Why You Should Consider Raising Meat Rabbits

Posted on: 4/16/2023

Author: Johannah Lawrence

This serves as a guide for anyone with a small plot or acreage wanting to raise an easy, inexpensive animal to turn a profit or produce meat for the table. This blog post is solely based on my experience and may not be applicable to all farmers everywhere, but the concepts should ring true for any type of agriculture endeavor you choose to start. Without further ado, let’s get started.

Is It Profitable?

The first thing that one must consider when trying to make a profit off any venture is the balance of revenue and cost. If a product or service costs more to produce than the revenues generate in return, it is unprofitable and you will lose money. Sure, you could offer such things because you like them or you are trying to be nice, but you will not make it into a business. Are you wanting to start a business, or a non-profit?

A good example of this would be quilting. I love sewing and quilting personally, but I have no market demand for hand quilted products or services. The price that I would need to charge to actually profit from either making and selling quilts (products) or quilting something for customers (service) is so high that I would not be able to find enough customers willing to pay the price necessary for me to run a quilting “business.”

Rabbits, on the other hand, are one of the simplest and can be the most profitable animal on any small homestead. Now, I know there will be cattlemen and women that will argue the difference in volume (pounds of meat produced) will outweigh what rabbits produce, but rabbits also provide something that all the other 4-legged critters do not: quick turnaround.

Compare to Larger Livestock

Cows cannot start breeding until about 12 to 14 months, and as an animal that could reach a mature weight of 1200-2500 lbs (maybe more or less depending on breed), that animal will have to consume a LOT of food in order to maintain its weight, grow a baby, and then produce milk to feed that baby. Oh, and not to mention that this is all for a single baby.

So, if you were to purchase a heifer (young female cow) and either buy a bull or rent/borrow one from a neighbor when your heifer reaches puberty, you would have to wait 12 to 14 months before she could be bred, then once bred, wait another 9 months or so before she gives birth to a calf (most likely a single baby), then raise that one calf for a minimum 12 months before it is ready to be slaughtered. So from the time the heifer is born until the time her first calf is ready for slaughter (and consequently, sale), you would be looking at 33 to 45 months total.

A single rabbit doe (female) can be bred in high intensity farming, and under optimal nutritional circumstances a total of 6 times in a single year! Most producers estimate that their animals will produce an AVERAGE of 6 kits per litter raised to maturity. If a female AVERAGES 6 kits per litter, with 6 litters, she would produce 36 kits in just 12 months.

Now here’s where the math gets crazy so sit tight! Rabbits are harvested between 8 and 12 weeks with a target live weight of 4 to 6 lbs. So if we average that out, let’s say we harvest our rabbits at 5 lbs and they reach that 5lbs on the lower end, somewhere around the 8 to 9 week mark. That means that a single doe’s offspring, if she averages 6 kits per litter, would produce 180 lbs of rabbits (live weight) in a year’s time.

As of the day I am writing this, rabbits are being purchased in my area for $2.20 per pound, live weight, by the processors, so that puts a single doe’s potential revenue from selling her kits to the processor at $396 per year. (Remember, in a year's time, the heifer cow you might have purchased is just now ready to be bred.)

“But Johannah, a single cow can sell for $4 a pound hanging weight, and if it weighs 1000 lbs that’s $4000! That’s way more than a rabbit!”

Well, I’m glad you mentioned that! Of course, a single cow sells for much more! That’s because they are much bigger, and the payout has to be much bigger. But if you consider the cost of raising that cow, and the time that must be invested into the production of a single animal, it is no comparison at all! (If the cow takes 36 months to produce a single offspring ready for sale, a single rabbit could have produced 108 kits for sale with a revenue of $1188 in the same amount of time, but with much lower input costs.) And in the case of low-income folks trying to get into farming for a second income source, the choice becomes even more clear.

Quick Turnaround

Going back to our example of the cow which takes a minimum of 33 months from the birth of the heifer to the time of harvest for its first offspring, did you know that same process takes place in rabbits in just over 7 months time?! Yes, really!

So, back to the argument that a cow sells for more than a rabbit, if a single rabbit can begin breeding at 4 months, then her first offspring can breed in 4 more months, and their offspring in another 4 months, and so on and so forth….then you can get a total of 8 generations of rabbits in the time it takes a cow to produce only 2 generations (the heifer and her first calf)!

At this point the math goes a little crazy, but if you consider that each rabbit can produce about 36 kits per year, and all of those kits would be able to breed within that 33 month comparison time, the amount of growth is exponential by comparison! Even if you only saved 50% of the kits she produced for future breeding stock, you would very quickly run out of barn space to house all the rabbits you would be producing!

Just as an example, if you had the original doe and she gave you 36 kits in the first year, you kept back 50% (only the females), that would be 18 more does added throughout the year. So, in the second year you would have 19 does total breeding, which would produce 36 kits each, or 684 kits total. 50% of that would be 342, which you probably wouldn’t have room to house, BUT IF YOU DID…you would begin year 3 with 361 does, capable of producing 12,996 kits in year 3. At $11 per rabbit ($2.20/lb x 5 lbs), that would be $142,956. No cow can compare with that sort of rabbit math!

Nerdy Rabbit Math Aside…

Putting all my crazy number crunches aside, you can see that rabbit math works! (If you have the space to house them!) There are other considerations to make also, so here they are.

Rabbits raised for meat are traditionally raised in all-wire cages off the ground, which reduces pest incidence and allows them to be raised completely pesticide and antibiotic free in most situations. Our breeder cages are only 2ft x 2ft, made of galvanized wire, fastened with hog rings, equipped with a sifter feeder and attached to our automatic watering system.

Even with the increased cost of wire in today’s economy, a person making very little money can easily afford to invest in rabbit infrastructure. Wire prices currently average around $2 per foot for the budget, galvanized before welded wire, bringing the cost per hole to around $25. So, if you begin your rabbit-raising journey with a buck and two does (a starter trio), your costs would breakdown something like this:

Trio rabbits $60-$120 (depending on age and prices in your area, plan to spend a minimum of $20 per rabbit. Less than that and I would be suspicious of the quality and health of the animals)

Cages $125 (you need a minimum of 3 holes for the breeders, and an extra hold for each doe for when her babies are weaned. Also, your cost may be higher than this if you cannot by the wire by the foot and have to purchase entire rolls.)

Feeders $35

Water $30-100 (depends on whether you use bottles or set up an auto watering system. Auto water is more startup cost, but saves you so much time on daily chores)

Total cost: $250-380

So, for less than $400, you could start raising rabbits today, and by the end of your second year, be bringing in enough money to replace an income from a 9-5 job. Granted, you would have additional costs along the way as you expand, but $400 to get started is a very low entry point when compared with any other livestock species. (You can't buy a single cow for $400, not even counting the fence, feed troughs, waterers, etc. You can't start with any other livestock species for such a low cost either, except maybe chickens.)

One other consideration when raising meat rabbits to sell to a processor is that most processors will ONLY accept white furred animals. So, if raising rabbits to sell to a processor is your goal, resist the urge to purchase the pretty colored rabbits. You will have plenty of time to play around with different colors later, when you are no longer punching a timeclock for someone else!

But What about for Personal Use?

I'm glad you asked that. Although I look at rabbits today as a business venture and I ask myself how I can make money off of them, when we first started that was not our goal. Of course we always planned to sell a few to people here or there, but our main goal was to raise delicious low-fat meat for the table.

The great thing about rabbits is that the same rabbit math that makes them super profitable if you have the ability to scale production, also makes them great producers for the home table. The same starter trio that I would recommend for anyone wanting to get into meat production for sales will provide a generous amount of meat for the table as well. If one doe averages 36 kits per year, two does will give you 72 kits in a year's time. You could sell 20 kits throughout the year to pay for feed, and the remaining 52 kits would allow you to have rabbit on the table once a week, every year.

So, my recommendations for people growing for their own food is: Figure out how much rabbit you want to eat (how many times per week) and set that as your goal number for kits produced. Then divide the goal number by 36, and that will give you the number of does you need to keep to achieve that goal. Remember, the one buck can service a lot of does, just not all on the same day. 

In Conclusion

I hope I didn’t lose you in the process and all the Nerd Math! Thanks for sticking around until the end! I hope that you will consider raising rabbits for meat in the near future, and more importantly, I hope you will consider purchasing your seed stock from us at Lifebread Mini Farm.

To see a list of what we have available, click here.

Otherwise, have a blessed day and get out there and enjoy some nature and hopefully sounds of country life.