How many people have rabbits. I would think most people that homestead have rabbits but how many pet rabbits are out there? Lots. This gives you an opportunity to sell rabbits to more then homesteaders and people that will eat them.
One of the most common questions I get is "Can you make money selling rabbits?" The answer is yes but not in the way you would think. We raise our rabbits and all of our livestock on Country Side Organic feed. Organic feed is not cheap and we buy it 45 bags at a time on a pallet to cut cost but it is still not cheap. More then $0.50 a lb. We of course don't only feed grain to our livestock we grow a good amount of fodder crops in the padlocks and rotate them and also use a small greenhouse and a king crop fodder system to produce extra feed but quality grain is an expense and organic is a larger one.
Can you make money selling live rabbits at $15 to $20 a rabbit feeding organic? The answer is no. Can you raise meat rabbits and also raise a few quality pedigreed rabbits like Flemish giants or other show breeds that will sell for $100+ per rabbit and make money? It will put you closer to the positive and maybe earn a few bucks but nothing to boast about.
How to make money with rabbits. Cutting cost on your meat is a huge way to slide the bar in your favor. I figure every pound of rabbit meat we eat is $5 worth of meat I would have spent. We have been known to eat half a dozen or more rabbits in a week. Butchering them when they are younger before they start eating costly grain is one way but you only get the meat and the hides are not worth very much on fryers since they are thin and not great quality. You can raise them up to larger size spending more money on feed and get a better quality pelt to tan and work with. The reason to do this is if you want to stitch a few rabbit fur mittens or rabbit fur hats and you get pretty good at it you can easily bring $35 or $40 and even more on something that is considered a waste product to many rabbit breeders. Add in $2 for rabbit feet key chains that can be easily made and your sitting on over twice what the live rabbit would have sold for plus you got several pounds of meat out of it. $40 rabbit fur hat, 3 lbs of meat say $15 and a couple rabbit feet key chains your at $60. If you lucky to live around a university or a zoo that has falconry you can sell the heads to them. They will use them as treats for the birds of prey. Not a lot but if you butcher 10 rabbits a week and get $4 a head it is not bad and should pay the entire cost of the feed for that week. That only leaves the carcass. You can grind this up for dog food or ,depending on your local laws and if your raising for personal or for sale, you can toss it to the hogs. If that is an option for you that will cut a little feed cost off your swine grain and also eggs why we are talking about it are a favorite of hogs if you have an abundance of or lots of cracked ones when you get them.
We do mainly the New Zealand, Californian, and one of my favorite Giant Chinchillas. We were also doing some blue and fawn Flemish that would sell for a nice price. The giant Chinchillas hide usually makes really good quality things and even just a tanned hide brings a little more then your other rabbits. I think the velveteen Rex rabbit hides bring a little more.
As you can see we build our cages and the smaller ones are 6 ft by 3ft of cage space with 8ft tin roofs. The females will have the entire 6 ft by 3ft of space because they will have nesting boxes and young with them. The males will be in cages where it is divided in half so they have 3ft by 3ft of space. Now the pens are getting a little worn out and the larger ones are starting to lean because they are over 6 years old with only Lumber Seal, that is the name of the none toxic sealant we use from Home Depot.
The key to building these types of pens for rabbits and making them last is don't wire to the wood frame, wire over it. You may not be able to see from the photos but the inside of the pens have ever inch of wood covered and wired so they can't just eat at the wood. This will make your pens last much longer otherwise they will only last a year or so. These have lasted so long the wire needs to be replaced in some spots before the wood needed to be.
Hope this helped out anyone thinking of getting rabbits or anyone that already has them. Read my tips on how we breed rabbits year round even in hot summers here.