December 31, 2018December 31, 2018
Slow cooked rabbit with chorizo and mushrooms
Slow cooked rabbit with chorizo and mushrooms Slow cooked rabbit with chorizo and mushroom 1 rabbit, cut into 8 pieces....
High-Quality Rabbit and Quail Cages for Urban Farming Homesteaders
Our Commitment
At Hostile Hare we are committed to producing High-Quality Rabbit and Quail Cages because we understand what it’s like to depend on farm equipment. Failure of housing can be dangerous to the animals and unproductive to the homestead. Keep your quail and rabbits safe and comfortable with High-Quality Rabbit and Quail Cages made here in America!
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Our Rabbits
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Fodder as Feed
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Check out our delicious rabbit recipes!
July 29, 2015February 5, 2019
Rabbit Enchilada Dip
This rabbit enchilada dip is a great appetizer or main dish. Cook your rabbit meat ahead of time and throw...
July 21, 2015January 16, 2019
Super Rabbit Casserole
Remember those yummy, creamy, casseroles that mom used to throw together? This…this is going to take you right back to...
In The Begining
The first 5 rabbits did fine in our secondhand hutches until the hutches started coming apart. We had bunny rabbits running loose EVERYWHERE! The rabbits turned their wooden hutches into chew toys, then into kindling… it was a mess.
The need for quality cages was apparent, but proper materials were not to be had in small quantities. I shipped in 14 and 16 gauge cage material to build some proper cages. The first set I built was a nice hanging style that went up in my 3-walled shed. They were huge and inefficient. The rabbit cages were too deep to reach a rabbit laying against the back wall, so tall they took up a lot of volume in the shed, and so wide it was difficult to catch the bunnies for inspection or removal. The oversized cages caused other issues as well, when spooked, the rabbits could get up enough speed to seriously hurt themselves against the opposite wall. The next generation of rabbit cages proved MUCH more suitable and are still in use today.
After the very expensive learning experiences of starting up, I started to feel I was knocking the rough edges off my rabbit cage designs and rabbitry function. The new 36-inch by 24-inch footprint kept the rabbits snug and feeling safe. The 15-inch tall roofs were sufficient to let the rabbits stand, and keep their ears up while laying down without their ears hitting the cage ceiling. With the newly designed cages, I was able to take the barn that only fit 5 cages before and convert it to hold 24 breeding females and 10 males. My rabbitry went from producing 20 bunnies a month to 120 head a month. The new cages were also MUCH easier to clean!
Quality Rabbit and Quail Cages
As the rabbitry grew, so did the demand for efficiency. Soon I had outgrown my little 40 x 20-foot backyard and needed space for expansion. I built a small barn and added quail to the Hostile Homestead. With the high quality rabbit and quail cages, I was able to ramp up production and start REALLY hitting my output goals. The quail happily laying 300 eggs per hen per year, the rabbits having 64 babies per doe per year, you could say I had SLIGHTLY more food than I needed to survive!
Why Rabbits?
Why you should consider raising your own rabbits:
Time Efficient
Feeding, watering and breeding your rabbits takes very little time. A properly built housing system installed in a well-planned rabbitry will allow for decreased labor and increased production. As an example, 128 breeding females, 16 males and an average of 1200 babies still only required 20-30 minutes of labor daily to maintain those numbers. So for a combined total of 10-15 hours of work per month, 3500 pounds of rabbit could be produced. That’s $35,000 retail. Think of how little time you’ll need to lower your food costs.
Space Efficient
Rabbits require very little space to live and nurture their young. In the wild their warrens are just big enough to turn around in and nest their kits. The warren is also just tall enough to allow their ears to stand up all the way while the rabbit lies down. Our housing systems are designed and built with that in mind. For every 28 square foot, you can raise 640 baby rabbits annually for a combined live weight of 3200 pounds. You can find Hutches and cages here.
Money/Resources Efficient
Seventy percent of America’s tillable soil/ known farmland is allocated to growing food for our food. Vast seas of corn and soybeans sprawl out over the countryside, mostly intended for cattle. Cattle require an average of 9 pounds of feed for every 1 pound of meat. Rabbits require 1.5 pounds of feed for every 1 pound of meat. If retail rabbit pellets are used, rabbits cost 7-8 cents per day to feed. If barley grass and “Cut and Carry” methods are used, the cost will drop below 2 cents per day. On pellets cost per pound (live) will be around 78-81 cents. On barley and garden scraps cost per pound could be under 20 cents!!
The Famous Rabbit Man: Hostile Hare
The Phoenix New Times
The Phoenix New Times– Nick Klein is a mass murderer — of rabbits. No, really. Klein is an enterprising businessman and owner of the “Hostile Hare,” a company that specializes in raising meat rabbits, selling meat-rabbit cages, and educating others on the ins and outs of raising rabbits for meat
The Prepper Broadcasting Network
The Prepper Broadcasting Network– Nick Klein blog owner at Hostile Hare and Podcaster at We Grow Ours.com from Hostile Hare will be on the show this episode talking all about raising rabbits for meat not only for the fact that they are delicious but also to talk in detail about how one goes about beginning to grow rabbits for meat, selecting the correct breed, humanely processing them and much more!
Voyage Phoenix
Voyage Phoenix– Nick, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was just looking for a natural pelletizer for my biofuels project and decided to use rabbit manure. The five rabbits turned into 50 in less than 8 months, 50 turned into 1600 after my first year. I started selling rabbits and cages after that, focusing on the prepper and homesteader target audiences.
Blog Talk Radio
Blog Talk Radio– Nick & Tony discuss how raising rabbits is your quickest and cheapest solution for producing protein in your prepper diet. From birth to butcher in only 8 weeks, rabbits can quickly produce a huge supply of protein. They are easy to raise, reproduce well … like rabbits, and very inexpensive to feed. Learn how you can start raising rabbits for your off the grid, self-reliant protein production.
Living the Country Life
Living the Country Life– When Nick Klein moved from a cattle farm in Wisconsin to a small lot in Queen Creek, Arizona, he still had the desire to raise livestock. He bought a few rabbits, which quickly multiplied into many rabbits, and created a business. He markets them as breeding stock, sells cages, and also teaches workshops on raising rabbits as livestock.
Off Grid News
Off Grid News– Renowned rabbit keeping instructor Nick Klein recently sat down with Off The Grid News to share some of the secrets of the trade. Klein is the owner of Hostile Hare, an Arizona-based business. Rabbits are perfect off-grid and doomsday preparedness critters to have around the homestead for many reasons, according to Klein.