Round Butte woman raises New Zealand Reds
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Reddish brown rabbits, sleek and brown-eyed, inhabit the greenhouse at Eloise Anderson’s place off Round Butte. They are New Zealand Reds, and the adults can weigh 9 to 12 pounds.
With big cages, half inside the greenhouse that stays at about 82 degrees, and half outside, now covered with tarps, the rabbits nibble alfalfa pellets and hay at will. Two bucks, Thumper and Hiccup, each have a pen to themselves while eight does and their fluffy babies share pens. Then there are the rowdy teenage cages — the boys and the girls — Anderson calls them.
“I see a sore ear,” she said, peeking in the boys’ cage. “They had a fight last night.”
Anderson imported her New Zealand Reds from the Ghost Mountain Rabbitry in Kentucky, the oldest rabbitry in the United States. The breed was introduced in 1932 and is thought to be a cross between Belgian Hares, Belgian Hare sports, Golden Fawns and Flemish Giants.
Anderson became interested in raising the huge red rabbits after attending the Kentucky Derby and enjoying a “big rabbit dinner.” Rabbit meat is a fine-grained white meat, low in fat and cholesterol and high in protein, according to Anderson.
She has only been a rabbit-raiser since May. Shipping the bunnies from Kentucky to Montana was problematic, Anderson said, and she ended up paying $120 to transport each rabbit. All nine does had litters and produced 62 fluffy babies, but then she lost one of her does to pneumonia.
After looking at her rabbits, Anderson called her rabbitry the Terra Cotta Rabbitry, “cause they’re terra cotta colored.”
A recycler, Anderson used long pieces of rubber belting she found at the landfill to form a hay feeder on the back of the hutches as well as support for a roof over the outdoor portion of the hutches.
In addition to the hay and Pfau’s alfalfa bunny pellets all the rabbits eat, the does and bucks get oats, she said, “for milk and for energy.” For rabbits destined for the table, she adds rolled, steamed oats.
“These bunnies have been domesticated for so long, they can’t have fresh food,” Anderson explained.
Although she’s exploring other marketing opportunities, right now Anderson is selling rabbit meat by word of mouth. The young rabbits are ready for the table after 10 weeks, according to Anderson. A whole rabbit, slaughtered and frozen, goes for $8, and she sells packages to pop in the crockpot for a little less.
