Bunny Project
Bunny Project
Cidesci, an alternative school just on the edge of San Cristobal, runs a program to produce rabbits for food. The students learn how to take care of, slaughter and cook the rabbits in various projects. Those who are enrolled in the rabbit course tend to them and learn how to slaughter and skin them while those in the cooking classes learn how to make them edible meaning the schools raises almost half the food needed for its students and staff.
In our work with women, especially Araceli’s work with her small cooperative, we are always talking about projects that would be easy to maintain and cost little to start. We started to produce the bunnies after a lot of experimenting. I designed some Aula, or hutches that had a small feeder and a division between the two sides since we found out that pregnant females fight and if one births before the other, the mother not yet with children will eat the young of the first – cannibalism among furry creatures.
The second batch of aulas we made were for the male and only 1 meter square. We then discovered we needed a third kind of aula for the young babies when they were ready to be weaned from their mothers and fattened up, so to speak. We started building the third general style where we could keep the young ones for 3 to 4 months, or until they were ready to be slaughtered but before they reached puberty, when testosterone poisioning could affect the quality of the meat.
The practical side of the cages, etc. went well and we got a small project started in Itzaltepec at the home of Araceli’s parents. The village where they live is small, some would say backwoods. Me, I would say just full of superstition. Anita, Araceli’s mother started complaining the very first day we got the cages unloaded, bunnies installed, etc. “The people here won’t eat rabbit that isn’t from the campo. It won’t taste the same. The rabbits are too big to sell, people want to have enough meat for two, not four.” And so on. The children around the house loved the bunnies. By the third month, the next round of complaints started “They eat too much so we cut back on the feed because it’s too expensive.” So two young rabbits died and they ate them- but they were too skinny. And so on. The family is down to just 3 rabbits with the male the most recent to go to the pot. Now, it seems, they didn’t really want to sell them because they were too tasty so they saved them for their own pot.
Meanwhile, since we got the space in Betania we have started the same works for that locale. Our first cria, or batch of bunnies, came two weeks back with five babies born. One runt died the following day. A second batch was born the following week to the youngest of the rabbits but all of the babies died. We suspect that the mother was too young so we will wait another couple of months to breed her again. Meanwhile, two others are pregnant and ready to birth next week and the week after. The first mother of the tribe will have finished nursing by the end of this week at which time we will move the young babies to the empty fattening cage for two to three months.
Locally we have had lots of interest in starting small cages to do the same on a smaller scale. Our next door neighbor Juan has constructed his aula and in 3 to 4 months we will sell him two of the babies, a male and a female from two different broods.
We have been working with the worm project simultaneously so that we built the hutches above the ground with room to clean out the excrement as it was needed. The excrement goes into the two canals we have built for the worms. As one canal gets filled we add a kilogram of worms which then gets mixed with the leaves, excrement, coffee husks, etc. to form an organic fertilizer and produce 4 to 5 kilos of worms, which we are also sharing with our neighbors.
