This is significant.
Never, ever put the buck in the doe’s cage if you want rabbits to mate. She will beat the living daylights out of him till his only thought is of getting away, not having sex. Rabbit females are fiercely protective of their territory. Put the doe in the buck’s cage instead. He will be happy to see her, but she will be a little confused.
Managing my tiny farm in north Pulaski County has led me to this most recent realization.
I am a novice rabbit wrangler who knows very little about what I am doing. Now that my bunnies are five months old and ready to breed, I’m learning how to create a loving environment in the hutches through painful trial and error. They have bald eagle-like claws on their rear paws and are adorable and cuddly. My last three doe transfers have left the back of my hands in a bloody, scratched mess, and my bucks require roughly 12 hours between dates.
The process of breeding is fascinating. Before he mounts her, the doe and the buck spend a few seconds getting to know one another after I drop her off in his boudoir. Instead of fast dating, consider speed mating. He takes off like a jackhammer for ten or fifteen seconds after he and she are in position, then he stiffens for a second before falling backwards as if he had been struck by lightning. Drama kings, etc.
I cultivate a lot of fruits and vegetables in the more G-rated areas of the farm, but each season I am brought to the dance by heirloom tomatoes. The dance is over come first frost, but not when it comes to costs. In the winter, when there is little money, tasks like removing tomato stake and string rows, spreading truckloads of manure, and purchasing and distributing 1000-pound rolls of mulch hay must be completed.
Thus, I discovered meat bunnies. That might provide the farm with year-round revenue.
I used to work at the Hillcrest Farmers Market, raising sheep and selling lamb. However, it simply became too damn athletic at 73. It takes a young man to try to worm a 100-pound ewe that is afraid. Now, I think I might be more into bunnies. I’ll have rabbit meat to sell at the market starting this winter, if my learning curve doesn’t completely incapacitate me.
The breed stock for my budding rabbit enterprise consists of my two bucks and ten TAMUK does. These rabbits were bred to withstand heat at Texas A&M University at Kingsville, or TAMUK for short. TAMUK is an agricultural department located in south Texas. A rabbit can’t really be frozen to death, although they can devour their young or perish if they get too hot.
I’ll admit that I’ve grown a little attached to my breeder rabbits. They’re nice and inquisitive, and I’m sure I’ll learn how to pick one up eventually. Friends, especially women, stop by and tell me how adorable they are and how I could possibly consider eating them. I calmly clarify that I only plan to murder their offspring and that my breeders are not on the menu. When the young bunnies are 10 or 11 weeks old and weigh roughly 5 pounds live, I will have them killed. My goal is to raise roughly 300 meat rabbits year, dress them to a weight of 2.5 pounds, and sell them for around $10 per pound.
Compared to chicken, rabbit meat is lower in calories, higher in protein, and cholesterol-free. It’s also excellent. I ran over a rabbit on my way from Little Rock to the farm, cutting through Camp Robinson, the last time I had one. Since it was winter and I didn’t want to throw away the meat, I stopped and threw him into the truck bed. We ate fried rabbit and a butterhead lettuce salad from the garden that evening. Where else would a man want to live, although life out here gets a little weird.
It’s dragon-slaying time!
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