rabbits

[GoodOlBoy]

been seeing a few on the roads and in the late afternoons around my place. Thinking about live trapping and cross breeding them with domestic for meat stock. What do you guys think?

GoodOlBoy

[Mr. 16 gauge]

Don't know much about animal husbandry, but seems to me that you wouldn't get much......kinda like crossing a wild boar with a domestic hog. I think you would be better off crossing domestic with domestic and culling those that weren't big & meaty and crossing those that were big and meaty until you got what you desired.
Also, don't forget the very real possibility of introducing diseases such as tularemia from wild stock....

Just my 2 cents (after taxes, that's all I have left!:()

[wrenchman]

I have eaten lots o rabbits wild and domestic and can say i would eat a wild one any day my grand father use to raise rabbits when a i was a kid.
I would say build some brush piles and increase your wild rabbits.

[GoodOlBoy]

Yep, With a wild/domestic cross I am hoping to get a heartier rabbit with the denser muscle of a wild bunny. Of course they will still be in a cage so it will only do so much to improve the quality. Most of the Domestics we have in the area are New Zealand Whites and California black ears. What I would really like to have is a few Flemish giants to cross with some of the BIG swamp bunnies we have so that hopefully I could get a heat tolerant strain out of them with a size close to that of the Flemish. The problem is getting Flemish giants down here.

GoodOlBoy