Huisjen McCoy

Here's what little I know:

I've had a few rabbits in the past.  The first was an easter present when I was a kid.  It was pretty standard.  We got him at a pet store and fed him pellets.  He died of a respiratory infection when he was about four years old. 

As an adult, I "got" a pet wild rabbit when I caught a tennis ball sized bunny in the parking lot at work.  I kept it in a cage in the living room and fed it oatmeal and a few scraps and greens.  It was reasonably healthy but sedentary.  It lived two years before keeling over, probably from lifestyle induced problems.  There are no natural deaths in nature, but two years is a good long run for a wild rabbit.

That's the difference between wild and domesticated.  The domesticated breeds have been bread to sit around and do nothing but grow.  They don't waste calories on exercise, and have a good feed conversion ratio.  They can be long lived, as they don't wear themselves out.

My reading of Salatin and others is that it's easy enough to substitute hay and pasture for a good chunk of their diet:  Maybe 50%.  But pure pasture is harder.  In Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits, the author gives a recipe for feed:

6 Qt. Oats
1 Qt. Wheat
1 Qt. sunflower seed.
1 Qt. Barley
1 Qt. Kaffir corn (when available)
1 Qt. Terramycin crumbles.

The person who gave him this recipe was very old and fed it as well as pellets.  The guy was old enough that he may have fed this mix before pellets were available.

Note:  Terramycin crumbles contain 4 grams of terramycin per pound.  The rest is "roughage products", "grain by-produducts", and other things you might find in a balanced feed. Personally, I wouldn't feed antibiotics as a matter of routine.

Meanwhile, Carla Emery stresses a mix of grain, root veggies, and leafy greens, as well as some hay or grass.  There's nothing magic about rabbit pellets.  They're a convenient commercial product, but with a little thought you should be able to offer your rabbits a balanced diet.  Read the analysis on the pellet bag and try to give a similar mix of protein, fat, fiber, carbs, and salt, and give as much fresh green stuff and root veggies as they'll eat as well.  Get a copy of Feeds & Feeding by Morrison if you want to understand what the nutritional breakdowns are for various feedstuffs.

To sum up: 
Can you grow all your own feed for rabbits?  Yes!
Can you feed rabbits nothing but pasture and keep them healthy? Probably not.

Dan

You mean a Garden Folly?

Dan

Interesting, but why not graft a branch of something good to something else good and have a self fertile tree with two varieties? 

Dan

I'm just the other side of the bay from Camden.  Eliot Coleman, who's lived on the other end of town for a good long while now, has kept paper records and says it's true.  I don't know what kind of statistics math he's run, but I'll believe him.

I live in a coastal town.  We have tides.  Tides bring deep salt water in and out of the bay.  Salt water has a bit of thermal mass.  Tides change their timing and height throughout the monthly tide cycle.  Here, they're generally highest at the full and new moons, and at those times the highs happen at about 11:30, AM and PM.  That means the tide will be low at about 5:30, close to the coldest hour of the morning. 

For my location, it's not hard to see how moon phase could effect frost.  Most people in the world live on the coasts, rather than deep continent interior, so it's not hard to see how for most (but not all) people, there could be a correlation (positive or negative) between full moon and frost.  For people in Kansas, I doubt the correlation will be evident.  And if you average all locations, you'll average the positive and negative correlations and get no clear signal.

Dan

It's a "lifestyle" magazine.  It has no roots.

I read it in the '70s when I was about ten years old.  I'm still exposed to it occasionally.  I find that the useful stuff is recurring.  The stupid parts are brushed away like pictures of out-of-favor early soviet leaders, only to be replaced by newer (but still poorly thought out) ideas.  And the ads say something.  That magazine seems to be largely supported by tractor sales to people who mostly don't need that kind of expensive tractor.

I suggest people look into Small Farmer's Journal.  It's a bit heavy on the horse farming, but has some grounding in practice, especially pre-chemical methods. Ads are for books, horses, horse equipment, hand tools, and amish clothing patterns.  Also (regional bias alert) look at the quarterly newspaper/magazine published by The Maine Organic Farmer's and Gardener's Association.  It has relevant news, profiles of farmers, technique articles, etc.  Ads are for allied Maine businesses, seafood compost, organic dairy products, etc.

Otherwise, buy useful books.

So, what do other people read?

Dan

Water goes into the chute just below water level up above the dam and is discharged below the dam.  There's enough flow due to the size of the pipe and the elevation difference that bubbles of air are carried down to the bottom of the chute, where they collect in an air chamber.  It's not dissolved air, but larger bubbles. This section is effectively a compressor. 

Pressurized air is then sent down the well and released below an upside-down funnel that extends to the discharge.  The weight of the water above the funnel intake is greater than the weight of the air and water in the funnel tube, so that water and air get pushed up to a height well above well static level.

It's cleaver and low tech, but despite using a low elevation drop, it requires a lot of digging.  You can do something similar with a drilled well and a compressor windmill.

Dan

It's ruined. 

But I'd be willing to add it to my collection, just as a warning to others.

Dan

Bleach, flamethrower, chainsaw.  Check, check, check...  And I know who's next in line.

These are Katahdin sheep, so the pelt has no fiber value.  But that's more or less how I've been doing it.  I was looking for something better.

Dan

I've got a question:

When I've done a pig, I kill, hang, scrub, and then peel it like a banana as best I can.  Doing pig, I clean the outside before getting to the inside.

Doing a sheep, I've killed, hung, and then proceeded to skin, which risks getting dirty outside on the inside.  Any hints on clean technique?  I don't have clippers to shave the critter first.  I don't know if any sort of scalding and de-hairing like a pig would help.  I'd just like a good way to clean the outside first without making a worse mess.

Dan

Give us a better idea of what your resources are.  This is your Masters.  What was your Bachelors in?  What knowledge do you have so far that can be applied to your thesis?  When you say sustainable development, what aspect are you focused on?  Garden? Buildings? Transportation? Irrigation?  Waste? Where are you?  What's your local environment like?  wet/dry? grassland/forest?  hot/cold?

You've ruled out economics for good reason.  I'm assuming you rule out regulatory issues for similar reasons, although there's a lot to be done to repeal zoning restrictions in many places.  You could look at the regulatory landscape and how it effects permaculturists:  water harvesting, greywater, livestock in town, mown lawn ordinances...

I see a lot of people asking "How do I make the transition?"  They mulch kill their lawn and try to convert it to a permaculture garden.  You could look at methods for this transition.  Compare heavy mulch with grazing a pig, or a dozen rabbits in a moderate area.  Compare buying in straw with owning a paper shredder.  Compare permaculture systems that use livestock to those that don't.

Audit your community for resources.  Look at potential nutrient sources, fuels, fuel needs, land (both vacant and underused), water, etc, and build a new model of how that community could function under permaculture principles.

Find an intentional community committed to permaculture and document their efforts.  Consider what's needed on a community level and what physical and sociological challenges must be met.

The book The Integral Urban House was written 35 years ago.  Write an update.

Run a survey to establish what the standard skill set and physical tool set of the successful permaculturist is.  Describe it in terms of what a B.S. in Permiculture would have as a curriculum.  Or do the same, but imagine it not as a B.S., but as a course similar to, or building on, Master Gardener programs. 

Produce a series of model plots, each incorporating different soils, hydrology, exposures, and human populations, and produce a permaculture design appropriate for each.  This is somewhat of a landscape architecture approach.

Still thinking...

Dan