One More Day Until Bunnies

[amberfocus]

And I'm not talking plot bunnies.



This will be our third livestock adventure. The first two, of course, were chickens and ducks for their eggs.

I will be bringing home 1 junior (means less than one years old, but old enough to breed) buck, 1 senior doe (senior just means it is at least one), and one junior doe with six kits that are six weeks old. So nine altogether. They are New Zealand Whites. I would like to eventually have a total of 2 bucks and six does for breeding. That should eventually supply us with enough meat for a weekly meal of rabbit for a year, without overbreeding the does or having them kindle during the coldest part of the year.

We will also be getting some male chicks for fryers this year, if my mother is to be believed. But that is her baliwick. The rabbits are mine. We will be breeding the doe that does not have kits after they have had a few days to settle. We will not breed the junior doe until her kits have been weaned.

We spent most of yesterday getting the shed prepared and the hutches moved in. Today I have to pick up the feed, the food troughs, the water bottles, and dedicated cleaning supplies for the hutches. I have orchard hay and timothy hay already. I will also need to get or make a couple of nesting boxes within a couple of weeks of breeding as it only takes 28 to 34 days for a rabbit to kindle.

It is exciting. I am really looking forward to raising them. Well, almost all the parts of raising them. Probably not the sending them to freezer camp part so much. But if we are going to move more and more towards self-sufficiency and sustainable living, this is one of those things I'll just have to get used to. It is very easy to buy your meat on a polystyrene tray wrapped in plastic and have no knowledge of how your food was raised or that it was in fact, once an animal that gave it's life to sustain yours. Do you know that 70% of elementary age children do not realize that chicken nuggets come from an actual chicken? Although that's debatable, in my opinion, as I'm not sure there's any actual chicken in chicken nuggets, but there is supposed to be. We have moved so far from farm to table some kids don't even realize there is a place beyond the grocery store, that eggs don't automatically come in cartons, and that broccoli actually grows in the dirt. There is quite a lack in food education today.

By raising my own I will know how it was raised, that it lived in a wonderful environment, and was fed the best food, got some time on actual grass, and that it was harvested humanely and with thanks for its sacrifice. That does not, however, mean you won't find me crying like a baby after the first harvest. Youtube vids can only desensitize you so much. I have made the decision to look my food in the face. I consider myself fortunate to even have this opportunity. That does not mean it will be easy, though. Still, we are only 2 generations removed from the farm. We can find our way back.

Comments

[azriona.livejournal.com]

Now I want to know if you're going to name the bunnies. I mean, I know you name the chickens, but for some reason, I think of bunnies as being more like pets, whereas chickens are more like livestock. If that makes any sense at all.

Then again, I name the chickens I cook, but that's after they've been plucked.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

We will only name the breeding stock, not the ones we will eat. We also won't name the frying chickens. We just name the ones that will be around for a while.

[apurplepatch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my rule growing up on a large scale farm was you only name pets, not anything destined for the plate. We only broke this rule once and it was horrible.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

I can imagine. I think the most we might do is bunny A, bunny B, etc.