We want to grow our own food. We prepared the garden. The first year ground squirrels eat all our lovely new plants. The second year we place metal fencing under and around the garden. The rabbits climb the fence, bowing it and eat all the sprouting plants. The third year the birds swoop down and remove anything green. The fourth year we cover the top of the garden with lattice. I get sick and do not have enough energy to haul buckets of water to the garden. everything dies. I give up.
We want to raise rabbits for meat. I read about all the benefits of rabbit meat. It is lower in cholesterol. The produce well like rabbits. It is easier to harvest a rabbit then a chicken. I find some wire cage material in the desert and create a hutch with two separate cages. Knowing that I want at least one buck and three does I need more hutches. I look and look on craigslist for rabbits and hutches. I find rabbits in laveen and an unfinished hutch in chandler. So we go for a drive and purchase two bucks and two does. They were breeding pairs. My husband didn't want to break them up. We place them in two separate cages, bought at the humane society for under five dollars, one for bucks one for does. Get them home and try to breed them. Using the tree methods I researched, leaving them together, together then separate then together, next to then together. We tried for over six months. No kidding. Then three of the rabbits died. We think something got into their feed. We still had one doe.
Our hens stop laying in the hot or in the cold so I start looking into ducks. My husband and I actually took a chicken processing class and they only had ducks to cull. Back to craigslist. Two free Peking ducks we get our trusty dog kennel and head to phoenix. The neighborhood that we get them from was pretty scary. Graffiti, smashed up cars, and thugs loitering everywhere. We knock on the door and are escorted to the back yard. Picking a drake and a hen. We carried them thru the house. Yes I said thru the house. And for a bonus he gave us their kiddy pool. Thank goodness because where was I going to find a pool in the winter. We name them Romeo and Juliet. When we picked the hen up and moved her she was hysterical until the drake was brought into the dog kennel. They wrapped their necks around each other. Just like the fairy tale. Romeo Romeo where art thou?
Im really interensted in this little process. Have you been able to make enough to market any of your products yet? Ae you still raising the rabbits or did they all pass away? I don't kknow which Imm responding to soI am just goint to respond to all of your entries at once. Good luck to your son, I hope he finds a job. Its hard out there fo everyoe. It seems that older people have to take jobs yourng people used to get just to make ends meat for their families. But if you look around things are starting to pick up. It wont be long now, the economy will be back in place, perhaps not just like before, but Im old andI saw this cycle trough the 70's. We will be back. But you are wise to become more reliant on yourself. I am waiting each day to read about your little farm. Have U given up on a garden> Sounds like nature is against you on that acord. Although. l, living in the desert, U would think nature would be against yo in the first place unless you were a reock or a lizzard. But sounds like you have done pretty good. Looking forward to tommorrow
ReplyDeleteI have been selling eggs to friends and family.
ReplyDeleteAll but one rabbit passed away.
We have started gardening again. Try Try again. Practice makes perfect. The sun will come up tomorrow.
Thanks for your comments