A rabbit harvest is way overdue
We have way too many rabbits that we've been feeding only because we haven't prioritized harvesting them. We usually catch them as part of the morning chores but with the winter chores it has fallen out of routine. We just ate three from the crock pot, have one resting in the fridge and one in a cage that I'll process tomorrow. I hope to have the rest harvested over the next week or so. We are still undecided whether to get new breeding stock in the spring or keep what we have. We are are looking for slightly larger rabbits.
#homesteading #permaculture #permies #meshtadel #rabbit #rabbitcolony #selfsovereignty #homegrown
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When I harvest rabbits, I give the heads and guts to our karakachan homestead guardian dog. This helps to supplement her food/nutrition. My thinking was that this rabbit byproduct would be best used as food for the dog vs giving it to the chickens or composting it. The dog loves the treat usually scarfs it right down. Unfortunately, we had to take her to the vet a few days after feeding her these rabbit parts. She was acting sluggish and vomiting. I thought maybe she had some bones or a rabbit tooth bothering her. To our surprise, the X-rays revealed she had swallowed the entire rabbit head whole. Thankfully the vet was able to get her to vomit up the head but not without an expensive bill. Similar to my mistake freezing the maple sap reverse osmosis filter, one mishap can erase much of the efficiency gains from aspects of a system all at once. However, the work the dog does far outweighs what we would have to do without her to protect the homestead from predators so I'm glad we were able to get her back into good health even though we had to let go of some sats to do it.
#homesteading #permaculture #permies #karakachan #livestockguardiandog #lsd #dog
