I've been looking for a breed that is dual purpose and I think we found him. He is a Beveren and should get to 10-11 lbs. We don't have any experience but have read lots of blogs and since we live in an area were we can't have chickens we went for the Rabbits. My kids are happy and we already have lots of rabbit friendly greens, trees, shrubs growing in the yard so once we experiment a little with the feed and get it down we will try and get off of commercial pellets asap. He has already had kale, parsley, clover, we are going to go slow but we are really excited.
If you have pointers out there just let me know. One of the biggest questions is bamboo a good forage. I have read it is excellent for cattle and horses in the winter but I can't find anyone out there feeding it to their rabbits.
2 comments:
I wanted to drop by to return the blog visit and thank you for taking the time to comment on mine. I've never heard of the Beveren breed rabbit. Very interesting. I used to keep Angoras, quite few years ago, so can relate to foraging for them. We didn't have bamboo at the time so I'm not sure about that. I've been curious if goats can eat bamboo.
I don't know if you've thought of this or not, but The Weekend Homesteader recently put her rabbit hutches over her compost bins. I think that's an excellent arrangement.
So nice to see someone check out my blog. I don't write a lot but "one of these days" I hope too. As to your question about bamboo and goats I was told by someone growing all types of Bamboo that Auburn tried to get a study done with regard to goats but couldn't get enough bamboo to complete the study (the goats love it) and I have read and was told that the nutrition is best in the winter when all other forage is weakest or nonexistent. I have found that rabbits love it. My Beveren will eat it all day long. The hutches over the compost idea is great, I have seen hutches over worm bins, over chickens in a coop, and over ducks. As of right now we just put it straight into the garden. I'm still looking for an unrelated Doe for my Buck.
All the best
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