Total Cost to Raise Meat Rabbits in a Year

Ever wondered how much it costs to raise a whole bunch of meat rabbits? So have I, and I have been raising them for a few years now. I recently calculated the total cost to raise meat rabbits in a year. Starting in January of 2024 and ending in January 2025, I documented all of my feed costs. Lets dive in.

My Meat Rabbit set up

My rabbits all live in hutches. I have each Doe and buck in their own space in the hutch. I currently have three does and two bucks. Most commonly Homesteaders starting out with meat rabbits will get a trio( two does and one buck). That is how I started out and have breed some of my own breeding stock. For more information on getting started with meat rabbits check out my post about getting started!

Hutches

I have three hutches. One of them has three separate spaces in it where I house my two bucks and a doe. The other two hutches each have two spaces to house rabbits. One of the hutches I keep two does in, one on each side, and the last hutch I use for my grow outs. I will not be including the cost of Rabbitry set up in my total cost to raise meat rabbits in a year analysis.

Breeders

Let me give you an idea of what breeding stock I raised in 2024 and am currently still raising. I currently have 3 does. One pure bred Silver fox and the other two are part Silver fox. Below I will go over each breeder that I have, how old, litters, and how much rabbit meat they produced this year. Keep in mind that I butcher at 12 weeks old when they are about 5 pounds, live weight. In the end, I end up with about 2.5 pounds of meat per rabbit. Plus stock bones and organs. So for the sake of this post, I will calculate each breeders production of meat based on 2.5 pounds per kit she produces.

Thumper

Thumper is my oldest rabbit. She is a Pure Silver fox blue Doe and weighs about 10 pounds. She was born in March of 2021. For the year of 2024, she produced 18 meat rabbits. Thumper gave our family a total of 45 pounds of rabbit meat this year. Below you will see my breeding log for her. This shows my breeding schedule throughout her life.

Lucky

Lucky is my favorite rabbit. She is such a wonderful mother and a easy breeder. Which is always nice. I can’t stand it when I have to wait an hour to get 3 fall offs during breeding because the Doe is stubborn. Anyway, she was born in February of 2022 and I kept her back from one of my litters. She is part Silver fox, part Rex and weighs about 9 pounds. In 2024 she produced 20 kits and 50 pounds of rabbit meat.

DArling

My third doe is Darling. I held her back from a litter in April of 2023. She started breeding around 8 months old. as you can see from the chart below, she has not performed well. She is a poor mother. Now sometimes it normal for a first time Doe to not do well for there first litter. But I have tried again and again with her and she never wants to pool fur of care for her babies properly. The last time I bred her was in October. When that whole litter died, I decided to find a new home for her after breeding her 5 times. She produced a total of 8 kits and 20 pounds of rabbit meat.

Meat Rabbit Feed

My rabbits eat rabbit pellets. I use Top Hutch 18, but before that I was buying Producers Pride pellet feed from tractor supply. They also eat Timothy hay as well. Check this video, where I go over what feed I use along with going over everything you need to start raising rabbits.

The Truth about Cost of Raising Meat Rabbits

I have to be honest, I was not happy with my results when it came down to how much it costs me to raise rabbit meat. Yes, I could work on having more productive rabbits, mine are getting older and one of my does was a loss this year. But, I want to share with you the truth of my experience raising these rabbits. The truth is, homesteading isn’t cheap!

From my research and watching other homesteaders calculate their cost to raise meat rabbits, they calculate start calculating feed costs when the does becomes pregnant, up until the kits are processed. I have also seen others start calculating feed costs when the kits are born up until the processing day. To me, this makes no sense. Why not include the cost of the breeders? Those breeders are costing me money all year long, even when I do not have grow outs. To me, it only makes since to include that cost in the total cost of raising meat rabbits.

Breaking it down

Below I have included the chart that I created to document my total feed costs. These feed costs are for the whole year of 2024 and I have included every rabbit in my Rabbitry, breeders and grow outs. I then took the total feed cost amount and divided that with the total pounds of rabbit meat I raised. So I have included the cost of feeding the breeder when considering what it cost to get the end product of rabbits meat. Naturally this will make the cost of each pound of rabbits meat I raised much higher than the numbers you may see from other homesteaders who raise rabbits. I’m sure you are dying for the numbers now, lets get into it.

Yearly Meat Rabbit Cost

I have been raising rabbits for a few years now, and this is the first time I ever put to pen and paper what I was spending. Here is the chart I created to document my feed costs for my Rabbitry in 2024. Each months cost is different depending on whether or not I have grow outs during that month or not. But this is it my friends. Every time I opened a new bag of pellets or hay, I wrote it down. I found out by doing this that I go through on average 50 pounds of pellets every 12 days or so. In August I switched over to a higher quality feed, which made my costs go up a bit.

Meat Rabbit Cost Breakdown

Here it is, the total cost to raise meat rabbits in a year. In the year of 2024 I raised a total of 44 meat rabbits and 5 breeders. To feed all these rabbits between pellets and hay, I went through 1,825 pounds of feed. That really isn’t important but it was interesting and fun to know. My total feed costs were $893.22. My grow out rabbits get to be about 5 pounds by 12 weeks when I process them. By the time I piece them out and package them up, I get about 2.5 to 3 pounds of meat per rabbit. Since I raised and harvested 44 grow outs, I calculated 44 times 2.5 pounds to get the total pounds of rabbits meat I raised, which is 110 pounds. This does not include the stock bones and organs I was able to use from the rabbits. To play it safe, I decided to stick with 2.5 pounds. Since I harvested 110 pounds of meat, I divided that my total feed cost and got a little over $8 dollars per pound. So It cost me $dollars per pound of rabbits meat. This means that each meat rabbit cost me $20! Whoa….

Lets be Real

I know what your probably thinking….shes doing something wrong. Since this was my first time actually documenting my costs, this information came as a shock to me as well. Yes, there are some things that I could change, like getting rid of one of my bucks. Lets also remember, that raising any homesteading animal is more expensive to raise when compared to larger scale farming operations.

Typically the average litter size is 8 kits, and this year my does did not meet those expectations well. But as a homesteader, you come to realize that you can’t always control the outcomes you face when raising animals. My older buck Earl is getting old, and he has not been giving the does decent litters anymore. Because of this I will have to retire him. I think going forward I will just keep one buck to keep costs down. It also took a few times breeding him this year to come to that realization, which cost me decent litters that I could have gotten from my younger buck.

I really just want to be more honest and transparent with my readers and viewers than I think some others are. Knowing how much you spend and having real numbers to go off really helps when you are starting out.

Ways to Bring Cost Down

There are a few things you can consider to bring these costs down.

• Selling rabbit meat
• Selling breeding stock or pets
• Rabbit tractors for your grow outs
• Grow a Rabbit Garden

There are many ways to save on costs. For example, I have a Etsy shop where I sell rabbit foot key chains and meat rabbit supplies. Let me know in the comments if you have thought of other suggestions!

Its not all about the Cost

Yes, homesteading is expensive. It’s cheaper to just buy eggs and meat from the store and much easier too! But I homestead to provide healthy food from my family and to experience and learn basic skills that I personally think everyone should learn. I mean, everyone did this back in the day. This is how people survived. I would rather spend more raising healthy animals, than support the industrial food supply. I don’t trust the people who own these mega food companies, who by the way also own big pharma. But hey, do not get me started, that is a whole other story.