is considered?
2) it is interesting to me that all tropical diets seem to be protein deficient as the main limiting factor. Do you plant any protein based crops to have as a staple of your diet?
And on that note, seconding the experimenting with guinea pigs. Would be very interesting to see how that turned out.
Hey friend, thanks for taking the time to read this.
1) We keep them in the Rainy Season Retreat only during peak rainy season, when it rains so often and so strong that it's questionable they would survive otherwise. It's more due to necessity than convenience, to be honest. During this time, we keep them penned and bring them food several times daily, because otherwise they'd be soaking wet all the time - they don't seem to have an instinctual fear of rain or humidity, but we don't want to take any chances. Leon from the Philippines reported heavy losses only due to humidity-induced disease.
But as soon as the rains stop, we'll "semi-free range" them again, in the large enclosures we tested successfully last dry season. We have one such larger range set up at all times, and whenever it is dry for a few days we take them out and let them run around there. But it's not always convenient, because they don't have sufficient shelter there - so when we're working on the other side of the garden and it starts raining, we have to sprint back, throw them in a basket and carry them to the safety of their Retreat. Let's see if we get any more smart ideas in the coming years.
I'd definitely say that the extra time investment will pay off eventually, because we do weeding anyway and walk past the bungalow several times daily even before we got our rabbits. It's not that much extra time effort, we simply collect feed when we do weeding, pile it up in a basket, and drop it off for the rabbit as soon as there's enough. I wouldn't even really consider it work, to be honest.
We're not even sure what the average meat yield will be over time, but I guess it compares favorably to our chickens, even if eggs are included.
2) Yes, carbohydrates are generally much, much easier to obtain than plant protein in the tropics - although, traditionally, wild "bush meat" was an easy & stable source of animal protein. Unfortunately, declining wildlife numbers have put a cap on how many wild animals you can harvest sustainably these days.
We have several high-protein crops (beans, tree legumes, certain nuts, even some protein-rich foliage), but none of them could serve as staple so far. More like seasonal additions. There's a few promising nut crops, but the trees will take a few more years before starting to fruit.
As so often, diversity seems to be key.
I really hope we will have an opportunity to find some guinea pigs soon. We'd love to try. If our land was less steep (or we could somehow gain access to more land), we would even experiment with goats or (in the future, when/if we have enough surplus food - environmental conditions permitted) with the small black pigs people traditionally raised throughout the region. According to Karn (whose parent's kept some when she was a child) they have an insatiable appetite, though - and you need to make sure the fence is strong enough at all times so they can't break out. But things like that are much easier to do on a community level - if it's just us two, I think rabbits & chicken are enough, hahaha.
David, always a pleasure and enjoyed reading it.
1) this makes sense, I’m sure you made that clear and I simply missed it trying to read too hastily. And it sounds like you are being efficient having the rabbits capture a nutrient flow that you already are generating, permaculture at its finest!
Rather than buying a meat breed, why not just buy as much diversity of ‘common rabbit’ as you can and start your own breeding program for your conditions? I’d hate to see you spend money on something that could die right away, when they otherwise breed like, well, rabbits. I think you said you ate the bigger buck, but if you just keep the biggest of each generation and keep cycling through I’m sure you will have your own resilient meat breed in good time. All my knowledge is theoretical of course, so take it with a grain of salt!
2) You might be interested in Shane’s ‘Going to Seed’ podcast episode with Reville Saw. He is in Papau New Guinea but talks about various protein crops he is growing and their success in the tropical environment.
Do you raise ducks? It seems like it’d be easier than chickens with your wetter conditions, and I’ve heard they can forage their food more effectively. If you were interested in ducks, you might also consider Muscovy ducks? They are a South American species that is distinct from the two common domestic breeds, and are supposed to be really good for meat production while being incredibly hardly a self-sufficient.
Likewise, if you could get your hands on one, sheep are more resilient than goats and tropical hair sheep are supposed to be very vigorous in hot/humid conditions, and can still mostly browse for their food (though still need to graze as well). That could be a good community project when there is much more farmland available for grazing ruminants one day.
Enjoyed your thoughts and look forward to your response!
Thank you for this post, I was recently looking for exactly this information.
You're most welcome, I'm happy this was useful for you.
As for your earlier inquiry: our rabbits do indeed love Cannabis leaves, but the leaves contain only miniscule amounts of cannabinoids so I'd be surprised if it actually affected them. Also, it's a rather rare treat (not an everyday staple), which they nonetheless seem to cherish much more than most other foods we give them. We usually feed them larger fan leaves that we have to trim anyway - we either use them as human food or give them to the rabbits (or both). Cannabis leaves make an excellent vegetable!
When i was doing my mandatory military service many years ago, they demonstrated how to kill a rabbit in a jungle survival course. The guy simply used his hand to chop the back of the neck, then stuck a straw or pipe in between the fur and meat, blew on it and the air pressure separated them. The rabbit looked like a balloon!
Usually for meat breeds (or any highly productive breed, or milk breed), they need either more or higher quality (eg concentrated) feed. When I buy animals to start, i try to look for someone that has been rearing them for many generations in a similar way that I plan to raise them. Eg fed purely forage, no vaccines and antibiotics. That way you have the lengthy genetical selection done for you already.
Just this week we slaughtered a 5.8m python that ate our goat so thats A LOT of meat. We kept some in our small freezer, fed the dogs cats chickens ducks, and gave the rest to the indigenous people. I live in a Malay village so my neighbours cant eat it because they are Muslims. So your chickens seem like a good bait for edible snakes!
We do appreciate the omnivorous eating habits of the chickens and ducks because we often give them meat that we cant eat (eg slightly rotted but cooked meat). Dead goats, dead chickens, dead ducks that we cant eat gets turned into a readily edible form again (meat and eggs).
I think herbivores will become a big part of our diet when cheap fossil fuel and machinery runs out. No more cheap industrial grains and soy. Herbivore meat will become cheaper than chicken or pig, like it was before. Goat was the main meat in ancient China but now it is rarely eaten.
Thank you so much for your detailed comment!
With the younger rabbits I can totally see how a karate chop to the neck could be enough, but for the larger ones I think I have to hone my Kung Fu skills a bit before I attempt this. I might try the rabbit-balloon thing, although I'm not sure it'll work with the rabbits we keep. I had to use all my strength to pull off the hide in some places!
We initially also wanted to get rabbits from somebody who has raised them in a more permacultural way, but in the end we gave up because there's only a handful of those people in the entire country (it seems). The people whom we got the rabbits from fed them GMO corn, salad (!) and morning glory from roadside ditches... Not the best start, but we're surprised that it worked this well!
Congrats on catching that python - 5.8m is a MASSIVE animal. The largest I've ever caught was around 3.5m, but with yours you could feed an entire village! Definitely jealous, python is my favorite bush meat!
I tend to think the same about the snake "problem" - if I exchange one or two newly hatched chicks for a good sized snake, it's well worth it in terms of calories and time spent. And when the snake eats eggs and you catch them in the act, you even get the egg back! Win-win!
We haven't tried feeding our chickens slightly bad meat yet, partly because whenever we have meat there's usually zero leftover, haha. But we might try this in the future. I'm a bit reluctant to boil animals that died from unknown causes, but only because we don't have an extra pot for stuff like that, so we'd have to use our cooking ware. Might make sense to invest in an extra pot for the future though.
Your thoughts about the importance of herbivores in the future is spot-on, in my opinion. All that rewilding farm land will make great habitat for herbivores as well, especially after the initial decline in human population eliminates the biggest threat for the survivors.
Чудовий підсумок!
Я колись тримав кроликів безстанковим методом :)
Закопуючи по периметру 40 м на глибину 70 см каміння а зверху роблячи щільне подвійне плетиво тину з ліщини, заповнюючи проміжки лозою верби. На кутах накладав довгі жерди з ліщини густо настилаючи сіно, солому чи гілки з листям, щоб робити затишні прохолодні кутки.
Так само в середині все обмежувалось невеликою хатинкою з щільно нашарованих гілок та каміння.
Зазвичай кролі виривали чималі нори в центрі і не намагалися прошмигнути під парканом впираючись в каміння.
Скільки їх там було, одиним богам відомо, але сприйнятливісь до міксоматозу була нижчою ніж у кролів в клітках.
Кормили ми їх нагортаючи накошену траву та сіно копицею, яку вони розтягували і яка слугувала і підстилкою і адсорбентом сечі та калу .
Крім цього давали кормові буряки, а взимку – трохи зерна вівсюгу та жита.
Хутро, використовували для здачі в кооператив, а також бабуся шила шапки-вушанки, які колись в УРСР носили всі.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, that's a very interesting setup! A rabbit enclosure like this probably lasts for generations! If we had more stones in our environment we might try something like that as well, but sadly large stones are too difficult to find in the mountains where we live...
Also, I really love the idea of rabbit hats with ears, but sadly it's a bit too hot for those where we live. Any attempts at hide tanning have been unsuccessful so far, due to the high humidity. Even professionally treated leather eventually starts rotting in this climate.
Great to hear the rabbits are working well for you. Have you considered planting any fodder banks for scaling up the operation? Can you see ways to house them safely without relying on industrial building materials?
Yes, we did - this year we've started planting "runoff barriers" from hibiscus, dense lines along the contour of the slope. They will serve as something like a fodder bank, while at the same time catching runoff and mulch that the chicken throw downhill, and (hopefully) creating low terraces over time as well.
Apart from that, we've diligently hurled ripe wild bananas into the fire break on the border of our land, the goal being a row of wild banana plants that act as a fire-proof wall (due to the water content), distract squirrels & monkeys, and provide a steady supply of banana leaves for the rapidly crowing rabbit clan.
If we took the time, we could easily construct them a palm-thatched bamboo hut - but there will be metal sheet around for decades to come, so it's worth compromising here IMO. (In a post-collapse scenario, I might even use salvaged metal sheets for fencing.) If we have to build a second Rainy Season Retreat we might actually build a small shelter, also because we want to experiment with a slightly elevated floor from bamboo slats and see if that makes harvesting manure any easier.
There's people selling meat rabbit breeds here in Thailand, but they currently still exceed our budget - I had no idea how expensive rabbits from breeders can be!
Maybe next year we'll have a chance to try!