Boyd Craven

That,s really cool! Definitely worth a try!

I have an old friend who always tells me that if something wants to grow that bad, let it. Embrace it, and find a use for it. Someone above said pellet mill. I'd have to agree. You can pelletize it, then make those pellets a percentage in a feed recipe for a variety of animals. They may not like it all by itself, but if mixed with something that tastes better to them, and ran through the pellet mill again with that something, you'd have a winner!

I raise rabbits and play with things like this with their feed. Sometimes you just have to look at something from a different angle!

tel jetson wrote:

Abe Connally wrote:

tel jetson wrote:the only issue I see with your math, J.D., is that you're assuming "arable land" means that it will support animals at the rate you cite. and if it would, what level of inputs are required?

actually, just use the lawns, that's where I found the land in my example. So, it takes max .55 acres for a family of 4 to produce their own meat, and we have 21 million acres growing rabbit food (lawns). So, we could supply a minimum of 38 million families (152 million people, 1/2 of the US) rabbit meat without touching any other aspect of the US food system.

Everyone is making good sense with the amounts of lawn needed to feed a family of four. I like believable examples. What I want everyone to remember is that our world is not a 1 dimensional plane. Having had quite a bit of experience lately on the subject of feeding rabbits, (I know little to nothing about beef or poultry) I have found that it takes approximately 6 pounds of this type of food to make 1 pound of rabbit. 1 pound of rabbit (live weight) produces slightly over 1/2 pound of edible flesh (depending on the meat/bone ratio of the breed). So what we should be discussing is how much poundage of feed, with an acceptable amount of rough protein can be grown on this 21M acres of lawn that we are talking about. If we wish to increase the poundage, we simply need to go more vertical, and research alternatives to the popular Kentucky Blue Grass lawns. What about ornamental trees and bushes that are safe for rabbits to eat, rather than the traditional yew bushes (which are poison to a rabbit). There will be different solutions for different climates across the land. There are, fortunately, many and varied choices for us to choose from.

I think that everyone gets my point. It may be unsustainable to provide meat to 7B people the way we have always done it. I'm saying all we need to do is change how we do it in the future. That's why I spend my time with rabbits. It's my opinion that rabbits can feed the world at a much higher rate of population. I believe the days of beef and poultry making up the bulk of the meat in everyone's diet is over. Sooner, rather than later.

R wannabe wrote:As far as the local vs. transport thing--it isn't so easy. If you grow that food where it grows best and then transport it, it could be less total input than if you try to grow it local in a less than ideal growing region. Local can add resilency to the food supply--whether it is from fuel shortages or large crop failures--but it is hard to feed a city either way. It isn't an easy thing to balance on the national/world scale.

You have a valid point, depending on how you define local. I personally like to think of "local" as within the county. My goal is to identify someone, or help teach someone in every State of the United States to become a local “backyard meat rabbit” resource. Then, with their assistance, identify or teach someone to do the same in every county, parish, or borough in every State of the United States. That's all 3,143 of them!

To me, that would put what I consider a very sustainable source of the highest quality of meat locally available to every person in the USA. That my friends is no myth, it's a work in progress!!

Abe Connally wrote:we only keep one boar that is over 8 months old on the property at any given moment. All the little boys born on the property must be sold or butchered by 8 months old. Period.

I find the same thing to be true with my rabbit herd. After 4 months, my young bucks try to run each other off, so to have the does and the turf for themselves. However, when in hutches or grazer runs, there is nowhere else to run off to. Therefore, unless sold, they wind up on my table or in my freezer at about 100 days, before they tear each other up. I have never been able to NOT control the numbers by sex.

My does however, if kept only with other not pregnant does, get along famously. They graze evenly and fertilize evenly on the land. They have a habit of digging. As long as they are able to move, they don't usually "dig to China", just little bits. It seems to do the pasture good. In my short experience of just going on 3 years with them, the soil where they have spent their time is much more alive and vibrant that when I started. Wild birds galore peck through the grass where the rabbits have been and leave seeds from whatever they have been eating nearby. I find new kinds of plants all of the time. The new plants that don't take too well to being grazed by a rabbit don't survive. Back to the point though, the does, if managed to a number that allows for enough food to go around seem to be quite a sustainable source of meat. They just hang out there until I need them, or until winter when the grass dies out for the season and I take them all to freezer camp.

Abe Connally wrote:Feed prices have skyrocketed in the last year. Alfalfa is now at $10 a bale, and at this time last year, it was $3 a bale. Corn has tripled in price, too.

It would be a wonderful thing if we could find a species that could grow fast enough in 4 months of wet season to provide a profit. We're not there, yet.

I am open to any and all suggestions of how to restore grasslands and make a profit in our climate. It would help thousands of families.

I've been reading this thread with some interest. I run these same arguments through my own head on a daily basis. What I CAN say for certain is only what I have done with my own hands, personally. I live in the NE United States, in Michigan. There are far fewer large chunks of land here to do ANY kind of farming, be it meat or vegetable than there was in my youth. I feel safe in saying that it will be rare that many large chunks of land will ever be recreated in the future. What does this mean for future farmers? That they will be working with smaller farms, which utilize smaller equipment, to grow smaller amounts of crops but more variety, with less overhead, less transportation, less employment (outside the family), and smaller animals, that require less space, less equipment required to process animals and get to the table.

I retired very young from the workforce, and enjoy spending my days almost entirely on this subject. I never did it before, so I came into it with no preconceived ideas about how our food streams and waste streams flow. I researched them both, and continue to do so. Up here, all the land has been chopped up into smaller pieces to build sub-divisions of homes, apartment buildings and shopping malls filled with people. All of these people live somewhere, and all of these somewheres have lawns up here. Big lawns, that require time and equipment to care for. Land fills for all of the yard wastes to be dumped at. We have a separate truck that comes around once a week to pick up nothing but yard refuse! So we have exchanged big chunks of land with large equipment making food, for small chunks of land with small equipment making trash. I see this not as a problem, but as an OPPORTUNITY!

I started a 20x20ft garden in my backyard of my 120x120ft city lot at my home. I acquired a trio of Californian rabbits. They, of course had babies. These babies became my guinea pigs to see just how much of this yard waste stream could be turned into valuable meat protein in virtually NO space that I didn't already have. I ADJUSTED the plants in my garden, the trees in my yard and the ornamentals around my house to things that they can eat. My neighbors saw what I am doing. Their children come to visit the animals and learn about food streams and waste streams. They bring kitchen waste to feed the rabbits from their house. They are given rabbits when they are ready to raise their own. They learn to overcome the Easter bunny syndrome and eat rabbit too. The local papers write about "Green Initiatives" going on. The local grocers are quick to offer salad bar waste (that they threw away anyhow) to the initiative for publicity. I named the initiative The Urban Rabbit Project. Slowly, more people are learning about it. I plan to purchase a small pellet mill to turn excess local waste stream into "foul weather" feed for the community, and to document the process on my Facebook page. Others are interested in doing the same. This is my fiendish plot to overthrow the local waste stream!

Now to DESIGN the "stacked systems" that Abe Connally has mentioned to fit into my manifesto of change. The paradigm shift from big animals to small animals that are better for us any how. Maybe I'll grow some evil worms to give to the children that visit and teach them to catch a fish. Maybe some day I'll be allowed to keep a couple of hens to give fresh eggs, so the children can learn where they come from too. Maybe I'll share some rabbit and worm poop with the little, old lady up the street and make her prize roses look even prettier! Maybe I'll mow her grass FOR FREE just to use it as rabbit food! There's no end to the evil this could bring about!! muah-ha-ha-ha!

The amount of land HAS NOT CHANGED, it's just different. It now requires a different farming technique, and different, smaller animals. Different regulations will follow slowly. America will remain great. Abe Connally is correct in his assumptions. I am a legend in my own mind. The end. <---Just seeing if you were paying attention all the way to the end!

Casey Halone wrote:What about rabbits that are natives? I raise New Zealands and according to the sources I have read they are native to the America's, despite the name.

I have wild brown rabbits in my hop / clover field all that time, and was thinking about trying to catch one and breed it with my stock just for shits and giggles.

Let me know how that works for you.

Jami McBride wrote:I hope you can grab freshly falling leaves and store them for testing as feed, but my gut says once fallen they will be to dry to interest rabbits. However, I'd love to experiment with picked and stored leaves

Actually Jami, they LOVE the freshly fallen Maple leaves and even slightly more dried ones too! They eat them like so many potato chips it seems! I also have a weeping willow tree in my yard. They LOVE the green leaves AND eat the entire green new-growth branches all up! They will eat these stored branches all winter, but mine will not touch dried willow leaves.

Saybian Morgan wrote:I wonder what implement could be used as a ripper to loosen the ground

It seems to me that my BCS has more pulling power than pushing power. We hired a man with a big hydraulic brush hog powered by a 45hp diesel tractor to come in and obliterate everything less than 3" in diameter into large chips and shreds. He had a bucket on the front, and I had him drag the bigger stuff to the north side of the clearing into berms, which we cover with soil, compost and rabbit poop to create Hugelkultur beds. At $75/hr USD it made more sense to hire the one-time work done than to purchase equipment to do it. For about $1,000 USD he did 2 acres (100x800ft) of the thickest stuff that you could hardly walk through. You can see pictures of the process at my Facebook page The Rabbit Trail.

Now, back to the question:
After the ground is cleared, there is LOTS of organic debris left, and many small roots from the saplings that had been there. We let it rot over the winter, THEN before things start budding in the spring, you can attach the rear-mounted tiller on the BCS AND the single blade Hiller/Furrower attachment connects to the rear of the tiller. The tiller will chew through amazing amounts of stuff, then the single blade will catch on and tear in half any roots it encounters (within reason). Rocks are not a problem. It kicks them right out of the way and even breaks softer stuff into pieces! (I'm not exaggerating) The next pass will further chew up broken roots. I'm not trying to remove them for grass-based pasture purposes, just kill them and let them rot in place. I don't think the front blade would be of much use in this process. It's more for snow or sand in my opinion.

I bought my BCS on craigslist.com for $800 USD for the tractor, tiller and bio-1000 chipper/shredder. It starts almost always on the first pull, and that's a good thing, because it's a pretty stout pull!

Casey Halone wrote:maybe I need to look into getting wild rabbits to hang around my area then? let them do their thing and spread like rabbits? breed with meat rabbits?

Wild rabbits cannot successfully breed with domestic rabbits. Genetically too far apart. They can "practice" all day, but nothing will become of it.