1st Butcher went well, ?'s

[nomad7inwi]

We butchered 5 of our rabbits today. It went well. They were 5 month old Dutch. The kill went fairly smoothly. Skinning was more difficult than described, but still easy. Our only 2 issues were the bleed and cutting out the anus.

The blood seemed to coagulate too quickly for a good bleed out. We used teh broomstick method for the kill. Then we hung it up and slit the throat or cut the head off, it didn't seem to make a difference. Then we skinned. When I started to gut & cut, the blood was all pooled at the throat and front legs. So what should we do differently?

Also, I somehow need to work on my technique for cutting around the anal opening. I nicked the intestine 3 out of 5 times. Any tips?

All in all it went pretty well. The rabbits were older than we intended but the cuteness factor and the killing of an animal caused us much procrastination. But we needed food on the table & empty cages for the next batch growing up. And that batch is about ready to butchered too.

Oh well the deed is done and we are mighty satisfied with ourselves!

[Terry W]

Animalfarmer sent me what appears to be an efficient kill method-- and I should think, if you arranged it so the front legs were up against the body, they would bleed out better rather than be a place for blood to pool.

I seem to remember my uncle pulling gently down on the intestine, and start cutting around the anius form "inside"-- it gave him something to hold onto as he pulled the intestines away from the body cavity

[turtlehead]

Skinning is easier on younger rabbits. It's amazing how much easier.

We have problems with blood pooling around the neck, too, so can't help you there.

We use the tail as a handle and kind of let the rabbit hang while we cut around the anus. I think this does pretty much the same thing as what Terry described, in that it stretches things a little bit taught and keeps it from all being bunched up and in the way.

The cuteness factor is a pain. We have two that are WAY past butchering age and four or five more that we need to do.