Rabbits make great working animals. In fact, rabbits just might be the perfect first farm animal to get. Not only are they cute and kids adore them, but they are easy to care for and inexpensive to keep. Need a reason to dip your toe in the shallow end of raising animals? Here’s why rabbits make great working farm animals.
More and more people are adding rabbits to their homestead or farmstead. Like chickens, these cute bunnies are not raised for meat like they were in the old days. Rather, they are more often kept for the byproducts they provide. And most importantly, they are an asset to the diversified farmstead.
Are backyard bunnies becoming the new urban chicken? Well, they should be. Here are a few more reasons why rabbits make excellent working animals.
Fertilizer
Rabbits provide the fastest – and cheapest – soil conditioner around. Each backyard bunny will reliably produce about a pound of dry manure per week. Per. Week. Yes, 52 pounds a year.
Besides increasing the fertility of your own garden or farm, this plethora of plant nutrition can be marketed and sold as a value-add product. It is highly desirable, too, because it is one of the richest fertilizers you can get your hands on.
Does that sound a little like hyperbole? well, it is not. Rabbits are 100% herbivores. That means that rabbit manure is the perfect ratio for breaking down and releasing nutrients to the soil. Check out my post on Why rabbit poop makes the best fertilizer. Over there I go into a bit more detail on the ‘science of rabbit poop’ and ways to incorporate it into your planting beds.
Mulch
Another great application from the rear end of your rabbits is to use their manure as mulch. Because of the shape of rabbit pellets, and the high nutritional content of it, Rabbit manure makes excellent mulch.
Mulch helps soil retain water during the hot days. But the best mulch still allows water to seep into the soil from above when it rains. Some of the more expensive mulches actually promote runoff from overhead rain because of the shape or texture.
Rabbit poop spread around the base of your young sprouts will retain water while still allowing overhead sprinklers or rain to penetrate through to the soil. And as an added bonus, you are fertilizing the plant with each watering and conditioning the soil for long-term health.
The biggest difference in application is that as a fertilizer you incorporate the manure into the soil or planting bed prior to planting. When using it as mulch, you add the manure to the top of the soil around your vegetable plant after planting.
Fiber
If you have an angora or a rex rabbit, you can use or sell the rabbit’s fur. There is now actually a huge cottage market for rabbit fiber for use in knitting and felting.
And, of course, we love our rabbits. I would not recommend this if it put your rabbit in any danger. Actually rabbits slough off their fur regularly. Some more than others. You can collect the fur which is naturally shed during grooming or moulting. Generally, rabbits moult twice per year.
There is not a huge market for shorter-haired rabbit fur, only for angora rabbit fur. However another option if you still want to use a shorter haired rabbit’s fur is to spin your own yarn from your rabbit’s fur and sell the yarn instead of the fiber itself. Many knitters are looking for natural fibers and the price of these yarns can be quite high. This is more time consuming and does require some special skills and materials. But there are excellent tutorials out there.
Cost of Maintenance
Another benefit to getting rabbits, especially as a first farm animal, is the low cost. From food to housing to maintenance, rabbits don’t require a lot of expensive equipment to be healthy and happy.
A rabbit’s primary diet consists mainly of hay (Timothy grass), which can be obtained at a very low cost. Even prepared rabbit food is pretty darn inexpensive, and they do not need a whole lot of it. Especially if you supplement with your green kitchen scraps. In fact, many people feed their rabbits primarily garden scraps. (read about growing your own rabbit garden!) Rabbits love your broccoli and cauliflower leaves and stalks, carrot tops, cabbage, apples, and any number of other greens.
Any way you look at it, the dietary needs of your backyard bunnies are met mainly with things you either already have or with a relatively inexpensive bag of feed which will last a very long time.
Carbon Footprint
Awareness of our carbon footprint is critically important to all of us as we consider the climate-based impacts of our farms and gardens.
Rabbits, clearly, are not like raising cows or pigs. They can be raised on marginal land, and are extremely good converters of food and water. Bunnies convert calories into pounds more efficiently than any other livestock animal. This means we need less water, food, land, and energy to grow the feed for rabbits than any other livestock animal per pound.
Not only are they not depleting the land where they reside, the are actually replenishing it with their fertile manure.
Low barrier to entry
Rabbits are small and need very little space. They can be happy living in a spare room, a corner of a barn, or inside an existing covered chicken run. There are no conflicts between chickens and rabbits. They are perfect for urban homesteads because you don’t need elaborate setups or space. Just a cage or a hutch will keep them quite happy.
They have far fewer setup requirements than even chickens. Yes, chickens are super easy once you’ve built the coop and the run and the roosts and everything else. But rabbits don’t even need all of that setup. Rabbits don’t need expensive toys, or specific equipment. Rabbits make wonderful house guests, too.
Easily portable
This is generally true for transporting your rabbit from the hutch to a tractor or to the house, and also for bigger moves. Because they are small and don’t need a lot of special equipment, you can move your rabbits in a car with cat carriers, rather than needing a pickup truck and special crates, like you would with other livestock, even chickens.
Kids love rabbits, too. Your kids will be the envy of the neighborhood and their friends will love to visit the rabbit hutches! Plus, they are great first animals for teaching kids responsibility.
Yes, rabbits make excellent working animals, but they are super sweet, too. They each have individual personalities and are usually happy and loving. While they sometimes take a little longer to bond, with proper socialization, they can even be held and cuddled. But the patience will pay off!
