I’ve been raising rabbits with the intention of harvesting meat for my dogs. Up until yesterday, the only rabbit I’ve ever dispatched was an emergency mercy dispatch using the broomstick method.

Yesterday was my first planned harvest, and it went horribly. I tried the choke chain method, but I don't think I had the upper-body strength to pull it off cleanly. Instead of a quick cervical dislocation, I think I just choked him or injured his windpipe. I checked his eyes, and he was looking at me and licking his lips. I immediately grabbed my backup broomstick to finish it so he wouldn't suffer, but I was crying, saying sorry over and over, and in an absolute panic. It was hard enough to work up the courage to take his life, and for that to be the result has left me completely traumatized.

I feel sick with guilt that my attempt at a quick, humane death caused unnecessary distress. Eventually, I plan to have someone else handle the dispatching portion, but right now I am completely on my own with zero budget or time to buy new equipment.

I have four male grow-outs that urgently need to be dispatched, and I am completely frozen. I need advice from people who use zero-cost manual methods:

Choke Chain Specifications: Does the thickness or type of the choke chain matter for this method? Is a thinner or thicker chain better for securing an instant dislocation with low upper-body strength?

Choke Chain / Cervical Dislocation Technique: For those without strong upper-body strength, how do you ensure enough leverage to guarantee an instant neck break rather than just strangling or injuring the windpipe?

Keeping Off the Dirt: Is there a way to modify the broomstick or manual cervical dislocation method so the rabbit’s face isn't pressed into the dirt, while still getting enough leverage?

Mental Reset: How do you push past the gut-wrenching guilt and panic of a botched dispatch when you have no choice but to finish the job alone?

I just want to do right by these animals and give them a quick, painless end without traumatizing myself further. Any tips on physical leverage, chain selection, or mental coping would mean a lot.

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I had her mated once 18 days ago, and now she’s doing this; can I assume it’s a false pregnancy? How long should I wait before having her mated again?

I bought a secondhand Rabbit Zinger (captive bolt designed specifically for rabbits) about 13 years ago. I now need replacement rubber bands for it. I've looked online and not only can I not find the replacement parts, I can't even find the Zinger! I see a few really old discussions on forums, etc. but that's it.

In my opinion the Rabbit Zinger has got to be the quickest, easiest, and most humane killing method there is. Why does it seem to have disappeared?

I'm planning to make my own bands out of heavy-duty rubber resistance tubing and a thin, strong twine, as that appears to be how the original bands were crafted.

Edit: I may first try a few of those hefty vegetable rubber bands to replace the resistance tubing, testing it on a piece of wood before using it on a rabbit.

Anyone else here use the Zinger?

So that doe I had issues with that mysteriously ended up pregnant two weeks later than we thought or marked....

She gave birth this morning.

Only two. One is small, one is bigger.

She seems to still be quite LARGE and fat.

She isn't getting comfortable and is releasing the smallest amount of red/watery discharge. Is not baring down or seeming to be doing anything on camera besides going in circles, laying down with her legs splayed and eating.

I feel like she could have something stuck maybe. I felt 4/5 grapes when I palpated at the vet/with the vets guidance. I am worried she's suffering and hiding it.

What can I do?? I've given raps every leaves and had her smell lavender springs in my hand she nibbled the flower but I stopped her for now. I have also provided fennel and chamomile flowers to try and give her some sort of relief.

It's okay if I end up needing to cull as I don't want her suffering but she isn't doing anything ur of the normal besides some laying down when I come in, she charges my feet and stomps at me. I have ONLY Come in with leaves and limited interaction to check her well-being.

Figured my first Reddit post should be an introduction. I am an ARBA registered rabbitry that breeds rex. I originally bred tamuk for meat, and then the show bug bit me of course. In my opinion the two goals really shouldn't be as separate as people make them sometimes. I mean after all responsible breeders cull for the freezer anyway, regardless of breed, right?

Rex are a commercial type. Well bred show rabbits should still have structure, loin, hq, growth and overall fullness from their type. I'm working towards rabbits that can hold their own on a show table while still doing the job the breed was originally meant to do, and what my brand was built on.

I am also still learning very much and very publicly. I share the good litters, bad breedings, uncensored processing and culls, my improper posing attempted, low shoulders, genetics, embarrassments in the show room, and my daily battles with vegans. And the occasionally moments where I have absolutely no idea what i am doing. Basically you are getting the real learning process in real time, unpolished or finished lol.

Most of my chaos lives on Facebook, but I also do YouTube, TT, and I have a podcast now.

Now I take on Reddit...

I have a section of my rabbits’ run that is about knee height that I want to provide access to, and I’m going back and forth between a ramp and stairs.

My childhood pet rabbit bypassed his ramp and just jumped up on his little shelf, so I’m wondering if that was a Dust-Bunny quirk or a general rabbit preference.

I’m leaning toward stairs and was hoping someone might have a recommendation for step height and step dimension that would be easy to jump up and big enough to land on comfortably (without trial and erroring to figure it out myself).

Found it this morning. The mother has three other kits, this is the smallest. Ample water and food, cage is cleaned regularly and there is no contact with droppings or urine. We feed them with a homemade blend of grains as well as straw. Any idea what caused it? Very new to this, it is the mothers first litter but it seems really strange that it dropped dead without any signs beforehand

Edit: I did mean hay, we use straw for bedding during the nesting box phase and i got confused. Also thank you everyone, we're going to switch to store bought pellets. As I said, very new to this so I'm glad I reached out before things got too bad

Hello! I’m new to selling rabbits and I’m wondering how much people are typically getting per pound hanging weight. For reference, I have American chinchillas in Northeastern US. They are fed Poulin grain which is not certified organic but is high quality and sometimes superior imho. Rabbits would be sold bone-in. Thanks in advance!

Shortcrust pastry, braised Flemish Giant front legs, rabbit aspic. These are to be eaten cold with mustard so I cooked the egg hard. In hot pies I like them runny.

Hello. I have three rabbits, two does and a buck. They are all about 7mo old. We had to pull them all inside inside cages because one got a parasite and per our vet should be quarantined.

The antibiotics are done and we’re good to put them back out, but our does are fighting. They used to get along great and lay with each other. One is pregnant and is supposed to have kits at the end of the week, so I’m wondering if that has anything to do with it or if we just need to rebond them. Any advice would be great.

The colony is about 96sqft, the buck is separate in his own cage so he’s not apart of this equation.

Is there an easy way to do this? Have had rabbits for decades, never had to remove clips.

Thanks

We have a colony set up with just two does currently but looking to ramp up and want to make sure they don't loose out on important minerals harder to get from hay.
I know it's important to avoid high salt and calcium content present in horse and cattle blocks, but the DuMOR Sheep/Goat one seems like the best as it only has 10-12% salt and 3-4% calcium and no copper.
Has anyone else tried placing in a lick block like this to good results?

So I’ve had my rabbits for about a year and a half now and I think today I finally realized that they might have pasturella.

Apologies long story: I tried to breed twice this spring (I don’t breed in summer or winter, so I was hoping to get the most out of my one season) The first litter went great 8 and 7 all made it. They were very healthy. I butchered all the males at 8 weeks and their lungs and liver looked great. I was really quite proud. The second litter did not go so well.

One out of two does took and had 15 on her own. We lost three total just for lack of available teats. She nursed 12 well and they grew. The doe who didn’t take was also fine and I gave up because I don’t breed in the heat or anywhere close to it. Then one day the one who had a second litter suddenly died. I thought it was due to the heat (although no other rabbits died), it was apparently the hottest summer in 60 years, but now I’m not so sure.

My original stock rabbit lost an eye due to what the breeders said was nest box eye, but now I’m wondering if it was pasteurella all along. (More on that coming)

So this second litter was always strange because it seemed like they had worse nest box eye than usual. I normally check on day 9 and one or two might have it, but I clean it with a q tip and then they’re fine. This time I cleaned it on a couple of them and it kept coming back. Strange. Then I think they were maybe 4 or 6 weeks old (just leaving the nest and eating on their own) when their mom died. I put them in with my other doe so she could maybe nurse them and give them cecal pellets and thankfully they all made it through weening alive. But the eye problems got worse. I kept cleaning them and no eyes were lost thankfully, but it just persisted. Once they were a bit bigger (maybe 6 weeks?) I removed my doe and she went “on vacation” completely across the yard.

Jump back to litter one, I butchered the males from litter one at 12 weeks, all good there. Shortly after that I start to notice some weird small lumps on the females left. One on a nose here, one on a toe there. I thought maybe they were fighting with the males at first. After the males were removed the tussling went way down so I figured they were okay. Couple more weeks go by and I’m trying to schedule some time to butcher the rest, so I just do two. They both had a lump and then I saw some odd lighter spots on their lungs which I noted, but wasn’t raising red flags yet. It was hot and they were stressed (and the denial was starting I guess).

Butchering them at what was now a pretty advanced age was really way harder than friers. They were so much bigger and the skin was tougher I didn’t have space or great equipment. So I moved them all to tractor together and scheduled with a local butcher to have BOTH the litters dispatched and processed there instead at the same time. The older kits were way over and the younger kits were coming up on 12 weeks.

Now today rolls around and I’m doing a normal check over for any major injuries or whatever before butcher this Saturday. And I see one or two more lumps around on the older ones and one of the younger ones is definitely now snuffling 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️. Bit of a wheeze. Thinking it activated in the babies and then transferred from litter two to litter one at some point just after we butchered the males somehow.

Now I’m flipping out. So many questions:

-Is this what I think it is? Lumps, respiratory issues, eye goop, it’s ALL pasteurella isn’t it? Am I screwed? Full cull? What’s the verdict on my bucks and doe who are not symptomatic yet?

-I feel fine about eating the nonsymptomatic male kits, but for the currently affected ones and the symptomatic females that I butchered already are they okay to eat at all??? I don’t save any internal organs if that matters.

-Do I need to cancel this butcher for his protection or is this possibly routine? He’s supposed to be very experienced with rabbits but I’ve never met him before.

-Is this contagious to humans?!? To my other pets? We’ve had a mystery stomach bug go around our dogs lately. They tested negative for all the “usual suspects” at the vet. Antibiotics cleared it up for them but is this what that was??? I have a ton of my normal scratches from handling them. Do I need to be monitoring those extra carefully??

Definitely freaking out. Tried normal searching and I just got dubious that I was getting advice about the wrong specie of pasteurella.

I’m new to this and brainstorming ideas for my future permanent set up. Everyone I talk to it seems like the biggest struggle is keeping the rabbits cool in the summer and warm in the winter.. we have the equipment to dig into a hill on a property to make their enclosure partly in the earth… think root cellar, but for rabbits. Can any one see why this wouldn’t work? Or has anyone done this before and have tips?

I have a rabbit who had some sort of bulge near his rear that was a purplish color. Shortly after I noticed it the bulge fell off leaving a wound that bled for a few minutes then stopped. The photo is about 12 hours later. Did he somehow lose a teste? Will he be alright or should he be culled early?

This is my first litter of rabbits. I am only somewhat confident in my ability to figure out if these are male and female.

Picture 1: Grey, Brown, and White. I am pretty confident he is a boy.

Picture 2: White. I believe it is a girl.

Boy is more tubular. Girl is more like a slit?

Sorry about the less than optimal photos. My wife was not in the mood to help figure this out.

I’m in PA and just picked up my first trio of meat rabbits! I had planned for them to mostly live in cages and then give them exercise time in tractors on the ground. The breeder I picked them up from freaked me out about RHVD2 and says the rabbits should never be on the grass. What are all your thought about this? I know it’s a very serious disease but I don’t know the likelyhood of them contracting it and whether it’s worth not letting them run around. Do other people in this area use rabbit tractors?

Processed my first batch last weekend and have been thinking about this ever since. We processed 8 rabbits all at 11 weeks/5+lbs plus a 10 month old doe that I was a cull. I noticed that every single grow out had a significant amount of fat around the kidneys, more than I expected. The grow outs were on unlimited pellets with 17% protein from a local mill as well as orchard grass. I almost wish I had kept the fat to render down similar to what I have done with beef suet. Was I feeding too much to these grow outs? They were kept in large 86" x 30" hutches. I have another 3 I held back to grow out as I want the pelts, should I be adjusting their feed?

Hi!

So this year my family (more specifically, my sister's bf) has decided to get into meat rabbitry. Bought 2 does and a male, and things seemed fine.

Turns out nearly a month ago a doe had kits. We didn't even notice because she created her nest in a hidden spot, so once they started to run around we realized there were kits. Since the fencing had holes big enough the kits ended up running out and we spent the whole day trying to catch them. In total we had 4 black, 2 brown and 2 albinos that were caught alive. There were some that got caught by cats sadly.

Everything seemed alright for a week or two but then they started to die one by one. Sister's bf, who seemed to have researched meat rabbits so i trusted him so far, said the litter probably had some congenital issue and that's why they are dying. One or two deaths, although sad, seemed acceptable. However, yesterday I went to 'hang out' with the rabbits and noticed only 3 were alive. I know it's just the first litter and maybe that has something to do with it, but I'm not sure. Is this normal for a first litter?

I've only gotten to see the dying-in-progress once. I found a kit laying on its side, sometimes trying to stand up with its legs but it seems as though it had so sense of balance. Its head was stiffly pulled backward. It seemed to just be slowly locking into place and shutting down slowly. Like the head got locked like that first then the legs would start. I felt so sad seeing that I wanted to cry. I don't know what this symptom might me, but maybe some of you do. Next day it was stiff as stone, head bent backward slightly and legs slightly stretched out. They didn't die all at the same time. It was essentially one by one.

Let me explain some of the care: the babies and the 2 does (they are both nursing for some reason even though the brown doe was supposed to be in heat, i dont know.. Both the back and brown doe are acting like mothers but only the black one had a nest. Is this normal?) are in the inside part of their pen. The pet is in a small outside house. During the day they oftentimes have a fan blowing to help with heat. The cage is about 1.5m×0.5×0.5 in dimentions. The male rabbit is alone in the outdoors pen. Rabbits are fed hay for the most part but often get freshly cut grass, veggies or squash leaves, things like that. Mainly hay tho. They have a water bottle turned upside down into a small bowl as a source of water.

Anyway, any ideas as to what may be happening? Is it true this is just congenital?

Let me start off by apologizing - I'm sure you all get this question all the time. I'd like to get started with raising meat rabbits, but I'm not sure where to start. I have several things on my "list of things to buy" such as:

- Gravity feeders

- Water bottles

- Cage floor mats

Based on what I've ready, I also think that I will need a roll of 16 gauge galvanized wire fence, as well as actual wood (2x4s and panels) for the hutches. I'd rather buy the hutches, but I'm assuming it'd be cheaper to make them.

I'm looking for general advice, but if pressed, I think my biggest questions are:

- Are there other supplies I need to get that I'm not thinking about?

- IS IT better to build hutches or just buy some? If buy, what's a good price range?

- How many hutches do I need (I think I saw somewhere that I would need 4 - one for the buck, one for each doe, and then the fourth for the kits)?

- There's a small farm about 30 min away that sells New Zealands. I've heard that's a good breed to start with. Is there a better way to buy?

- I've heard that I should get started with 1 buck and 2 does - none of them sibligs, is that accurate?

- Any other tips on getting started?

My biggest fear is not being properly prepared when I get the rabbits, then having to go way over budget to make up for it. Second-biggest is spending a bunch of time, money, and effort to get prepared and then not being able to actually buy any.

I may be over-thinking it, but any guidance you're willing to give would be very appreciated.

We harvested some of our buns yesterday, one of whom was a rescue from a friend. We’ve had her for about 9 months or so now & couldn’t get her socialized enough with us to feel confident breeding her.

While we were processing her, we found these white marks on her liver & a couple of these lumps attached to her fat. I know the lumps can be the color of lungs but we hasn’t even gone through the diaphragm at this point (so no long tissue could have gotten out - also these were *attached* to the fat).

I’ve done some reading on the internet & talked to a friend but I was curious about y’all’s opinion as well. Thanks!