Is my math right?

[BlsdMama]

Let's say you get a bunny litter in:

December
March
June
September

Is four average?

And we'll figure that seven is the average litter.

That would mean each doe could produce approx. 28 babies per year.

If you needed 500 bunnies per year for your family/dogs, you'd need 18 producing does. Now, if you also needed to be producing your replacement does and account for losses....

I guess bottom line, we need to feed a butchered bunny as part of our dog's diet per day. That's 365. And then we add in two bunnies per week for our family and that's 104. So I think the number 500 is pretty accurate.

How's my math look? Is that optimistic or pessimistic or pretty realistic?

(Or am I just looking for an excuse to keep most of the does out of the current litters?)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who does crazy math like this. Let me see what I think....

Yeah, those numbers are good. 18 is a nice number...you could breed 6 does a month and by the time the last set of 6 were bred, it'd be time to breed the first set of six again.

The question is, how many cages do you need for all the rabbits, including growing out pens? How many bucks would you need? What would your yearly feed bill look like?

Just out of curiosity, what size is you dog? I wonder how many does I'd need to feed my family and 8 dogs.....my husband would kill me.

[o&itw]

uh....I think you either need to get a rat terrier.......or stock in Purina.

[MorrisonCorner]

It's the cage space build out that might be tricky. But if you were managing as a colony system..

[Bamboorabbit]

4 litters per year is very conservative. I would bump it to 6. Your average litter size is also a bit light as I get a average of 7.5 per litter to butcher.

[ctomosky]

We're trying to get a good scedule going, that has us breeding two does a month, with three sets of does. So after we get some good does, we should start getting two litters of kits per month, year round (if we're really lucky...

[nancy237]

Helpful info.

I want to switch from selling as pets to putting meat in our freezer.
We were hoping to have 2 rabbits/week in the freezer to eat or share.

If I can count on 6 litters/year and 6 rabbits /litter= 36 rabbits/year
I want 2/week= roughly 100 rabbits.
If my math is right 4 does should be more than enough.

The part I haven't figured out is a grow out pen solution.

If they are weaned at 5-6 weeks doesn't that mean about a month
in a grow out pen??

[ctomosky]

We just have a 30"x36" Cage on a table, and they do pretty well in that until freezer camp...