KILLING AND TANNING RABBITS
Butchering:
"Rabbits are the easiest animals to slaughter," says Pasternak. "Mother Nature designed them to die: They are at the bottom of the food chain; you don't have to pluck feathers; it's easy to twist their necks; and skinning them is really fast and easy."
Fryers are butchered between 8 to 12 weeks of age, weighing 4 to 5.5 pounds and should dress out at about 2 to 3 pounds (usually 50 60 percent). Rabbits over 5.5 pounds are considered roasters. The feed conversion per fryer is about 1 pound of meat per 4 pounds of feed.
To kill the rabbit, hold it by its hind legs with your weak hand and with your other hand; put your thumb behind its neck and your fingers on its throat. Quickly snap the neck by pushing straight down. Another method is to hold the hind legs with one hand and strike it sharply with a heavy stick or pipe at the base of the skull. This will kill the rabbit instantly and is completely painless. The broomstick method consists of the rabbit lying on the ground, with the broomstick lying across its neck. Then quickly step on the broomstick and while holding the hind legs, pull up on the body, resulting in dislocating the neck. Some choose to use a firearm and shoot a round through the back of the head, resulting in a quick, painless dispatch. This is not always an option for those living within city limits or where discharging a firearm is not legal or not wise. There are many other tools and systems out there. Find the one that works best for you and your individual circumstances.
Skinning:
Immediately after you have dispatched the rabbit, hang it upside down with twine or 2 hooks and cut the head off to let it bleed out. For optimal drainage do this directly after culling.
Next, cut off the front feet at the first joints. Good scissors type clippers may be helpful for this step. Then cut the skin around the two hind feet, without cutting through the meat.
Next, cut through the skin, down the inside of the legs to the crotch and around the anus and tail. Peel the skin downwards off the legs continuing down until it has peeled off the
whole body. Make a slit just under the muscle, starting near the tail opening, moving downward until reaching the rib cage. Then cut around the anal opening and between the hind legs to remove the bowels. Carefully remove the bowels and entrails, making sure not to rupture the bladder or intestines, which can spoil the meat. Remove the two hind legs at the joints and clean the meat by running water over the carcass inside and out. Cut the meat to preference. To overcome the rigor mortis effects in the meat and make it nice and tender, soak the meat in salt water overnight or up to 24 hours in the refrigerator (about a half cup or more of salt in a pot of water with 1 to 4 rabbits). After soaking in salt water, rinse thoroughly and cook. Or if you don't plan on cooking in the next day or so, simply wrap in freezer paper and place in freezer. Prepare using any good chicken or rabbit recipe.
whole body. Make a slit just under the muscle, starting near the tail opening, moving downward until reaching the rib cage. Then cut around the anal opening and between the hind legs to remove the bowels. Carefully remove the bowels and entrails, making sure not to rupture the bladder or intestines, which can spoil the meat. Remove the two hind legs at the joints and clean the meat by running water over the carcass inside and out. Cut the meat to preference. To overcome the rigor mortis effects in the meat and make it nice and tender, soak the meat in salt water overnight or up to 24 hours in the refrigerator (about a half cup or more of salt in a pot of water with 1 to 4 rabbits). After soaking in salt water, rinse thoroughly and cook. Or if you don't plan on cooking in the next day or so, simply wrap in freezer paper and place in freezer. Prepare using any good chicken or rabbit recipe.
The process of tanning:
Tanning can be quite a complicated and tedious job, and there are many tanning solutions that are difficult to obtain. Quite a few tanning techniques are described in Rural Tanning Techniques, a FAO publication which is for sale in many countries. Here we will describe a method which has been used by many homesteaders with great success, and which calls for ingredients that are readily available. While this solution can be used for any type of fur, we are concerned here with rabbit skins. If you are tanning for the first time you will feel more at ease with a rabbit skin than with something large like a cow hide.
The tanning agent in this method is sulphuric acid (or battery acid) available from any garage or auto supply store. Battery acid is dilute sulphuric acid. Be careful with acid because it is very dangerous. If you get it on your skin you will be badly burned. When it is diluted with water it is less dangerous. Never pour the water in the acid but always pour the acid into the water carefully.
This is what you need:
60g of sulphuric acid or 240g of battery acid
1 kg of salt (any cheap kind)
A 10-20 litre crock or similar nonmetallic container, a plastic bucket will do.
7 litres of water
A weight (nonmetallic) to hold down the skin in the solution: a glass jug filled with water, a brick or rock or anything similar.
Tanning process:
Add the salt to the water. Then tip your container and let the acid dribble down the side into the water. Never add water to acid and be careful not to let it splash because it is a very dangerous liquid. Stir the solution with a wooden stick. At this point the acid is diluted enough so it is quite safe, even if it touches your skin. Keep the temperature as close as possible to 21oc. Higher temperatures can damage pelts and lower temperatures slow down the tanning process. Now you are ready to tan.
Time consuming steps such as fleshing, stretching and drying are eliminated with home tanning.
Rinse the skins in a bucket of cold water with one cup of salt to two litres of water. According to some people the salt seems to aid in the fleshing process described later.
Wash the skin in warm water and detergent and squeeze out the excess water. Never wring a fur, always squeeze it out gently.
Finally put the hide into the tanning solution (be sure the salt has dissolved), swish it around a little with a wooden stick and weight it down to keep it from floating.
A small hide will be ready in about 3-4 days. It does not matter if you leave the pelts in the solution for more than 4 days, as long as they are stirred from time to time.
When the skin is ready it is taken out, washed in detergent and rinsed in cold water. At this point the fat and flesh should separate from the hide easily. If it is really good and you are very careful, you can separate the flesh from the hide in one single piece.
After fleshing, wash and rinse again and return to the tanning container for another week or longer.
Finally, run it through a wash rinse squeeze process. Hang it in a shady place to drip dry. While it is still damp and limp, put it in a tumbling container, like a clothes dryer. If the skin is too wet, it will not tumble properly. Tumbling is important to break the skin. Breaking is gently pulling and stretching small areas of the skin in different directions. The stiff brown hide will turn white and soft.
If a tumbling container is not available the breaking of the skin will be a little more difficult and will take more time.
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