We don’t have any of the “fancy” breeds of rabbits. No long-haired Angora, no lop-eared Giants, no mini rabbits of any sort. What we have are “utility” rabbits I suppose, although the New Zealand Whites are from good, solid stock.

Our primary reason for having rabbits is for their meat. Because of this, we didn’t bother with purebreds or registration papers or any of that. You can’t eat the paper and having it doesn’t make the meat taste any different.

We started off by visiting a rabbitry in another city. We told the owner we wanted New Zealand rabbits. He said he didn’t have any white ones available but he had several colored New Zealands. We looked at them and immediatly fell in love with one that was white on the front half of her body and red on the back half. It looked as though someone had drawn a line, cutting the rabbit in half, and then applied the color! And there was a jet black bunny, all slick and shiny. These were both girls so we then looked for a male. We were shown a lovely gray rabbit and the owner explained that he wasn’t “gray”, he was agouti. Oh. Since we obviously didn’t know what agouti was, he explained that agouti is when each hair has three different and distinct colors on it. Supposedly, it’s quite unusual and hard to find. Of course we had to have this guy.

The rabbits ate and grew and finally were old enough to breed. We got nice litters of babies, all different colors but mostly just a plain brown like a wild rabbit. That was disappointing because we really hoped for more that were marked like Cutey Pie. Grandkids named the rabbits and Maddie immediately tagged the red and white rabbit with the name of Cutey Pie.

I remember from my 4-H days many years ago that the bunnies are ready for slaughter around 8 weeks of age. At that point, they should weigh 5 pounds and will dress out to about 2 to 2-1/2 pounds each. Well, at 8 weeks, these babies weighed about 3 to 4 pounds. It took a full 12 weeks to get them to 5 pounds!

Don’t get me wrong. The meat was always nice and tasty but I couldn’t help thinking that we were putting an awful lot of feed into these rabbits to get them to size. And then, upon butchering them, I found that there was a lot of fat in and on them! As time went on, we realized that although these rabbits were doing the job for us, they weren’t the most efficient at feed conversion. The meat cost too much per pound.

We spent a lot of time trying to find New Zealand White rabbits at a reasonable price. Personally, I don’t think $25 to $45 for an 8 week old bunny is exactly a reasonable price. That was the best we could do… and so we didn’t.

Last summer, a friend (actually, she had bought her first rabbits from me and we just got to be rabbit friends) called and announced that she was going to bring me three white rabbits, if it wouldn’t offend me. Offend me? You gotta be kidding!

Dad got busy building new housing for the white rabbits and we were all thrilled when Heather brought them to us. These guys were just 8 weeks old and already as big as my adult breeding rabbits.

As they grew, and grew and grew….. they soon filled the cage from one end to the other when they stretched out. At last they were ready to breed.

At the time of this writing, one has 4 bunnies and the other has 7. They are six weeks old and a very good size. This is what we wanted all along. I’m anxious to see if there is any difference in the taste of the meat. The reason I’m wondering is that we noticed a marked difference in the taste and texture of meat from our goats. Those bred as meat goats had a much better texture, better flavor and more pleasing color in the meat when compared to the dairy type animals.

No, we aren’t going to get rid of our other rabbits. Through some selective breeding, we now have a number of bunnies that are white with red spots. They are adorable and make lovely pets. Of course, the meat is quite tasty but the carcass is a bit smaller. We still get a rare gray rabbit and of course there is still that pesky brown color, but it’s coming less frequently now.

I will try to post helpful hints that we have learned the hard way in our rabbit-keeping venture. One thing for sure, if you want to reduce your dependency on grocery store meats, rabbits are the way to go. A single male with 2 or 3 females will keep your family supplied with plenty of rabbit meat. You can cook the meat pretty much the same way you would chicken but they most definitely do NOT taste the same.

Rabbit meat is more heart-healthy than chicken. Less fat and less cholesterol, which is always a good thing. I guess the only reason you don’t hear more about rabbit is that it’s only rarely available in the supermarket and when it is, it’s on the expensive side.