Why You Should Raise Meat Rabbits in a Colony (Pros and Cons)

Reading some of the lower comments about disease... listen to your land and your animals and your own biology. You will save more lives with observation and listening than you will with just noticing sickness 😷 and death. Notice life and what health looks like, and is. ^-^ win win .

Mites!

In a confined pen like this the rabbits' urine will become concentrated in the soil and if any of the rabbits is carrying a particular protozoan parasite in their body this will spread to all of the rabbits. This protozoa is neurotoxic and will cause a wasting disease starting with paralysis of the front legs then going to the back legs within a few days. They will die and or you may have to out them down. I have tried this and nearly half of my rabbits died from this cause. It is difficult to keep this kind of enclosed pen cleaned properly, as they dig holes everywhere and the poop and pee get caught all over the place. I do not recommend it in a small setting. Maybe in a much bigger pen that could be kept more sanitary. Maybe. Also, if you gather up their manure for garden purposes, this would be hard to get it all with the holes, etc. Just my personal experience.

thank you for tis video!

My parents had such a colony setup, when I was a child. It worked great for a few years, but then the rabbits managed to dig down below the barriers at the side and escaped. The family dog helped to catch them all, but the setup had to be redone with an additional barrier below. Unfortunately, after that, the setup never worked again, the soil was not compact enough and the tunnels collapsed over the rabbits. So, that is something to get done correctly from the start. For my family that problem was the end of keeping rabbits, because there was no time to fix it and keeping them in separate cages did neither benefit the animals nor us.

i can never understand why people keep em in small wired cages, whats the point then, might as well buy from big meat farms, keeping domesticated rabbits in small sollitare cages is not okay, not as pets not as food

I started my colony about 5 years ago. Now all my neighbors have rabbits, too.

Eating the litter is a mental health indicator.
Recover the resources and try again later when the situation is better.
If your rabbits don't feel the need to do that, then that means everything is fine or at least good enough.
That is also why this happens more with caged rabbits. They are not as relaxed as yours. (Stress might increase with no fault of yours, if for example they get attacked by a predator. Caging eliminates these variables.)
Caging is mostly only economical if your bottleneck is the area available. And that is simply not the case in your scenario.
But in the industrial scope you can go cheaper by increasing density. As most of that infrastructure has mostly a flat cost.
Similar with chickens if you are not constrained by square footage just letting them roam free is way easier. But if you store them on multi leveled shelves you can obviously squeeze in A LOT more.

We raised our meat rabbits in a colony style pen. Would never do it another way. While any method has its own pros and cons, for us the colony was perfect.

What state are you in? My interest is in pest control (fire ants).
Im in GA.

Thank you for your video

Well i have to say , i thought of making a colony..but there are issues that i will tell , hope others read and think about them.

1) space, if you dont have a huge amount of space , i suggest cages ,it has saved me ton of space and was relatively cheap spending around 120 euro for 5 large cages (3 breeding female, 2 large male pens) and 16 smaller cages (60x60) for grow outs, in that money is included the watering system i made and the feeders and "houses" for the females.

2) is timing , check where you live ,for example where i live ,you can not have litter in summer, its basically suicide and when i started and tried a colony set up, i lost a bunny due to the heat (can hit 40°C fairly easily) this also allows me to give the doughs enough time to rest from the kids usually 1 or more weeks of relaxation.
3) depending how comited you are ,the rabbits in cages will be far more docile and if you let them out to graze as i did (and you should let them "strech" every now and then both females and males) you will notice you have less of a hard time putting them back in, i even had one dough that actively pulled me to her litter especially if things got too warm or too cold ,in order to fix things.
4) diseases , now this is something that applies to regions , check what your area has as diseases, in my place rabbits and chickens share the same issues so if i had chickens get sick the rabbits would soon follow, being in cages meant that i basically already had a quarantine to keep them from getting things worse.

5) cleaning...this was probably the easiest job i did, grab a shovel every 1-2 weeks and fill 2-5 buckets of poo and straight to thr garden it went, surprisingly rabbit poo isnt that "hot" so it doesnt need to be composted for long time or at all depending on the feed.

Keep in mind though NOT ALL RABBITS ARE MADE EQUALLY: a lot of meat rabbits can be in cages but not all of them are suited for such lifestyles, check their back legs, usually extremely thick rough fur is a good indicator that they will do ok in a cage set up..keep in mind that you have to feed them moderately feed, not moving means they can get fat easily ,so aside the growouts you should avoid giving protein dense feed to breeders and males , instead opt out for far more greens,grass and mineral/vitamin heavy feed

well thx for sharing ,i always wonder how it will work as a colony ,thx a lot!

Great vid. Any footage of how you built your bunny tractor?

Why do you have the ENTIRE feeder inside the pen instead of inserting only the tray portion through an opening in the wire?

You should really separate your Bucks from the colony. This prevents aggressive situations that result in bite injuries. A buck ALWAYS WANTS to breed... a doe is ALWAYS physically able to breed. The act of breeding stimulates the doe to breed.. by his second or third attempt she will let him. Bucks do well indoors as pets or simply separate them into different enclosures. Bring your does to the buck's cage to do purposeful, recorded mating and never have questionable offspring. Juveniles can be intermixed, just get the boys out before they sexually mature.

Nice video! I suggest 1.5+ gallon water bowls for colony rabbits. Rabbits will wet their paws in a bowl of water and groom with wet paws.

I also find bucks to be the most friendly bunnies. Mine comes running when I come outside and he just 'melts' when I pet him. He's such a sweet boy. My females are generally more territorial and like their space/freedom more, don't love being held but do come around for pets on 'their terms', lol

I may use a colony system if we move properties, but my hutches work great: larger than any other cages I've seen, controls waste, and takes about 5 minutes of work a day.

I've tried both ways, twice. Cages are all I will use, it's slightly more work but it's much easier to control breeding and losses from does trying to use the same nests. Pathogen loads are much less too. The biggest plus for me is the ease of dealing with their poop. My rabbits all live next to each other in 6'x8' moveable cages partitioned into 6 separate "rooms". They're free to touch each other through the wire and all share hay between rooms.

This is such a good idea! My husband and I are thinking of raising meat rabbits. So, in the winter, if it gets in the negative degrees, the rabbits can just burrow down and be warmer?

What is the minimum area of colony rabbit

This was great.
I have not 're-started' raising rabbits yet, but as a kid we hunted rabbits and I always thought it a bit strange to raise in cages for meat. Sort of like free range chickens... free range rabbits.

What happens if a baby dies underground? Do the adults bring out the body?

Do you have any good books you would recommend on raising rabbits in colonies ???

how / when /which do you harvest

If you try to raise meat rabbits in a colony, you will have skinny kids. It just does not work.

Where can I buy rabbits?

the humane living conditions have to outweigh the incovenience--- even if burrowing wasnt allowed the community sure beats the hanging wire cage-- that just seems like a living hell. my freinds father an old italian mobster used to raise the rabbits, community-- males in one hutch females in teh other,,, that still beat the individual wire cage hanging in air in 0 degrees

This is a much better way of raising rabbits than cages. Certainly better for the rabbits but for you too because you have less daily work. All the data you mentioned is only important if you were selling meat/hides. Once other people have expectations of your products you have to have and keep records. Forget that noise! No records! From experience I say the aggression of ANY rabbit is from overcrowding in cage setups. Not only will bucks attack kits but does will attack one another. Meat breed rabbits were never meant to be in small commercial style cages.

Thank you for making this. It is exactly what I was looking for.

I appreciate your view, it sound like you have under 1 year with this setup? I see lots of colony set ups and i am not aware of any long term(10 year)colonies, but lots of 40+year cage breeders. How do you plan to handle the manure buildup over time, like 5 years down the road? How often will you need to dig up that 3ft deep tunnel system ? I believe you will find the reasons why so few rabbit colonies endure years of use. I dont think colonies are viable long term especially in my frigid winter area. Thanks for showing your setup i do enjoy getting new ideas from other people's experiences.

Merci from Montreal Canada.

Thank you for this! Was looking into getting some meat rabbits, but hated that the information on it was so reliant on the tiny cages, and it also seemed too work intensive for us, but I'm very glad to see an alternative. Love the idea with digging down so they can have room to burrow!

When I was a kid, one of my friend's dad raised his rabbits for meat. Every once in a while he would get a rabbit in the colony that would become cannibalistic. It would first eat the ears of the other rabbits and then the babies if not removed. He would have to separate one adult out of the group and wait a few days to see if it stopped before putting it back and separating another until he found the rabbit doing it. He would destroy the rabbit but wouldn't eat it.
He never told me why this happened or why he refused to eat it. I recall that happening to his colony several times as a kid he would have a rabbit that went crazy like this.

and whot results u got? more count litter? biggoer bunnoes? more meat? whot? y got anyfing gut of it or u just clowning here blyat?

Man I love this I built a 12x16 barn and have them all running around the male locked away but was planning to dig down and do this... as in Canada 🇨🇦 it's cold 🥶

They ain't wild ain't been wild for over a 100 years

I watched some pet channels, but there is no way I am keeping a rabbit inside my house. Meat channels seem to have more sensible advice.

Like another commentor, I am also concerned about manure build-up. We have approximately 250 square foot available planned for an adult Flemish Giant (as a pet for our sheepdog).

I plan to build (with help) a hobbit style hutch to provide protection from the elements, but wasn't sure what kind of flooring to use. Leaning towards the 14GA wire, with a removable tray underneath that, because I am worried about disease.

From what I understand, the rabbits poop a lot while eating, so planning on having a metal hay tray attached to a wall, also with a 14GA wire + tray setup underneath.

Do you think this is realistic / safe / sufficiently sanitary? Thanks!

any good recipes ?

Glad your video popped up after one comparing each system, you explained the colony style the best! Also love how you dug down to install a wire barrier: smart! I will definitely be doing the same, once i knock off a bunch of other projects that are on the priority list, lol... In the meantime, I'm thinking about removing one wall in my minibarn/chicken coop and putting rabbits in, as my flock size is small enough that i can consolidate my birds into just one unit (the middle unit has been vacant for months already). I have had rabbits in there before (not mine, and only for a couple months) and they ate away at the walls and studs (open framing). This behaviour seemed to be reduced after providing lava blocks, but do you think lining the space with 2' chicken wire will help? Like, would that be tall enough (they won't climb over and get trapped in behind) or should i go taller/install horizontal blocking along the top? Also, is there something I can do to protect the plywood floor from damage? Like, I'm thinking i could probably do a 1" pour of concrete, but then if we ever decide to disassemble and relocate the building again in the future, the concrete would pose a bit of a problem. TIA!

Amazing! Extremely humane way of raising meat.

Rabbits are happier in colony than cages

We have a colony but I find the poop build up to be a problem. I provide deep litter but they just mix it in and so they are always in their poop, even heavily in their nests. Please tell me your thought on this.

Thanks for the info… hopefully, I can start my own rabbit colony soon.😊

I love that they can make borrows. Do the tunnels collapse now and again?