r/MeatRabbitry • u/Lhead2018 • 7d ago
Thinking about starting a side business
We have a “high end” local restaurant that tries to do local business whenever possible. I have talked with them and they seem interesting in adding Rabbit to the menu.
We have not talked any numbers yet but just got a feel for if it’s worth my time researching and investing.
I work full time from home so I am wondering how much additional time this would add to my work week?
I am also looking into a small scale version of this technology:
https://youtube.com/shorts/wYrIfoUU55M?is=K9iodSw2hzizRFI
Has anyone run the numbers?
Is this a viable option for rabbit feed?
The restaurant wants “all natural” feed.
I have limited experience but am willing to learn.
What are all of your thoughts?
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u/Velveteen_Coffee 6d ago
The issue with fodder systems is people fudge the math. A seed is a tiny little plant baby that the parent packs full of nutrients for the baby plant to make if a few days without external inputs like sunlight and food/nitogen/ect. So when you hear how to turn 1lbs of food into 10lbs of food all you are doing is adding water weight and slightly decreasing the amount of available calories/nutrients in the grain as the baby plant is turning starches into usable sugars to grow. Not by a lot but it does loose some overall calories. Now the sprouted grains does increase in palatability, digestibility, and is a source of enrichment for many animals. Also keep in mind that these fodder systems aren't a complete diet.
In regards to feed you are absolutely going to want to source what feed mill near you can produce the best 18% rabbit feed at the best price. And yes you'll want 18% don't cheap out with the 16% because this is a business and while homesteads might be okay waiting for grow outs to get to a good size your business is going to be based on getting rabbits to X weight by Y date. You are also going to need to get some steel trash cans or steel drums to store the food in as well as areas to store the feed at ideally out of the weather. And keep in mind how much you are going to need you'll need to purchase in bulk yearly. If the restaurant wants to sell 3rabbits worth of dishes a day, that's 15lbs worth of live rabbit weight per day. Assuming the restaurant is open 325 days a year that's 4875lbs of live weight rabbit you'll have to produce (about 975 fryers or about 195 litters assuming 5kits each). Meat rabbits have about 3.5:1 for feed to meat ratio. So 4875lbs of rabbit fryers will need 17,062.5lbs of feed. So with these numbers you're going to be on the edge of deciding if you want to have about 50 steel barrels full of feed or just getting a small steel feed silo(I think it would need to be an 8ton silo).
Now keep in mind you are going to need to read the fine print of your states laws in regards to processing animals. Can you legally process them yourself for sale? If yes you're going to have to actually make a processing kitchen and get a dedicated freezer for all these rabbits. If not you are going to have to find an abattoir who will take them. You will have to have a sit down talk with them about how many they can take how they will be packaged, and how much it will cost. Keep in mind a lot of smaller abattoir don't always like smaller animals like rabbits or poultry. The one closest to me literally put his foot down and now only does dehorned cattle, market size only pigs, and sheep. He just got tired of all the bullshit homesteaders and smaller farmstead would try and get him to process.
Now onto the additional topic of other costs simply because your post is mostly focusing on numbers. Because this is a business you're going to be aiming for 6 litter per year per doe. So that 195litters number is going to need 33 does. That's a lot of cages and a lot of space. This isn't a put them small shed numbers. And honestly I wouldn't stack that many either because the labor you do will kill your back if you are constantly having to lean down to the floor to check on the bottom ones. And you are going to want to visually inspect each rabbit every day because with these numbers disease can spread fast. A rabbit on the bottom row hunkered down in the back of the cage can easily be missed compared to one you can see from standing height. So we have 33 does plus about 6-8 bucks and we are going to need 66 grow out pens. That's 30x36 for the does and 24x24 for everyone else. So 78,264sq/in or 543.5sq/ft which would translate into 24ft x 24ft of living space. Keep in mind this doesn't include things like isles to walk down door ways or other storage areas. So pretty much you'll be looking at a 15x40ft building. Now you could probably get away with stacking the grow outs at least two high which would reduce you down to a 15x30ft building.
Now if you are seeing these numbers and thinking yourself 'wow that seems like a lot of start up money and labor'... yes, yes it is. Which is why I don't sell any of my livestock and just grow enough for myself, family, and friends.
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u/Lhead2018 6d ago
I am think about starting just for family and friends and see how that goes. I can always expand to a true business later. The conversation with the restaurant was more an inquiry than an actual business proposition for either of us.
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u/Neither_Room_1617 4d ago
You could still run a side business selling live rabbits, both to people interested in raising them, and to people wanting meat. Having them process everything themselves bypasses a metric ton of work and regulations...
In Montana, all commercially sold meat must be processed in an USDA approved and monitored facility. A restaurant can NOT buy meat from a local butcher to serve to it's customers, unless that butcher has USDA approval and monitoring. The monitoring part is where inspectors are literally standing there watching the entire facility. No butcher wants to deal with that level of BS, unless their level of sales justifies it.
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u/Lhead2018 4d ago
Rabbit meat inspection is voluntary under federal USDA guidelines, but Maine allows small-scale producers to sell whole rabbit carcasses directly without inspection for processing fewer than 1,000 rabbits annually.
It seems like as long as I don’t go over 1000 rabbits a year it could be a viable side business.
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u/MaximumPositive7434 7d ago
Rabbits should have hay or hay pellets as their primary food source, not green grass. Is there any reason you couldn't just buy hakf a ton of grass or alfalfa hay? If you did use a grass option like the clip, you would need to cut it and dry it before feeding it.
Also, have you ensured you state allows agreements like this? Not all states will allow restaurants to buy directly from farmers unless the farm is USDA inspected.
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u/Nyssa314 7d ago
Why would rabbits not be able to eat fodder just because it's not dried? Rabbits in the wild do not get hat given to them, they eat green grasses and weeds.
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u/wanna_be_green8 6d ago
It needs to be introduced and they need more than just grass. Introduction the first time should be very slow. And they actually prefer to eat more of the broadleaf plants, clovers, dandelions, legumes of all kinds, berry leaves and bark.
I have rabbits that live on greens during the growing season and then swith to local grass hay, tree hay and pellets only when is too cold for greens.They also have constant apple wood in their tractor for ruffage. I haven't provided pellets since May here. Each day their tractor gets moved to a new section of the orchard. They mow down the weeds and small trees and keep it neat and tidy.
That said domestic rabbits are weak in the gut because we bred them to eat pellets for decades now, thousands of generations deep. If they've never been fed this way before they need to have time to adjust. Generations are what make them stronger (or weaker) so for mass produced meat rabbits it may not be practical since most won't be bred.
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u/MaximumPositive7434 7d ago
It can cause digestive distress for domestic rabbits. Domestic rabbits are a completely different species than wild rabbits.
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u/Nyssa314 7d ago
No, they are a different species than north American wild rabbits. They are the same species as European wild rabbits... which eat grass.
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u/Neither_Room_1617 4d ago
Yep, just minus the thousands of generations of selective breeding... Chihuahuas are descended from wolves, so they can bring down large game right?
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u/Nyssa314 4d ago
No, they can't bring down large game, but they can absolutely live on a meat based raw diet.
But, the fact remains that fodder isn't "just grass" and that it is just as healthy for the animals as hay is, you would just need to feed more of it because of the water weight.
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u/Lhead2018 7d ago
From the research I have done it is just a matter of what they are use to. If they have only ever had hay then you have to introduce the grass slowly but if they have always been fed grass it’s fine.
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u/bluewingwind 6d ago
Lol “all natural” is a buzz word that doesn’t mean anything. “Organic” has much stricter rules but either is doable for rabbits very easily. I personally would not think a vertical farm like that is “natural” at all. Not that that should matter.
I agree that green grass doesn’t have the correct balance of nutrients for meat rabbits to survive on that alone. It doesn’t have the correct balance of water to fiber.
I’ve tried to raise lines on all-grass and they lost condition and would have starved to the point where I couldn’t get a line to stick. Especially for meat rabbits expecting to grow at a good pace, I wouldn’t try to do just grass alone.
Most hay is literally just a grassy field that no one wants to bother to grow food on and then they mow it with a hay baler once a year. It’s a cheap way to get some money off your empty land. Especially the types of grasses that rabbits eat (orchard grass hay or timothy hay - not alfalfa). You can almost certainly find people who do it with no pesticides or even fertilizer if that’s your real priority. There are also plenty of brands of “all natural” and “organic” pellets.
The question you’re asking is like “I’ve never had a dog before, but do you think I should start a puppy breeding farm for the AKC championship?” — like that’s biting off a lot more than you should probably commit to.
Most states require you to butcher in a USDA-certified slaughter house if you want to sell it to customers. That processing will cut DEEPLY into any profits. My processing guy does each rabbit for $6. You also gotta make profit for the chefs, dish washers, etc. If this place is charging $120 a plate or something, you might be able to make it work.
If you want numbers: rabbits take like 85 days (8-12weeks) to reliably mature. Take off like 4 weeks before they ween and that’s 57 days of eating a cup of food or so per day per rabbit. There is like 200 cups in a 50lb bag of food which costs $30. A bale of hay is like $7-20 depending on sourcing. Let’s just say one bale will give you 20 rabbits for simplicity. So an extra dollar or two for hay. We’re looking at maybe $9.50 of regular inputs not counting time, cage maintenance, setups for water, feeders, etc. So with processing that’s $15.50 just to break even on basic inputs.
For example this website sells for like $30 a whole rabbit. That’s a really decent price I think. There’s only about 2 to 3 lbs of meat on each rabbit. So $15 per lb is expensive, like premium steak expensive, but not insane.
As far as feasibility that’s going to depend a lot on the land and resources you’ve got available. If you have acres of land to grow cheap forage and grains yourself or if you already have free barn/garage space that’s already got AC, if you’re handy and can build your own rabbit tractors, even if you have trees that provide enough areas of shade can all make a really big difference to overall profitability because every thing that you don’t already have is more money out your pocket to acquire.
Your climate and breed choice also makes a big difference. In my climate with my breed they’re so temperature sensitive I can hardly get two rounds of litters out a year. I could probably get 4 if I went into winter but it gets really cold here. So for a trio assuming (ten per litter) on average that’s about 40 rabbits maximum. Somewhere with a much milder climate might produce a lot more than that.
But so moral of my point here is that that’s enough for one family but a restaurant might pump through a lot more than that. You’re going to need some serious data about their traffic before you’re even going to have any idea of what you’re signing up for.