Meat Nuggets: Episode 2

Welcome back to our Meat Nuggets series! If you missed Episode 1, click here! Since the first update, we have weaned the kits (aka meat nuggets aka baby meat rabbits) from their mommas, and moved them to the rabbit’s pasture grow-out cage. That’s right, these little ones have all the grass they can eat, along with a giant bowl of pellets that magically refills for them twice a day.

But first, a rewind, so you can see our updates in real time.

Week 2:

All of the kits have open eyes! They are so adorable. Cute little meat nuggets.

Cinnabon’s kit that has her same coat! All of the others look like Bucket, the father.

But we have sad news. One of Ebony’s kits was crushed the first week. We composted the little kit. Her other six meat nuggets are doing great though! Ebony with 6, and Cinnabun with 9 means 15 meat nuggets!

We had expected to lay the nesting boxes on their sides at week three, so that the kits could move in and out of their nest, but the little goobers were somehow hopping out at a week and a half. They probably were hitching a ride on their mommas, but it was happening to both does, so we figured it was better to be safe than sorry. We tipped the nesting boxes over so they could be warm in the nest or run around. Both mommas like hanging out up on top of the nesting box, away from the little nuggets.

Week 4:

The other day, the heat index was over 100, so we brought the does in, with their kits, to hang out in totes in our living room during the hottest hours of the day. We think the animals we care for should only have one bad day, so we don’t mind spoiling them until they head to freezer camp.

You see, a lot of the meat we get from the store is chock full of crazy hormones from the stressed out animals before they were processed. (In addition to whatever else was also inserted into, or fed to, the animals!) We’re not at all interested in those “extras.” We’d like clean, sustainable meat, thank you very much. The extra 14 pounds a year of food additives freaks us out. That’s why we go through the ‘hassle’ of raising our own!

But they’re no hassle at all to us. We enjoy caring for our critters. They feed us! And they also do “a job” for us as well. The chickens, for example, turn food scraps into eggs, significantly reducing what might otherwise be food-waste, and also turn compost piles for us, allowing them to entertain themselves digging for protein (aka bugs) to produce said delicious eggs, so that we can scoop and move the pre-flipped compost material. Their nitrogen-heavy chicken poop also gets added to the compost, which the plants love.

The rabbits? They’re little mowers! We move the rabbit run at least 3 times a day to keep them on fresh grass. The grass they are moved off of has a great layer of instant compost, and is freshly mowed. We just walk behind with a rake every couple of days to spread out the rabbit manure, and thank them kindly for leaving the grass better than they found it. (Rabbit manure is “cold” manure, in that it’s safe to apply to plants immediately—unlike the “hot” chicken manure that is so nutrient rich, it’ll burn plants if applied directly.) For the rabbits in the hutch, we pull the taller grass around the fence line the chickens haven’t picked down, so we sort of edge trim together when they eat that grass. Then we scoop up the rabbit manure and bag it, since it has some timothy hay or grass clippings in it too, and then stack it up, ready for the garden whenever, wherever we want to add compost!

Mowed on the left, then turn 90 degrees to mow back to the start

Don’t have to mow between the garden beds when the rabbits are on it!

Week 6:

We’re weening the majority of the kits during the day for a couple of days, but leaving the runts and the kit we’re selling with the mommas. After a couple days, these kits will stay 24/7 in the grow out pen until we harvest them. The runts will finish out the week with their mommas to help the mommas adjust to the weening. The kit we’re selling is to a couple who are looking to start up their own meat rabbit operation, and the income from this paid for two bags of rabbit feed on the way home. We don’t break even doing this, but it helps!

You might ask why the bowl is upside down. We’ve aske them several times ourselves. Since they play with it like a toy, we’ve started making little feed areas in their loft. Not all of them are keen to have soggy paws in the damp morning grass it seems, so they feast in their penthouse with their siblings raid the refilled feeder. Less than ideal, we’ll probably get a couple more feeders for the inside area, but it works for now. We can tell where they do their business, so we just avoid those corners.

Aren’t they adorable? See why we have to call them something ridiculous like meat nuggets?

We’re not sure which week we’ll harvest the meat nuggets. It’ll probably depend on their weight, and the weather. One source said 12 weeks, another said 16. We’ll let you know in the next episode!