Pastured Rabbits: Start Small, Scale Big, and Raise Them the Lunatic Way

Rabbits may be the most underrated meat animal in America. While the rest of the country fixates on the "big three" of beef, chicken, and pork, a small but passionate market is hungry for quality rabbit, and almost nobody supplies it.

That's your opportunity.

In the Pastured Rabbits course, Daniel Salatin of Polyface Farm pulls back the curtain on the animal that started his entire farming career. He shares the same system he built from a single breeding trio at age 7 into a 1,000-rabbit-a-year operation that paid for his house. Whether you're just getting started on your homestead, looking to add a profitable enterprise to an existing farm, or searching for the perfect gateway animal for your kids, rabbits might be exactly what you've been missing.

There are some undeniable benefits of the pastured rabbit model Daniel teaches, including:

• Small footprint, serious profit potential - A single doe can produce over 30 meat rabbits per year. Two does and a buck fit in a corner of your garage, a spare shed bay, or a backyard setup.
• Low startup costs - You can get your first breeding trio and build your initial cages for under $500. The infrastructure is simple, durable, and expandable.
• Fast cash turnaround - From breeding to butcher takes just 12 weeks. That's one of the fastest returns on investment of any farm animal, making rabbits an ideal first enterprise or a smart add-on to an existing operation.
• The perfect gateway animal - Rabbits are clean, quiet, and manageable enough for a child to handle the daily care. If you're looking for a way to get your kids genuinely involved in the farm, this is it.
• Works in the margins - No extra land required. Rabbits thrive in unused spaces. They mow, they fertilize, and they generate income from space that's otherwise sitting idle.
• A natural fit with chickens and other enterprises - The Polyface "Racken House" system pairs rabbits with chickens in a symbiotic relationship that eliminates manure chores, produces premium compost, and stacks two income streams into the same footprint.
  

Introducing the Pastured Rabbits Course

Lifelong farmer and Polyface veteran Daniel Salatin shares the insight he's gained through more than 35 years of raising rabbits, starting at age 7 and never looking back. He'll walk you step-by-step through everything you need to set up and run your own successful pastured rabbit operation, the lunatic way.

Rabbits are accessible to beginners, manageable for kids, and scalable for serious farmers. This course will allow you to get up and running quickly.

The Pastured Rabbits course includes:

• 18 video lessons
• Nearly 4 hours of video training
• Downloadable PDF transcripts for each video lesson
• Expert insight with real-world demonstrations
  

The Lunatic Difference

If you've ever walked into a conventional rabbit operation, you probably didn't stay long. The smell hits you before you even open the door. That sharp, eye-watering ammonia has become so associated with rabbit farming that most people assume it's just part of the deal. It isn't.

Industrial rabbit operations stack cages in long, crowded buildings, flush the manure and urine into lagoons, and rely on medications and interventions to keep animals healthy in an environment that was never designed for their well-being. The results: stressed animals, degraded environments, and an operation nobody enjoys spending time in.

The Polyface approach creates a system where those problems don't exist. The answer is the Racken House. This rabbit-chicken combination turns the biggest headache in rabbit farming, manure management, into one of its greatest assets. Chickens scratch and aerate the bedding beneath the rabbit cages, transforming what would otherwise be a weekly shoveling nightmare into rich, finished compost that's ready to go straight onto your garden or pasture once or twice a year.

The result is a workspace that smells like a forest floor, not a feedlot. Rabbits are calmer, healthier, and more productive. The chickens are doing what chickens love to do. And you're stacking two enterprises into the same building, the same labor, and the same square footage.

This is the system Daniel has refined over 35 years and thousands of rabbits, working through every trial and error so you don't have to. The Pastured Rabbits course shows you why the system works, so you can adapt it to your own operation, your own space, and your own goals, and build something that's genuinely enjoyable to be part of every single day.

Purchase Foundations of Farming & Homesteading, and you'll get access to ALL of our courses, including this one. (You'll also get access to all courses we release in the future, at no additional cost!)

Why Now is the Time to Start

Daniel started raising rabbits at age 7. He didn't have a perfect setup. He didn't have it all figured out. He just got started, and that decision funded his house, launched his farming career, and gave him a system he's still running and refining decades later.

The most common pitfall isn't a mistake people make with their rabbits. It's taking too long to get started. Rabbits are forgiving, affordable, and fast. Just a few months after your first breeding, you can have your startup costs covered and your first fryers ready to sell.

You don't need more land. You don't need more capital. You don't need to wait until everything is perfect. You just need a plan, and that's exactly what this course gives you.