Amherst family subsists on home-grown rabbits
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AMHERST - Eating rabbit meat, raised in her backyard on West Pomeroy Lane, is one way Michelle Chandler has found to pursue her independence.
For the past three years, the brood of 100 rabbits she keeps on her 1.3-acre property provides all the protein she and her four children need.
"I feel strongly that Amherst will be better served by being able to feed itself," said Chandler. "People are always going to be hungry, and if people have another food source, that's a good thing."
At the Blessed Acre Farm and Rabbitry, where the perimeter of the small yard is dotted with hutches, Chandler, 45, is developing a practice that she hopes will become as accepted as the raising of cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys for food.
"I give the rabbits the best life I can give them, and the gentlest death I can give them," Chandler said.
Chandler says her rabbits provide several meals for her and her children each week. She also has numerous egg-laying hens on the property and gardens producing fresh fruit and vegetables during the summer months.
"This is a direct reflection of what happened on 9/11," Chandler said of the terrorist attacks that inspired her to seek a sustainable lifestyle. They underscored for her why relying on oil is a bad idea. Eliminating the need for food that is transported by gas-powered vehicles, she decided, is a start.
Unique operation
Chandler, a former helicopter pilot in the Navy who spent several years raising her family in Florida, moved back to her hometown in 2000 with her former husband and their four children, who now range in age from 7 to 13. While she always liked gardening, something she did with her mother, her interest in sustainability grew from the threats she saw in the world, she said, and by 2008, she bought one male and two females rabbits to try her hand at raising meat. "It was small, but just right for a rookie," she said.
Chandler, who lives in an outlying residential zone where livestock was already permitted, recently spoke in favor of the new regulations passed at the annual Town Meeting that allows more residents to raise up to 12 chickens and 12 rabbits in their backyards.
John Gerber of Harlow Drive teaches sustainability classes at the Stockbridge School at the University of Massachusetts. To him, Chandler is setting an example of how self-sufficiency can look. "I think it's a remarkable suburban homestead," he said.
Carol Hepburn, the town's animal welfare officer, who is in charge of overseeing such operations, said she believes Chandler has the only rabbit farm in town. "There's none I'm aware of," she said.
But while most people accept the idea that chickens are a good source of local food, the idea of seeing rabbits as livestock has prompted objections by those who say the animals are vulnerable to the cold, the heat, disease and predators. Thus, they argue, rabbits should be kept only as pets - indoors.
"Any proposal that would allow rabbits to be raised in backyard hutches in Amherst for the purposes of slaughtering for food and/or fur sets animal welfare in Amherst back 20 years," wrote Leslie Harris, Dakin's executive director, in a memo distributed to Town Meeting.
The attitude, says Chandler, who admits she has lost rabbits to the heat, is shortsighted, and is a byproduct of living in an affluent society.
Still, she doesn't expect many to pursue the avocation in the way she has since getting her first Cinnamon breeding rabbits.
Growing a farm
Six months after her first three produced a litter with two females and three males, she decided to only keep the females, mating them with one adult buck. She quickly began expanding her enterprise after discovering other breeds and participating in a Yahoo listserv.
She is currently raising five breeds,, Cinnamons, as well as Thriantas, Californias, Creme d'Argents and American Blues, which are considered a rare heritage breed. "We as breeders have been working to bring the breed back," Chandler said. All of these are raised for their meat, but Chandler also sees them as beautiful specimens.
Now she has 25 or so hutches in her yard, each standing a few feet off the ground.
Each adult female - she has 16 at the moment - gets its own hutch where it spends much of the time caring for its litters.
These rabbits have names: Sunrise in the East, a Thrianta breed that had seven litters last year; Indigo, an American Blue that has a deep, dark color and Forget-Me-Not, which had six litters last year and has been consistent in raising offspring. "She's one of the greatest assets of the breeding program here," Chandler said.
Chandler places hay in the nesting box when the newborns arrive, but notes the mothers often pull off their own fur to comfort their offspring and nurse the babies.
After four to six weeks, the young ones will be moved to "rabbit tractors," rectangular cages placed on the front lawn that are each 4 feet long, 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. They are covered with tarps to keep the animals cool and dry. There, the animals have access to pellets and water, but also the grass under their feet. Every 24 hours or so, the tractor, this week containing 18 rabbits, is moved so the animals will have more fresh grass.
After 12 to 14 weeks, the rabbits will be evaluated to see which ones are good representatives for "brood stock," or producing future generations. She said most rabbits are raised to thrive on the commercial blue seal pellet, but she is trying to get them to thrive on pasture instead.
When they are big enough - between nine and 12 pounds - most of the rabbits in the tractor will become food for her family. "They go to freezer camp," is how she puts it.
So as not to get too attached, these rabbits aren't given names.
"Every person in livestock has to balance between efficiency and sentimentality," Chandler said. The rabbits, she pointed out, "can turn grass into meat, which we can't. The only disadvantage is that they are cute and cuddly."
With four young children, she said, one way she got them on board was to ensure that two rabbits would be kept as pets. "I promised my children that at least two would always be here," she said.
Getting started
Those interested in raising rabbits should start with three, Chandler said, which would cost about $60. "For someone who wants rabbit on the table once a week for a family of four, you could realistically get by with one buck and two does," she said. Then there's the cost of building or buying hutches, at around $50 to $75 apiece, and providing the feed. A 50-pound bag costs $14.
The work is not too taxing for Chandler, who recently completed a master's degree at the University of Massachusetts in literature and signs her emails "mother, scholar, gardener, aviator." The rabbits are largely able to take care of themselves, she said, with her and her children making sure food and water is replenished.
But those who decide to do it have to commit to and be willing to put the rabbits down when they reach the standard commercial weight, she said.
She cautions that the butchering process, which she and a friend in North Amherst taught themselves using an instruction manual, is likely not for everyone.
Chandler usually gets about three pounds of meat from each animal, which can provide about 12 servings, she said, two complete dinners and several school lunches. She usually cooks the meat, low in fat and cholesterol, in a crock pot.
The meat supplied by her rabbits is now more than she and her children can eat, forcing her to give away some of the product, since she isn't yet allowed to sell it. That's because rabbits are not considered poultry, Gerber said, and none of the local slaughterhouses can handle the product, which is not certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Chandler has been working with state and local health officials to create a process where rabbits could be more easily brought for butchering and then sold.
"What I would like to see in the next couple of years is to be able to process meat locally so it can be offered for sale at a farmers market or at Whole Foods," she said.
In the meantime, Chandler is trying to educate others, speaking at school classes and also preparing meals with rabbits for church potlucks and school events - always making sure people know in advance what they will be eating.
"Part of it is to make a point and part of it is because I have a lot in the freezer," she said.
