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[Bevanron <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

Marie McHarry wrote:

> The one thing I notice is that everyone apparently raises rabbits in 
> cages. Would it be possible to raise them in a chicken tractor and 
> take advantage of pasture? Any reason why that isn't done.


Hmmm.  They do make rabbit tractors that can be moved around, and I
suppose you could make one for yourself that would accommodate a couple
of rabbits.  The ones I have seen were A-frame types developed to allow
day grazing for pet rabbits, not specifically for raising rabbits. So,
you would have to overcome some potential obstacles if you built your own.
Here come the bricks...lookout bucket of worms.... ;)
1. You need to build something strong enough to thwart predators.
Everything eats rabbit.
2. You need to have some wire or something on the bottom, or at least
some way to keep the rabbits from digging out, but not enough wire to
prevent them from grazing through it and not enough wire to make moving
the tractor difficult.  It would be tricky on choosing the size and type
of wire.  You would need to make sure the tractor is on level ground
that is not too rocky or the rocks might hang up in the wire.
3.  Females are territorial, and you might end up with fights and dead
rabbits if the tractor is too small or the rabbits have not been raised
together or if the buck is in the same enclosure, the doe might kill the
buck if he harasses her too much...You may need a separate enclosure for
the buck.  The buck will continue to try to mount the females and they
will get tired of it and simply bite his testicles off-a bloody mess.
Also, if you have males and females together, they will do what rabbits
do, breed, and breed a lot.  You would have no control over it and over
the long haul, several years, you would have rabbits dying just from
overproduction.  Rabbits are on-demand ovulators, that is, they ovulate
when they have sex, so if a doe gives birth in the morning, and a buck
mounts her 2 hours later, she will ovulate and guess what, 31 days
later, you will have another batch of bunnies and the poor doe will end
up suffering for it.  Does need a rest between litters.  I do breed back
immediately in the Spring, but as the year goes on, I try to give them a
longer recovery time in between breedings.  If you don't, your breeding
does won't live very long, and most certainly, they won't have the
quality of life that you are hoping to give them by putting them on pasture.
4.  You will need to provide cover or nestboxes in the tractor since you
don't want them to dig burrows, and make sure the babies can't fall
through the bottom.  Rabbits should be protected from the wind and rain.
 They love cold weather, but don't do as well in the heat.


I think it is possible to tractor rabbits as long as you have cages,
too.  You could tractor during the day, and cage them at night.  I cage
mine, but I do allow them to graze on occasion.
  I built a couple of small, 1x3 , transport cages with 1" x 2" wire
openings and sometimes I will put a rabbit in a transport cage and sit
the cage over in a nice patch of grass/weeds/clover in the shade.  I
used to do it all the time, but I had two rabbits die on me so now I
only allow them to graze when I am going to be working right near them.
 The first one died when it was attacked by yellow jackets, and the
second one died of probably heat stroke.  I had left the immediate area
and forgot about him for a couple of hours and of course, the sun moved
and what was shade became sun...like I said, rabbits don't do heat well....


I am seriously thinking about colony raising rabbits.  I haven't got it
figured out yet, and I am still reading, but it looks like something
that would work under the right circumstances, especially if you needed
to "hide" rabbits in a natural setting outside of the barn-away from
prying eyes of inspectors.

Bev

--
erthnsky AT bellsouth.net  BevanRon of EarthNSky Farm      NW Georgia USDA Zone 7
34.498N 85.076W