Raising Pastured Rabbits for Meat: An All-Natural, Humane, and Profitable Approach to Production on a Small Scale

An accessible, practical resource for pasture-based rabbit production-complete with rabbit husbandry basics, enterprise budgets, and guidelines for growing, processing and selling rabbits commercially.

In recent years, there has been talk in the food world that rabbits make more sense than chicken. In a country with a $41 billion broiler chicken industry, this might seem like a pretty bold statement, but it’s hardly unsubstantiated. And yet while media has been abuzz about the supposed super protein, very few farmers are stepping up to meet the rapidly increasing interest in sustainably raised rabbit meat. This is partly due to the lack of available resources in the field of rabbit husbandry.

Raising Pastured Rabbits for Meat is the first book to address the growing trend of ecological rabbit husbandry for the beginning to market-scale farmer. Inspired by Daniel Salatin, who has long been considered the pioneer in integrated rabbit farming, Nichki Carangelo proves that a viable pasture-based rabbitry is not only possible and user-friendly, it’s also profitable.

In Carangelo’s approach, happy, healthy rabbits are seasonally raised outside on pasture, using a pasture and wire hybrid system that promotes natural behaviors and a diverse diet, while effectively managing the associated risks. Raising Pastured Rabbits for Meat offers valuable information on how farmers can build their own rabbit enterprise from scratch and includes tips on breed selection, breeding techniques, nutrition guidelines, record keeping tools, slaughtering and butchering instructions, marketing advice, and enterprise guides to help farmers plan for profitability.

This is an essential guide for anyone interested in integrating rabbits onto a diversified farm or homestead.

“Nichki Carangelo’s Raising Pastured Rabbits for Meat is like a long chat with a warm and generous friend who’s sharing advice based on her own experience, hard won from both her successes and her mistakes (which you won’t have to repeat). Her approach is pragmatic and flexible, never doctrinaire.”—Harvey Ussery, author of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock

Nichki Carangelo is a third-generation Italian American, second-generation small business owner, and a first-generation farmer from Waterbury, Connecticut. She began her agricultural career one year after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, and three years later, she became a founding member of Letterbox Farm Collective, a cooperatively owned, diversified farm in Hudson, New York. Today she manages livestock and direct markets for the farm, while squeezing in research and organizing work on the side where she can.