One of our "investments"

Our modest little rabbitry

For Al and King. I had not cleaned up yet for the week, bit you get the gist. You can see our super high tech misting system (16.00 at Ace Hardware. Comes with clips for hanging on an outdoor umbrella - I just clipped it on the roofing). You'll note the power cord, this runs the fan. The wood is laid down to give us a decked area to walk. It gets mighty muddy when the misting system is running.


Our upright hutch. There are three fans - one blowing in on each cage. These are the finishing cages, they are 36x36x30. The top one has baby saver wire so it can be used as a maternity cage.


The long run. Two decks. The lower cages hang using 3" treated deck screws, hooks, and paracord. Chain link was considered, but I wanted to use the biggest trays for waste management for the upper deck. The three cages - two on the upper left and the second one from the right on the bottom - were made by me, completely from baby saver wire. These are maternity cages.


Another picture of the long run. You can kind get an idea about how the mister hose hangs from the galvanized roofing. That thing in the lower right hand corner with the yellow top is a non chemical fly trap. Keeps the fly population really under control.


Well, not elegant, but it keeps them dry when it rains, fully shaded in the summer, and with my tarps, I enclose the whole thing, crank a small electric heater (I have a small propane for SHTF).

Every cage has a hay bin on the door, and they eat the hay through the wire of the cage. Keeps them from peeing on their food and making a huge mess.

 

Naming the food.

My husband told the kids, nothing comes on this farm that doesn't do a job-either produce, protect or get eaten-so name them if you want but you will be eating them. So our pig was named "Porkchop".

 

nice cage setup falcon
im wanting to build a setup that drains into a digester
still on the drawingboard but eventually ill get it worked out
lol watchful, we used to name our hogs weiner, frankfurt, sausage...

 

OK since it has been a while, I thought I would update the monkeys on the end all-beat all of the investments.
After basic processing, chilled down for 3 hours in ice water:

And here is the "easy meat" I harvested:

Here are the carcass remnants and meaty bones, ready for stock making:

Continued in next post...

 

All right, here is the meat in sterilized jars ready for canning. Meat, 1/2" head space, 1 tsp salt. That is it. The water you see in the bottom of the jars is coming from the meat itself:

Seven fryer rabbits made seven pints of meat. Here they are in the pressure canner:

The carcases are for meaty soup, Here they are in the stockpot with parsley, garlic and onion, ready to cook down:

Alright, the meat processed at 11 pounds for 90 minutes. Treat raw rabbit like raw chicken, and you'll not go wrong. Here they are just out of the pressure canner:

And the broth is strained, bones removed, and the meat added back in to the broth. It made 7 quarts of very very meaty "soup" or broth. Here it is straining, I line a fine mesh colander with a sterilized bit of unbleached muslin to keep bone slivers and other undesired things out of the broth:


Enjoy your own investments year round. Seven fryers added 7 pints of meat and 7 quarts of soup to my shelf.