Butcher Day

Well, we had a group that needed to be moved through yesterday and we finally found a reasonable way to do so many of them at once. Though we have been doing this for a year, we are still relatively new at it. We have only butchered about 75 rabbits or so over the course of this last year, 2009. It's never easy. We make sure not to make friends with them, we make sure not to give any extra attention outside feeding and watering. But it's STILL tough.

We always say a prayer for each rabbit on butcher day. It's the least we can do. 

But, I have to say yesterday was by far the easiest. My husband does the dispatching of each rabbit. This time he did them all one at a time and put them straight into a large cooler. After seven necks were broken we moved the coolor up to the dressing area (an old swing set, works great!) We used to do say, two or three at a time. From dispatching up to dressing out completely and that was just too hard on my husband. That is by far the hardest part for us. I can't even watch. Sheesh.

Butchering rabbits is much tougher than working chickens. Chickens, no biggy at all. Rabbits and perhaps later in the year, goats...much harder. Even harder with the goats. We may have a friend who has hunted all his life come over and do the goats. Goats are so much more hands on it's hard not to love them. Except for maybe my Amelia. I'll get into her later as I start chatting about goats. That damn goat...

Anyway, I'm just sort of musing my way along...thinking out loud.

We did get the butchering done and our dogs are quite happy with it. :-) Our little buddy Steve (the Chihuahua) can barely stand staying in his skin when we have a rabbit day. He LOVES the scraps we are throwing down. The big dogs (who do not get to be there while we do this) get to have the heads raw. The rest we put into the freezer for rabbit popsicles for a treat later. We cook up the good guts and other things for everyone and this is usually what it looks like before it goes in the oven. This is a pot with guts, potatoes and zuchini from our garden and eggs from the chickens. Not a bad deal all in all. With seven rabbits I get two large pots this size. 

This is the pot with just the goodies

And this is the pot with the added vegies.

Sometimes I will make a nice strata for the dogs. This will entail adding some crumbled bread and mixing in a mixture of eggs and milk to cook in. With 4 large German Shepherds, I need to find ways to keep them fed on good quality food. So here we go. They love it!!