[Music] in this video I'm going to give you everything you need to know about feeding meat rabbits without the feed store whether you want to go off grid save some money or the apocalypse just started and the feed store isn't available to you here's what you need to know when you first start racing rabbits you're going to find that feeding alfalfa hay or forage versus pelleted feed is very controversial and honestly the more I read about it I think the whole reason why it's controversial is because people don't understand how the rabbit's Body Works once you understand their digestive system and what they need to be healthy this is not going to be a problem for you anymore starting off if you are feeding your rabbit commercial feed they're going to get about a/4 of a cup every day which is about an eighth of a cup morning and an eighth of a cup in the evening now of course this assumes a 7 to 12 lb rabbit which if you are raising rabbits for the purpose of meat that's probably your breed anyway if you prefer to weigh things instead of measure it out that's about a half PB which is a/4 lb morning and 1/4 PB in the evening now to feed a rabbit forage only which is grasses and Haze and Alfalfa and whatever weeds you find in your yard whatever your rabbit's weight is multiply that by 1.5 for each month and that is how much food they should get for the month I have American chinchillas so I'm looking at about 18 lbs of dry forage per month don't forget you can screenshot these cards that I've made for you I have highlighted the last three weights on here because this is a little bit eh once you hit that 15 to 22 2 lb Mark your rabbits probably aren't going to be eating 1.5 times their weight those rabbits could probably stick around the 18 to 20 lb mark it just depends on your rabbit and please don't get too caught up in the numbers pay attention to the animal in front of you and just give them what they need for the most part however big your rabbit is is about the size of the bundle of hay or Forge you're going to give them a day if your rabbit has a lot of feed left over knock that down a little bit and if every time you come out to feed your rabbit they are totally out then give them a little more you're not wrong for wanting to use your Common Sense here okay so if you're doing a forage only diet you're going to take their weight multiply that by 1.5 and then multiply that by 12 that will give you how much hay you need for the year in a hay only diet for a pellet only diet you take their weight times 365 and that is how many pellets you need in a year in the ounces so over the course of a year a 10 lb rabbit would either need 180 lb of hay or almost 4,000 o which is 228 lb of their pellets and don't worry I will talk about how to combine your forage and your grains in this video so that way you don't have to choose between one or the other so what does it cost to feed a rabbit with the feed store so if you've got a 10 lb rabbit who is eating 180 lb of hay for the year and most square bales are 50 to 75 lb then you're going to need 3 to 3 and2 Bales for that rabbit for the whole year if you live in the midwest or the South you've got it made you might be able to get these squares for as low as $3 to $4 per bail which is $9 to 122 per year per rabbit once you get away from the IE States things start getting more expensive expensive where $5 to $8 Bales end up being $15 to $32 per year per rabbit $10 to $12 a bail means $3 to $48 a year and where I live $15 to $17 per bail is $45 to $68 per year per rabbit now let's talk about Pet cost from the feed store each bag is about 50 lb and you're going to need about 4 and 1/2 bags per rabbit per year so $12 a bag is 54 a year 15 a bag is $67.50 per year $20 a bag is $90 and finally if you're getting specialty $30 bags you're going to be paying about $135 per rabbit per year let's get into the difference between hay and pellets and which one you might like best just kidding if the feed store is not available you're probably not going to have pellets all jokes aside you can absolutely buy a pelletizer and keep that at your house you can pick one up anywhere from $300 to $3,000 depending on what the application is these are usually called a pellet machine or a pellet Mill anyway for the rest of this video I'm mostly just going to refer to this as forage and Grains I'll get into this in more depth when I talk about the grains but most of the rabbit pellets that you buy from the store are majority of alphalpha followed by hay and then a mixture of grains which I'll show you more of that in a minute so if you wanted to make your own pellets you can just use that to grind it up and have your own formula whether we're going through a crisis or not it's probably going to be a lot easier for you to find the forage type things rather than the grains the reality of it though is that you don't have to pick I have raised and processed rabbits completely on Forge only diets and I've raised rabbits on forage plus grain diets and my conclusion is that they're both great options the all forage diet is usually cheaper your rabbits can be a little more self-sufficient especially if you have a rabbit tractor the rabbits are going to take a little longer to get up to maturity and they're not going to have quite as much fat on them but that's okay but if you feed your rabbits forage and Grains they're going to grow a lot faster and they're going to have a lot of fat on their bodies and if you're in a survival situation this fat is going to be amazing to have and now I feel like I have to make this disc flamer for the millionth time and that is that you do not need to worry about protein poisoning with your domestic rabbits if you were eating anything with basically any amount of fat in it you are going to be completely fine you are not going to have a shortage of fat in your body cooking your rabbit with bacon or putting it in with butter or some Tallow or lard or any kind of seed oils that you might cook with are all going to be very helpful in getting all of the fat that you need and if you are in a survivable situation where you don't have access to those things just eat the organs you will be completely fine I have some videos on here about that and I will be adding more videos on that later my rabbits that I decided to grain finish ended up having almost a half cup of pure white fat all around their kidneys and inside that body cavity it is not marbled in the meat but it's just in there for you to grab out easily I'm actually in the process of making a soap out of mine because I have so much of it left over it's just crazy how much I have right now but seriously please do not worry about protein poisoning or rabbit starvation or any of that it's not an issue and now I want to move on and not talk about it anymore something amazing about rabbits is that they have a 30-day pregnancy and if they are happy they will rebreed immediately after kindling which is birth the mothers are absolutely in control of how often they have babies and that is one of the many reasons why I like raising rabbits so my current American chinchillas are consistently having like 12 babies per lit even from the very first litter and if I let them they would go back to back to back rebreeding immediately but let me tell you what when I was a teenager and I was raising rabbits for 4 Age my rabbits were having maybe four to six babies per liter and they wanted to wait months and months in between now as an adult I look back and I feel so sad thinking about those rabbits because at that time I didn't know as much about nutrition and what made them happy and I was not doing that good of a job of taking good care of them the price we pay for our intelligence is those we unintentionally hurt along the way and my first rabbits paid the price for my ignorance and that is part of the reason why I'm making this video throughout this I'm going to talk about raising meat rabbits and for all of these examples I'm going to assume that you're getting six kits per liter because a lot of times people will have two or three babies and then some people will be up there at 14 15 babies per liter I think that's a good common ground for Simplicity sake we're going to assume that each rabbit is going to give you 36 lbs of meat and if you let your rabbits live to be 12 weeks old you get a prize which is one Pelt each now I know some smarty pants in the comments is going to ask me if I don't address this if your rabbit is under 12 weeks old your rabbit does have a pelt it's just much harder to get it off without some major tearing if you want check out my two videos on tanning rabbit hides with the brains one of those rabbits is really young and one of them is a wild hair that's also young so they're really fragile you'll see what I mean after you check that out the size weight and growth rate of your rabbits also heavily depends on their breed here are six solid options for meat breeds even the smallest one is going to give you at least 3 lbs of meat whereas the largest one is going to be up to 7.2 lb though I will say you're probably not going to get to that 7.2 until you go to about 6 to 7 months at least because of that I consistently say 3 to six lounds of meat across the board most meat rabbits will give you 40 to 60% of their live weight in meat the reoccurring example I'm going to use is three Do's plus one buck so if each dough has six babies per liter and you let each dough have three lit per year you are going to end up with about 54 meat rabbits four of those are your breeders while the other 54 are designed for you to eat and those 54 rabbits are going to give you somewhere between 150 and 324 lbs of meat if you harvest them between 2 and 2 and 1/2 months old that's when you get about 150 lbs of meat between those 54 rabbits if you want to wait a little longer until they are 3 to 4 months old you're going to get 324 lbs of meat plus you're going to get to keep all of those pelts I know that's a lot of numbers so I'm going to do my best to make this as easy to conceptualize as possible so if you get 150 lbs per year you're going to get about 2. 8 lb of rabbit meat to eat per week if you wanted to eat just a little bit of rabbit every day that's about 253 calories per day if you let your Rabbits go a little longer until you get 324 lb that is 6.2 lb per week which is about 547 calories per day which if you are worried about rabbit starvation from not enough protein that's not a problem here because if you are only getting 324 lbs of meat in a year you're not going to starve from a lack of fat you're going to just starve to death you're going to have to either quadruple these numbers or eat your rabbit with something else I would much rather eat my rabbit with something else because even though I like it I don't want it for every single meal anyway if you harvest your your rabbits when they are 2 months old that is the absolute most efficient time you are going to get about one pound of meat back for every 3 lounds of Feed that you give to that animal harvesting at 4 to 6 months is less efficient with a 4:1 ratio but you get more meat and you get to keep your pelts now there are some giant rabbit breeds out there like Flemish Giants and giant chinchillas that weigh up to 22 lbs with a few outliers even hitting 50 lb but it takes at least a year to get that big and they have a higher bone to meat ratio so they don't actually give you 40 to 60% of their weight and meat they're going to be closer to maybe 30 to 50% that number can vary but that'll give you a good idea of what to expect if you're brand new to agriculture or homesteading that 3:1 ratio Probably sounds terrible I promise you it is not the only other animal that can outpa a rabbit on weight gain is fish for example every 1 and2 lounds of meat that you give to a cat fish you're going to get about a pound back and the only other animal that is on track with a rabbit is a Cornish cross meat bird which if you saw my chicken feed video you know that those are not really an option to the public those can only come from a hatchery so those are not available to people who want to have a sustainable backyard meat Source this ratio of feed to me is called the feed conversion ratio often called fcr you can look that up yourself if you feel like it but don't forget I have the homesteaders Chronicle article linked down below which I wrote and it's got all of this information put on to one sheet of paper for you so if I talking too fast or this is a little bit confusing you can always reference back to that and you've also got all of my sources right there so you are free to fact check me an important note about the feed to conversion ratio is that I am specifically talking about the pounds of food that the animal eat so if an animal eats 2 lounds of hay one pound of grain and then eats 4 L PBS of forage from the pasture I'm going to say that that animal ate 7 lounds of feed some people do not count the food that comes from the pasture and would say that that animal only ate 3 lounds of food so me and that other person are going to have a 4B argument I've learned that a lot of cattle producers don't count the pasture so a lot of them will say that their cattle only take 3 to 6 lbs of feed to get one pound of meat I know it is way more difficult to track the pasture usage but I do think that pasture space is valuable and it should be counted typically pasture raised animals will take more feed but that perk is that they are cheaper to feed overall a rabbit who is eating fresh forage is going to eat more food and they're going to take a little bit longer to get bigger but a rabbit eating hand grains requires more of your labor they're going to grow faster but they will eat less food by the time you get to the end of this video you'll be able to see which is the best option for you if you want to do a combination of the two before we get into the nitty-gritty details though are there any ways to reduce your rabbit feed needs the answer is yes but you basically just have one option take it or leave it that option is a rabbit tractor if you have enough brows available for your rabbit and you're willing to move that tractor enough this could probably take care of all of their feed needs especially in the summer months the main Park of a rabbit tractor is it saves you so much labor the only real work you have to do is moving your rabbits to and from their tractor morning and evening or you could leave them in there all the time if you feel comfortable uh with The Predator pressure in your area and then moving that tractor every now and then is your only real work involved so if I was in a survival situation I would probably breed all of my rabbits back to back from May to October please keep in mind that I am in Northwestern Montana and we have snow on the ground from like mid October until maybe miday I'm kind of at a higher elevation to so unless you're at an extreme area like I am you probably can get even more out of this and if you're in the South you might even be able to keep your rabbits in a rabbit tractor all year long so for my particular situation I have a buck and four Do's that are my breeders and that would cost me about 540 lbs of hay to get them through those 6 months where I cannot put them on the rabbit tractor 540 lb is about N9 bales of hay I'll talk about the land and labor later but I have cut and bundled about a qu of an acre here but I am completely confident that I could get my nine bales of hay completely by hand with no extra Machinery in just one or two days now if you're thinking geez a rabbit tractor sounds like so much more work I don't want to build anything can I just turn my rabbits loose I'm going to say yeah you can but there's going to be some consequences the difference between your rabbit and a wild rabbit is how they've been bred and their instincts if you're a seasoned rabbit breeder I would love it if you talked about this in the comments but in my experience if I forget to shut a cage door and a rabbit leans on that and falls out of the cage he will sit there under that cage however long it takes for you to come back out and put him back domestic rabbits do not want to be wild now they might run away from you if you startle them when you're going to pick them up but for the most part they are going to sit right under that Hutch and just hope to magically teleport back up in there because they like having their Meals On Demand and they do not want to be out and loose in the summer your loose rabbits are going to breed prolifically you can ask anyone in Australia or New Zealand they can confirm that but here in North America we have Winters and that is what keeps our rabbit population in ch it's estimated that only 30% of wild rabbits survive winter and only 10% of wild rabbits actually live to see adulthood if you live somewhere that doesn't have heavy Predator pressure or you don't have some really bad Winters kind of like Australia and New Zealand the rabbit population will go crazy but for a good part of the US rabbits are not going to do very well and in all reality you're probably subjecting your rabbits to a pretty terrible death if you turn them loose so I don't recommend that but it's totally an option if you want to take it now let's talk about what your rabbit needs to eat once you understand this you are completely free from the feed store I'm probably not going to word this right so please forgive me but pelleted feed is more expensive because the price you pay there is for someone else to do this math for you and to make sure that everything is evenly balanced those expensive pellets are not necessarily going to be any better than what you can grow at home it's just that someone else already went through all the trouble of formulating that for you basically I like to see pellets as a convenience tax anyway your rabbits need carbs and they need crude fiber fatty acid protein minerals and vitamins carbs and crude fiber are kind of the same thing some of it's digestible what they can digest is a carb and what they can't is a crude fiber carbs are what gives your rabbits calories and energy while the fiber is what keeps the rabbit's digestive system flowing without any blockages good sources of this include grasses herbes perennials which some people call weeds but I think they are lovely and I do not call them that leafy greens leafy vegetables bran corn barley oats rye wheat Millet and sorghum your young meat rabbits and your bucks and your non-breeding Do's are going to need 43 to 47% carbohydrates and these growing or otherwise non-productive rabbits also need 20 to 27% fiber Meanwhile your pregnant or nursing Do's need 44 to 50% carbohydrates and they need 15 to 20% fiber it's often advised to give your pregnant and nursing Do's more feed and they actually don't need that I know some of you are going to get mad at me for saying that but they need their diets to be balanced a little bit differently when they are pregnant and nursing if you know how to balance this right you don't need to give them extra feed now I do and they end up having more waste but I think it's important to know that that extra feed is not actually necessary it's more of a foolproof suggestion to keep new rabbit breeders from accidentally underfeeding their pregnant and nursing dose rabbits can be malnourished or nutrient deficient even with the stomach full of all the nutrients and vitamins they need if they don't have enough fatty acids in their diet without these fatty acids it's impossible for them to to absorb their nutrients and vitamins growing rabbits bucks and non-breeding Do's are going to need 2 to 3.5% of their diet to be fat while you're pregnant and nursing Do's need 3 to 5 1 12% fat most grasses weeds and hay are 2 to 4% fat all on their own forage is going to take care of most of their fat needs especially if you're giving them outside time in the rabbit tractor or you're pulling things to give to them in their hutches seeds are naturally higher in your fatty acids too while you can absolutely give your rabbit seeds or nuts to make up that extra fat there is a secret source that most people don't consider oats wheat barley and even corn are just forms of grasses we all value the tops of those grasses but what a lot of people forget is that the tops of grass and grass hay also has seed heads like that and these native grasses that are growing in your backyard they have a lot of value too grass seed can be up to 177% Fat sunflowers are up to 62% fat meanwhile pumpkin seeds are up to 55% fat so if you feel like your rabbits need a little boost of fat those are excellent sources sprouting seeds also called fodder is another excellent option here I'll have to come back to that one in another video though so this isn't too long but make sure you keep that in your back pocket because it's really good to know about all right now it's time for protein this is the part that you've probably already paid pretty close attention to especially if you've been buying pelleted feed from the store those bags usually tell you how much protein they have in really big letters so it's hard for you to miss that rabbits need protein for growing reproducing and for their overall health your growing meat rabbits your bucks and your non-breeding Do's need 12 to 15% protein while your pregnant and nursing do need 16 to 20% protein what's very convenient about all of this is that alphalpha is about 12 to 28% protein and what's even more convenient is the fact that bucks don't need quite as much protein as the Doe's which is handy because alphalpha is high in calcium and too much calcium for a buck is a big problem so when you're balancing out your rabbit's diet make sure that your buck is getting quite a bit less Alfalfa than your Do's grass is about 10% protein so if you give him majority of grass hay with just a little bit of alfalfa he'll be in great shape other good sources of protein are wheat soybean meal canola meal cornmeal seeds Sprouts parsley and peas oh and don't worry too much about your young male meat rabbits because if you give them too much protein you're going to butcher them before that becomes any amount of an issue for them your feed store rabbit pellets are usually a rich green color and that is because the majority of those pellets are alphalpha that has been chopped up and pelletized I don't exactly understand this mindset so if you do please please comment below I would love to hear from you but I see a lot of breeders who are exclusively feeding their rabbits pellets who talk about how alphalpha is bad for rabbits but I know exactly what brands they're feeding their rabbits and I know that those brands are like 50% alphalpha sometimes more I am absolutely not bashing that I just I don't understand and I for this many people to say that I feel like I have to be missing something so if you could please answer that I would be so grateful and I will pin your comments so that way other people can come check it out anyway let's move on to the minerals your rabbits need minerals for growing their bones growing their teeth which never stop growing by the way electrolyte balance and to avoid most illnesses and deficiencies these minerals come straight from the earth and plants coming up out of the soil is the vehicle to get them into your rabbit's body which as I'm sure you can imagine that is why so health is so important rabbits specifically need salt calcium phosphorus magnesium manganese iron zinc copper and Cobalt and this can be found in Alfalfa leafy greens hay grass weeds Ash and Sprouts more specifically each of these plants in their younger ages are going to be heavier in the minerals so alfalfa sprouts for example are going to have a higher mineral content than full grown Alfalfa finally let's talk about vitamins and if you have a queasy stomach now is a great time for you to stop eating rabbits need vitamins to use and metabolize the carbs fats and protein that they get and more specifically they need vitamins a C D E K and B complex which is B1 B2 B3 B5 B6 B7 B9 and b12 these are found in leafy greens vegetables grains seeds fruits legumes and rabbit cecotropes so what is a cecotrope rabbits have two kinds of manure they have the soft night feces called cecotropes and the hard pellets that you've already seen as you can yes these soft night feces come out at night usually when the rabbit is alone and the rabbit will eat these as soon as they are exiting the body rabbits don't have a way to recirculate the B vitamins and protein that they need so this is their way of manually recirculating this back into the digestive system aren't you thankful that as a human our vitamins are already naturally reabsorbed without our help Evolution did rabbits dirty so let's move on from that if you understand the nutritional profile of different forage types you can do an all Forge diet without the grains remember that each rabbit will eat 1.5 times its body weight per month I have American chinchillas they weigh 12 lb each so I'm going to use them as an example over these next few slides so A Buck in three do is going to eat 72 lbs of hay per month for the most part that is going to be about 1 to 1 and 1/2 bales of hay so now let's say you breed that buck to all three of those do and all three of those do have six babies each that very first month those babies are only going to nurse from their mothers and as I mentioned before the mothers actually don't eat anything extra they just need their diet to be reworked so it's a little more balanced in the rabbit second month of Life they're going to eat up to 10 lbs each I am estimating this extremely high this is probably closer to like 6 or 7 lbs but I'm going to say 10 just for the sake of making sure that you have plenty of feed for your animals I would much rather overestimate it and you have a surplus then the other way around so if these 18 babies eat 10 lb of hay during their second month of life they are going to eat a total of 180 lb so if you combine what the babies ate plus what the parents have been eating for the past 2 months that is a total of 252 lb of hay which is close to four bales of hay your more serious meat breeders are going to butcher all of their rabbits at around 8 weeks old which will have successfully turned about 180 lb of hay into 50 lb of meat now this will be different for everyone but our family of four will split up about a pound of meat per meal so that means we've basically turned three bales of hay into 50 meals if it's not as important for you to have the most efficient feed conversion you'll keep going so in their third month of life these eight rabbits are going to eat up to 12 lbs of hay and again this is estimated pretty high but like I said I want it to be safe so you're going to have a total of 612 lbs of hay for the first 3 months of life and that includes the parents hay if you butcher at this point the rabbits are 12 weeks old and you're going to get around 90 lbs of meat if you only count what the babies eat that is turning 396 lb of hay into 90 pounds of meat that's basically turning six square bales into 90 meals if you want to let your Rabbits go up to be 4 months old so that way you can keep the pelts your baby rabbits could eat up to 18 lbs of hay this month so in this fourth month including with the parents a you're going to be right at 1,000 lb of hay in total by 4 months old these rabbits are going to eat nearly 3,000 lb of hay giving you 324 lb of meat if you butcher your rabbits at 16 weeks old you have effectively turned 720 lbs of hay into 8 lb of meat plus you're getting 18 pelts this is basically turning 12 square bales into 108 meals and 18 pelts is enough for a small to medium siiz blanket so if you butcher your rabbits at 8 weeks old which is the most efficient age you are going to turn 1,400 lb of hay into 150 lb of meat if you like to wait until the rabbits are 16 weeks old for the maximum meat and pelts you're going to turn 3,000 lb of hay into 324 lb of meat plus you're going to get 54 pelts 54 pelts is probably enough to cover a full siiz bed I'm estimating that it's going to take me around 74 or 75 pelts to cover my king-size bed now if you're thinking holy crap that is way too much hey I'm completely there with you okay the reality of it is that you're probably going to put your rabbits in tractors for at least half the year and if you're using rabbit tractors the whole time that your meat rabbits are growing up that is going to significantly cut down your hay usage for this example I'm going to assume that your butchering at 16 weeks old because that's going to get you your maximum meat and your pelts then at that point you only need 540 lb of hay to get your four breeders through the winter and the rabbit tractors are going to sustain all of your rabbits through the summer which means that you've turned 540 lbs of hay into 300 lb of meat and if you're in a survival situation you probably have a lot of stuff going on anyway so this is probably the best way to go you could easily get those seven bales of hay over a weekend especially if there's more than one of you and yeah you're turning seven bales of hay into over 300 lb of meat plus 54 pelts that's pretty amazing so now let's move on to the burning question how much space do you need to grow all of this forage here in Montana you're going to get about 1.81 tons of hay and 2 tons of alfalfa meanwhile in Indiana and many of the Midwestern states you're going to get 2.8 tons of hay per acre and 3.5 tons of alphalpha per acre I got these numbers from the usda's national agricultural statistics service I felt like I was going to have a stroke saying that so how much space are you going to need to grow all of that forage for a forge only diet for your rabbits each adult rabbit will need about 2,000 ft of space this is equal to 12 125th of an acre per year and each meat rabbit will need 50 to 215 ft of forage space equal to 1/ 1,000 or 1/ 1200th of an acre per year a buck three do's and 9 L of meat rabbits will need 13,000 to 28,000 ft of space for their forage which is equal to 1/3 to just over 2/3 of an acre please note that these figures assume a Mixed Field of grass hay and Alfalfa and they also assume an average yield of hay of alphaalpha hay per acre these figures came from the USDA as mentioned in the last slide and these averages are per acre per year so it doesn't tell you how many cuting you're doing or how much you're getting per cutting it's just telling you what the productivity is per field per year just looking at those average numbers I'm going to say pretty confidently that if fertilize and irrigate your Fields you could probably double that yield meaning you would need half the space a lot of hay farmers are not irrigating or fertilizing their fields so you're going to have a pretty good Advantage right there doing things on the small scale has its perks for sure so now let's break down what needs to go into a grain and forage diet now the majority of your commercial pellets are going to be alphalpha followed by wheat middlings I've got no complaints with Al Alfa being the primary ingredient but I do not like that second one if you didn't know wheat middlings are the product of wheat Milling that is not the flow it's not the seed it's just the leftover bits it's got a lot of fiber but that's really more than what your rabbit needs this is really a cheap filler product so my suggestion is 20% corn 10% wheat that includes the berries which is the good part that has all the fats in it that your rabbit needs plus 10% barley and 10% oats and the other 50% is forage preferably the majority of that is going to be alphaalpha except for your buck and hopefully that is going to be majority hay for him the the corn wheat barley and oats can be swapped out for other ingredients of similar nutritional values use what you have near you for instance here in Montana we have almost zero soybeans growing so obviously I'm not going to include that in the diet but if you live in the midwest that's probably going to be a bigger component for you so you can make that a larger part of their diet even with your grains forage is going to make up 50% of the diet so we're pretty much going to slash their forage needs in half and then replace that with grain which means you're going to get about 108 lbs of forage per adult breeder per year that takes up 300 to 1,000 ft of growing space and for your meat rabbits that is 5 to 20 lbs of forage which is 8 to 107 ft of space I didn't say this before but I think everyone should know this and that is that rabbits need to have food in front of them all the time no matter what it is just as important for them to have food as it is to have water when us people are hungry or we start to think about food that's when we start to salivate if you've been hungry before and you've started to produce that I and then you didn't eat you got a really bad tummy ache that's because you basically produced all of the stomach acid and salivation and there was nowhere for it to go so it started hurting your own stomach uh rabbits can't turn that off they are just constantly making this acid so when you take their food away from them they are going to be in a lot of pain and the worst part is that rabbits are quiet animals so there is no way for them to tell you that they just sit there and they deal with it it is stressful for them emotionally and physically to go without food and that is why I always like to have some kind of food in front of them them preferably good forage and I know throughout this video I probably sound like I'm against pellets I'm absolutely not I just have a problem with people who feed their rabbits just a little bit of pellets in the morning and a little bit in the evening and then they're going without throughout the rest of the day and I know there's a lot of overlap between rabbit and horse people so I think it's worth saying that the same thing applies to horses so if you're the kind of person who is only giving your animals just a little bit in the morning and a little bit in the evening and they are running out in the middle of the day and in the middle of the night maybe stop that I am not saying this from a place place of judgment because I did exactly the same thing and I wish someone had told me different I had lots of rabbits and lots of horses sitting around with empty stomachs during the middle of the day and the middle of the night because I didn't know better so I hope maybe this video helps you avoid the same problems with your animals that got kind of long sorry about that let's move on okay over the next few minutes when I'm talking about the specific Foods I'm still going to be using the example of one buck and three do with each adult weighing 12 lb each dough having 3 lit per year and each litter having six kits okay corn is 20% of their diet you're going to need 43 lb per breeder 2 to 8 lb per meat baby and that total is 280 lb for the whole year if you butcher at 2 months or 605 lb for the full year if you butcher at 4 months old don't forget you can take screenshots here assuming that you are getting the national average of 4.5 tons per acre you need between 1,300 and almost 3,000 ft to grow all of the Corn for all of your rabbits for the full year now if wheat is going to take up 10% of the diet then you need 21.6 lb per breeder which is 1.4 lb per meat baby that is 140 lb for the whole year if you butcher it 2 months or 32 lb for the whole year if you butcher at 4 months assuming you can get almost 1,700 lb of wheat per acre you are going to need somewhere between 3600 and 7,800 square ft for the whole year oats is going to have a similar profile it's 10% of the diet 21.6 lb per breeder 1 to 4 lb per meat baby 140 lb for the whole year you butcher at 2 months for the whole Colony or 32.8 lb for the whole year butchering at 4 months old assuming you can get 2 and 1 12 tons of Oats per acre you are going to need somewhere between 1,200 and 2600 ft for the whole year barley has the same breakdown as the oats and the wheat since it is also 10% of the diet assuming you can get one ton of barley per acre you are going to need between 3,000 and 6500 ft of barley for the whole year Okay so so let's wrap this up nicely if you doing a forge only diet you need somewhere between 1,300 and 2800 ft of forage that is equal to 1/3 to just over 2/3 of an acre keep in mind your rabbits can get a lot of this on their own without your labor if you put them in a rabbit tractor for at least 6 months of the year and for forage only you can just go out and collect it and dry it and it's good to go if you're feeling ambitious you can feed that pasture your rabbit droppings and that'll give you an even better yield this is definitely the lowest effort option for you for you if you want to feed 4AGE plus grains it's going to take somewhere between 16,000 and 34,000 ft of forage plus grain space which is equal to A3 to 4 fths of an acre so depending on your choices which is either forage only or forage plus grain or butchering at 8 weeks versus butchering at 16 weeks you are going to need somewhere between 1/3 to 4 fths of an acre to grow all of your rabbits for the year growing hay especially in a survival situation is going to be free it just takes your labor please know that I am saying just takes your labor with air quotes because I know that is a lot of work now I know I am going to leave out a lot of expenses for growing hay because I don't know what your rent or your mortgage is I don't know how much you pay in property taxes you do you can figure that out I am only going to be talking about the direct cost associated with growing hay which in this case is free I live up in the mountains here in Northwestern Montana and I absolutely have not irrigated my field at all and even during the worst of our droughts our grass did not die off that is because we have native grasses which is amazing so if you can do that I highly recommend it I would like to irrigate eventually but right now things are doing great because of these native grasses they're amazing it should probably go without saying but I'm going to say it anyways in an apocalyptic scenario it is going to be a lot easier to find grass and weeds and other vegetation than it is to find grains while I love my chickens this is one of the reasons why I think that rabbits are a little bit more of a sustainable and safe option but if you're stationary and you have the space to grow your own hey I think you should take the time to fertilize it because rabbits make a ton of manure each adult rabbit is going to make just over a pound and a half of manure a day this manure can be applied straight to the Garden or your hay field it's safe it's not going to burn your plants and you'll want to add about 200 lb of manure for every 1,000 ft of space you can go up to 400 lb per th000 ft but that's usually Overkill 200 is going to be best for most people it's also worth noting that fresh rabbit manure is about 2.4 % nitrogen 1% phosphorus and 0.6% potassium that's four times as nutritious as cow and horse manure and twice as good as chicken manure and unlike those other animal manures it's not going to burn your plants so you don't need to have any kind of a wait time before adding it so if each adult rabbit makes 1.65 lbs of manure a day then each breeder will give you 62.2 lb of manure a year that means that your buck plus three do is going to give you 2400 lb of manure and that will cover about 12,000 ft of space on top of that each meat baby is going to give you 15 to 45 lbs of manure during their lifetime so 54 of those guys is going to give you 810 to 24,30 lb that means you can cover somewhere between 3,000 and 12,000 ft of space in total you're going to get a half acre of free fertilizer every single year and if you've been paying attention you know that's about how much space your rabbits need to grow their own feed which congratulations that means means you have just made a closed loop food system I know I'm a nerd because that gets me excited finally let's talk about how much it costs to grow your grains for the year I am still using the same example of four meat babies plus four breeders for a total of 58 rabbits most people who are feeding grains to their rabbits are going to butcher at 8 weeks old so that's the figure I'm going to use for this one you might be able to get these seeds for cheaper at a local place I don't know what your options are but TR Leaf market.com is a great option for you they ship to all 50 states so no matter what this one is always available to you I'm not sponsored by them I'm sharing it because I appreciate all the educational materials you get with this they tend to give you the history of these varieties and they have a lot of varieties to choose from Plus for a lot of their seeds they're going to tell you the weight that you're getting but also about how many seeds there are in each pack that makes it a lot easier to plan things out it cost $17.24 to get 7,000 corn seeds so in total it's going to be about 86 cents per year to feed your 58 rabbits next our wheat is $11 for 35 lb and I know that I need 8.3 lb to feed my 58 rabbits for the year so it's going to cost me about $24 per year to feed those 58 rabbits if you're wondering how the heck I'm calculating this I'm going to warn you it is a giant pain in the neck basically you have to look up what your yield is per acre and you also have to look up what the recommended sewing rate per acre is I I know for my wheat I'm going to get about 1,680 lb of wheat per acre planted and I know that for my buck three Do's plus 9 L for the year butchering at 2 months old I'm going to need 3,630 ft then I have to look up the recommended sew rate for red hard winter wheat I know that is 28 to 30 plants per square foot since there is 1.25 million plants per acre and since I know that there are 15,000 seeds per pound and I know that there is about an 80% germination rate then I can calculate this so with all of those numbers I know that the average farmer is planting 100 lb of wheat per acre and 1 acre is 43,560 ft so I put 100 over that 43,560 and beside that I have a question mark over 3,630 so now you take that 3,630 and multiply that by 100 you take that really big number and then divide that by 43,560 that gives me 8333 so I know that I need 8.3 lb to feed my 58 rabbits for the year always multiply your diagonal numbers and then divide them by the remaining number and that will get you the question mark that is by far the fastest and easiest way to work through that equation barley has a similar recommended sew rate so I'm going to end up at the same place with 8.3 lb needed to feed 58 rabbits for the year it cost $663 to get 24 lb of the barley and since I need the 8.3 lb I know that it's going to cost me $20.96 per year to feed those 58 rabbits and lastly it's $27.5 for 5 lb of oats and it's going to cost you about $45.73 per year to feed those 58 rabbits so what is the grand total to feed these 58 rabbits for the year feeding a forage only diet only cost your labor meanwhile a diet of 50% forage and 50% grains is going to cost cost $11.55 now you can't go to the feed store or these online markets and tell them you want exactly this many seeds so what you're going to do is buy more than you need and that Surplus is going to help you in the upcoming years so your total upfront cost to buy seed grains to feed your 58 rabbits at first year is going to be $233.6 and the reason why I mentioned the first year is because seed saving is an option if you're up for the challenge of saving seeds for the next year then your next years of growing are going to be completely free only for the cost C of your labor plus something I really like about seed saving is the fact that your plants are slowly getting more acclimated to your area so every following crop is going to handle your moisture content and your soil type better and better every single year and it really does not take much for you to save back enough for the next year since each year of corn has about 600 to 1200 seeds per cob you could get somewhere between 600 and 12200 new plants from every single year of corn your oats and barley isn't getting quite as good of a return but it's still pretty impressive with each plant potentially giving you another 48 plants so if you plant just 150th of each crop extra for the purpose of seed saving that will take care of all of your needs for the next year I would probably go a little higher than this just for the purpose of seed saving but you get the point so now you know how to potentially cut out the feed store alt together this information can get you through hard times and now you have the potential to create a closed loop system so you do not need the feed store at all and you can feed your rabbits a diet that is just as good if not better than what they were getting from from the store hey if I talk too fast or you need an easy reference guide make sure you check out the homesteaders chronicle.com I'm linking to that down in the description this whole video was based on that article that I wrote also I feel the need to tell you that I am doing this by myself there is no one to prove read or fact check for me so there's a very good chance that I messed something up somewhere in here but if you catch a mistake please let me know I don't want to mislead other people so yeah comment that and hopefully we can correct whatever I said wrong also I just joined YouTube this month so it's safe to say that I don't know what I'm doing yet I planned on having a lot more time to experiment and figure things out before this many of you came along so I'm very grateful you're here but maybe lower your expectations just a little please anyway thank you so much for being here I appreciate it and if you watched this long you're awesome thank you so [Music] much [Music] oh
