I'm not sure I should have voted for this being a vegetarian as there is no way I would do this.

I do however think it seems like a good idea for meat eaters who like the taste of rabbit and don't have problems getting too attached. The skins should be warm and could be used to make blankets or rugs. Dogs would probably like what parts no one else will eat.

The part were they are quiet and common pets make them easy to have in the city unlike chickens.

Is it wrong of me to immediately recall that Brooklynite half-assed "urban farmer" article years ago in which he essentially killed his "food rabbits" out of ignorance and borderline neglect and to recall this article (http://www.animalsheltering.org/resource_library/magazine_articles/nov_dec_2009/creature_feature_coming_home_to_roost.html) in Animal Sheltering where the animal shelters had to bear the brunt of the chicken craze?

I know there are responsible folks out there but, you know. I worry.

I understand what he means when it says in the article "Mother Nature designed them to die"... but... yikes.

I ate rabbit as a kid. I've always wanted to keep them because they are hard to find where I live.

Here is an interesting fact: During WWI British citizens were encourage to keep rabbits and chickens for food. Well, not so much with the chickens, but with the rabbits, people had become so attached to them, they could not bare to kill them. And, even if they did kill it half the time they couldn't even manage to eat them!

Check out Dolly Freed's Possum Living. She inspired me over twenty years ago to pursue simplicity in all forms, she and her dad kept and ate rabbits and she goes into detail about how they did it. It's good to see this practical suggestion here. I will likely give this a try when we get settled in America, though I'm not sure I'll be able to kill them, rabbits are also excellent lawnmowers and they fertilize as they go. I've cross posted this to my Home Scale Gardening site;
http://homescalefood.blogspot.com/

I tried to fill in your survey but it didn't work.

I know I'm a massive hypocrite because I am a meat-eater, but I have pet rabbits! So there's no way I could consider raising rabbits for food. Even though I've bought wild rabbit on occasion from the farmer's market. I suppose I'm just so used to the idea of them being pets. I'm not against people doing it though, as long as they keep them properly (i've read about it before where people basically had them in a backyard battery cage with wire floors). I'd prefer chickens though-nicer meat, and if you get the right breed you could have eggs AND meat..

Uh, anyone ever see '"Roger & Me"? It's about the glorious lives of Detroit's finest, living off of selling dead rabbit meat nad getting evicted on Christmas Eve. Those were bad times; the 198O's....I hope it's not getting so bad we have to revert back to rabbit meat for making it in these tough times.

For me, it comes down to the cute to delicious ratio. Ostrich, chicken, beef, and fish are much more delicious than cute. Rabbit is much more cute than it is delicious.

Done!

Vegan life for me.

Rabbit is really really good. I got it one time at a butcher shop and it was delicious. I'm not sure I'll ever be raising my own, but I'd pay for urban rabbit meat for sure.

I was a vegetarian for several years, and while I eat meat again, I can't see myself eating bunnies. Just saying eating and bunnies in the same sentence makes me sad...maybe I should say rabbit...that doesn't sound so cute. But I also don't eat veal or lamb...because they are cute too. So I guess I only eat animals I consider ugly, lol. But I obviously prefer free range and like the idea of raising your own animals to ensure they have a good life. I would definitely have to take them alive to a butcher I knew would end their lives quickly and humanely and come back to pick up the packaged meat...I'm not good at killing things with my bare hands....I guess that's a good thing.

We had pet rabbits when I was a child and, frankly, I found them to be nervous little poop machines. I have no compunction related to eating them, but I think I would find them annoying to raise.

Planning to raise them as a source of food for our dogs once I retire. Am transitioning the dogs to the raw food/raw meaty bone thing slowly now, and they're thriving.

Myself, vegan...

That Roger and Me part about the rabbits kept this idea repressed for a LONG time. It is still my cautionary tale--to avoid being my neighborhood's version of that poor woman killing and skinning rabbits by rote, or what looked a lot like post traumatic stress.

I'm mostly a vegetarian, but my husband isn't. Because of that, I've been thinking about this for some time. I'm going broke trying to feed him with happy sustainable meat, and I just cannot support the factory farm system. It seems like the logical next step is to learn to raise it myself since we have almost an acre of land. This is the year of the chickens, if I can get that under control, rabbits may well be next.

(I should mention for background that my family raised rabbits which were sold for meat to a very grateful public during wartime. This isn't an out of the blue concept for me)

I don't have a problem with the idea of *keeping* rabbits, but the idea of killing, skinning, butchering, etc seems like it would take a lot of time and be kind of gross. Not exactly my idea of a fun new hobby. Is there an option where I take a rabbit to a rabbit guy and come back later to pick up my rabbit steaks?

To answer the killing issue... Where I live, there are two professional butchers within a couple miles of my house. While I need to be *able* to do it so I can live with myself, they would likely get the job on a regular basis.

My dad tried to do this in his back yard in east LA in the 70s. He was ultimately unable to kill any rabbits. He said they squeak when they are scared and he lost all heart for the enterprise. Judging by the number of free rabbits available "for pets or meat" on Craigslist here in the midwest, this is not an uncommon outcome for backyard rabbit hutches!

Dad switched to ducks and kept four hens and a drake, who lived happily in a kiddie pool and ate expired produce purchased by the crate at the local grocery store. Dad ate the eggs and the ducks lived a nice long natural lifespan.

Oh, but I should say-- the part about them being less stinky than chickens is very true. My mother is an avid composter and usually buys a pickup load of manure each spring. Rabbit manure was by far the family preference, because it barely smelled at all, and the pellets were dryer and easier to mix in with the other compost material, so it all broke down much faster.

I am a vegetarian and chickens are the way to go. If you are a vegetarian, the eggs are great and for non vegetarians you have dinner when they stop laying.