#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Farming & Gardening In Thailand >  >  Rabbits for Meat

## jema

The largest Rabbits I've ever seen in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos weight about 2.5-3Kg.
Does anyone know, where I can find 4kg Rabbits in Thailand?

Many thanks in advance  :Smile:

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## DrAndy

I like to eat rabbits, but only ones that have been shot in the wild

some of those Chinese white rabbits get big, but I am not sure about what they get fed on

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## Eliminator

> I like to eat rabbits, but only ones that have been shot in the wild
> 
> some of those Chinese white rabbits get big, but I am not sure about what they get fed on


Is that to mean that you don't want to eat ANY animal that was killed in the wild? I would love to find rabbits at the market, why not, it's an easy process to raise. ::chitown::

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## expattaffy

I used to breed rabbits in the UK for food, out here where the Thais eat cats they look at you sick if you mention eating rabbits or sheep. they claim sheep smells, yet they eat pigs.

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## nedwalk

sheep do stink as goats do...don,t know if you had any 'hands' on work when it comes to butchering, but all animals stink when you get down and dirty

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## withnallstoke

Sick murdering bastards.

How would you feel if i liked to make bright eyes suddenly burn so pale?

Is it a kind of shadow reaching into the night?

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## Mozzbie47

If my memory serves me correctly, cage bred rabbit is the main part of the meat intake in China.

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## Necron99

Here's a fun fact. If all you had to eat was wabbit meat, you would starve to death.

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## beazalbob69

Wife's family looked at me like I was a lunatic when i brought up raising rabbit's for food. "We don't eat rabbit's here they only for pets" but yet rats are a delicacy. Rat's, Rabbit's same thing in my book. They usually sell them in the large markets around here. Different breeds also. Could probably ask for ones that get larger the sellers would probably know.

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## SEA Traveler

I'm thinking that the hot weather here in Thailand would not be conducive to breeding rabbits for eating because of worms and other bacteria developing in the rabbits digestive tracks that would be passed on to those who eat the meat.

I remember when back in the States in the Mid and Northern Atlantic States when we went hunting in the fall season, if the weather was warm we often did not shoot the rabbits for eating as they had often had worms.

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## beazalbob69

> Here's a fun fact. If all you had to eat was wabbit meat, you would starve to death.


Exactly almost 0 fat all protein. Especially if you don't eat the innard's, brain and eyes.

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## grasshopper

Seek out Warren?

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## Yasojack

I looked at rabbits a few years ago, my wife was horrified when i said, she said Wabbit suay no eat.

Seems there are rabbits up north, read that you have to protect the pens hutch's against ants as the ants will kill the babies.




> Wife's family looked at me like I was a lunatic when i brought up raising rabbit's for food. "We don't eat rabbit's here they only for pets" but yet rats are a delicacy. Rat's, Rabbit's same thing in my book. They usually sell them in the large markets around here. Different breeds also. Could probably ask for ones that get larger the sellers would probably know.

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## DrAndy

> Originally Posted by DrAndy
> 
> 
> I like to eat rabbits, but only ones that have been shot in the wild
> 
> some of those Chinese white rabbits get big, but I am not sure about what they get fed on
> 
> 
> Is that to mean that you don't want to eat ANY animal that was killed in the wild? I would love to find rabbits at the market, why not, it's an easy process to raise.



no, the opposite

I prefer game to farm animals, every time

but that does not mean I don't eat farm animals

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## Yasojack

Is there much game up where you are Andy?

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## DrAndy

> Wife's family looked at me like I was a lunatic when i brought up raising rabbit's for food.


we have bought both rabbits and hares in Portugal and my wife enjoys eating them

but then, my cooking is good.....

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## DrAndy

> Is there much game up where you are Andy?



where am I, Jack?

if you mean Chiang Mai, mainly rat, you don't see much for sale although there are animals in the jungles that do get caught and eaten

fish seems to be the main catch of the day

as I am in London, there are plenty of game dealers around

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## Up2U

I hate rabbit meat - it has a really bad smell and taste.

During WWII it was available in the UK off ration, but even then I would pass on it and just eat veg. Any other meat OK, but rabbit - ugh!!

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## Yasojack

fair enough thought you where in CM

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## Thetyim

> read that you have to protect the pens hutch's against ants


I think snakes would be the biggest problem

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## DrAndy

anyway, rabbit meat is good, I have always liked it

good value too

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## Yasojack

Possibly we bred ducks a few years back, and found as long as the huts were well wired the snakes never got in, the same plot of land last year we cut all the euca on it and then had a burn through, of the branches leaves etc and was amazed on how many snakes were burnt after we finished i was going to go in and rake it all first lucky i never.

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## beazalbob69

> Originally Posted by Yasojack
> 
> read that you have to protect the pens hutch's against ants
> 
> 
> I think snakes would be the biggest problem


Had a couple young pet rabbit's for the kids biggest problem is dog's one of the fuckers broke through the hutch and took off with one. Other just died for no apparent reason. Ant's will kill and devour anything that cant get out of the way of them. Baby rabbit's fit that bill easily. Snakes could be a problem if you have large snakes in your area. Easy meal if a snake can get to them.

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## DJH77

If you like Rabbit as i do you can buy Frozen Rabbits at Makro, i have been buying them for years and they are very good.

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## piwanoi

Wild rabbit tastes far better than tame ones thats a cert !

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## piwanoi

As the Doc said earlier Wild rabbit has more flavour  although shooting em was not my way of getting em , I kept ferrets for over 40 years and many times could get a dozen rabbit in a couple of hours or so with not a bruise or mark on them ,here,s a little vid on how its done, although personally writing it appears to me that the ferrets are new at the game

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## DrAndy

^ did you keep your ferrets down your trousers like proper ferreters do?

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## Necron99

Problem with ferrets was when one gat a rabbit cornered in a dead end.
Then you had to spend ages digging the bastard out.

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## piwanoi

> ^ did you keep your ferrets down your trousers like proper ferreters do?


 Good ferrets rarely if ever bite ,I used to handle mine from babys ,but  quite frankly having said all that, no I never did risk having a lump taken out of "the crown jewels" :smiley laughing:

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## piwanoi

> Problem with ferrets was when one gat a rabbit cornered in a dead end.
> Then you had to spend ages digging the bastard out.


 Did you see the little collars on the ferret's they are radio locators and you can pin point a ferret to within inches if it gets stuck with a rabbit in a blind hole that yellow plastic thing lieing on the floor between the two kids was the locator , modern science has took all the guess work out ,previous to that as you say it was sometimes a real pain in the arse  :Smile:

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## Mozzbie47

> Here's a fun fact. If all you had to eat was wabbit meat, you would starve to death.


Eating just corn wont do you a lot of good either, isnt that what killed a lot of American indians, other than the white folk shooting the crap out of em for no reason. Eating wabbit would be good along with greens etc, a mixed diet.

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## slackula

> Wife's family looked at me like I was a lunatic when i brought up raising rabbit's for food. "We don't eat rabbit's here they only for pets" but yet rats are a delicacy.


Tru dat! Rabbits are considered the most disgusting vermin on the planet yet BBQ rat is manna from heaven!

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## slackula

> Eating just corn wont do you a lot of good either, isnt that what killed a lot of American indians,


I don't suppose the side-order of smallpox helped much either.

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## Mozzbie47

> Originally Posted by Mozzbie47
> 
> Eating just corn wont do you a lot of good either, isnt that what killed a lot of American indians,
> 
> 
> I don't suppose the side-order of smallpox helped much either.


Good one mate, I forgat about that. :Smile:

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## piwanoi

> Originally Posted by Mozzbie47
> 
> Eating just corn wont do you a lot of good either, isnt that what killed a lot of American indians,
> 
> 
> I don't suppose the side-order of smallpox helped much either.


 Well stated QC ,the whitemen used to give blankets from some one who had died of small pox ,which often resulted in every member of the tribe becoming infected leading to total extinction ,of course the white men had many other subtle ways of killing the American red man of which is revealed in the book by Dee Brown "bury my heart at wounded knee" but in essence one cannot dwell on one of the greatest crimes IMHO against humanity, as no one alive today is responsible ,but this is somewhat going away from the OP about Rabbit keeping,  never the less it's the awful truth of which many may not be aware of, and there is no accounting for what goes on in the human mind, as one thing leads to another , and I would suggest that the Mods take this into account at times  :Smile:

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## POThailand

Myxomatosis  was introduced to cut down on the numbers of rabbits in some countries. Think England was one of them. Made it too risky to have rabbit on the menu after that. Few decades ago now but most people still stay clear of eating rabbits as far as I know.

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## DrAndy

Myx was not introduced on purpose, so the official story goes

A rabbit escaped from a research centre

I don't think eating a Myx infected rabbit had any harmful effects

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## Thetyim

It was introduced into Australia in 1950 in an attempt to control the rabbit population

 It reached the UK in 1953, being illegally imported onto an estate in West Sussex.

Resistance has been increasing slowly since the 1970s, and the disease now only kills about 50% of infected rabbits.

Source; Myxomatosis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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## DrAndy

oh, I was wrong, I just didn't believe anyone would do such a thing

my faith in humans.....

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## Norton

Did a quick village poll. Wabbits not for eating. All other creatures are. Especially them pesky rats.

I'm off to catch rats. Gonna save them all.

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## Thetyim

OK, just go along with the Thai culture.

Forget about selling meat, just sell lucky rabbit feet.
They must work because all Farangs are rich

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## DrAndy

my father used to say that those feet were not so lucky for the rabbit

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## colinc1

Rabbit was one of our main sunday meals when we were kids way back in the early 70s, especialy when it was stewed, yummsss.

But then myxo took over,and we would just shot them & leave them to rot.

Myxo was a horrendeous thing, rabbits would have only one eye,or even no eyes at all, legs would be deformed and so on, it put us off eating wild bunnies, i just stick to the domestic family bunnies now, not so yummy,but ok

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## keekwai

> Did a quick village poll. Wabbits not for eating. All other creatures are. Especially them pesky rats.


I tried some rat that was butterflied on a wire rack and cooked over a fire years ago in NonBua Lampoo. They brushed it with a mixture of oil, garlic, coriander, salt, chopped chillies and lime juice. Tasted OK.

I don't know if this old Thai guy there was bullshitting me or not ... but he said whoever gets the tail is 'lucky'. It must be like the wishbone in a chicken.


Anyway ... why hasn't this guy turned up in the thread yet?

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## keekwai

> i just stick to the domestic family bunnies now, not so yummy,but ok


Maybe a new thread on bunny diets to make them taste better is in order. Just have to recreate the same conditions a wild bunny would have. 

Feed it with weeds and half dead grass and scare the shit out of it with a cat everyday. 

The endorphins produced from the sheer terror of daily life in the wild and the shitty food are what makes them taste better. Must be.

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## DrAndy

> The endorphins produced from the sheer terror of daily life in the wild and the shitty food are what makes them taste better. Must be.


more probably it is the high variety of the diet combined with lots of exercise

Game is very low in fat, unlike the tame inbreds

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## keekwai

OK ... get a giant hamster wheel and force the bunny on to it every day ... with a cat.

... I was just joking about the endorphins. 

But I have heard that the way an animal is killed can affect the taste because of endorphins produced by fear and pain. Don't know if it's true or not.

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## keekwai

I'm wondering ... if you took a flock of chickens and several roosters out to an isolated patch of jungle ... left them there for 5 years ... returned and hunted them ... would their descendants taste better than the frozen chook in the supermarket freezer?

Maybe they are already available. Dogs go feral, so do cats. Maybe there are a few feral chickens on the loose somewhere.

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## sranchito

Chicken for eating only comes in packages in the super market.  The birds you see running around the country side are not for eating.  Hmmm.... Makes me wonder where the packages of dog and cat are in the super market?

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## keekwai

> Chicken for eating only comes in packages in the super market.


... and milk comes from cartons.




> The birds you see running around the country side are not for eating.


I guess cunnilingus is not on everyone's menu then.

sranchito ... get a gun, bow, knife, rock or fish hook ... kill an animal ... and eat it. Until then you are not human.

Just joking mate...

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## geejayess

> anyway, rabbit meat is good, I have always liked it
> 
> good value too


We used to eat rabbit a lot,but once I saw the state of them in the wild with miximatosis,it put me off them for life.

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## MongersSyndicate

> Possibly we bred ducks a few years back, and found as long as the huts were well wired the snakes never got in, the same plot of land last year we cut all the euca on it and then had a burn through, of the branches leaves etc and was amazed on how many snakes were burnt after we finished i was going to go in and rake it all first lucky i never.


I would rather catch and eat the snakes and rats, it's less work than raising rabbits. It's also low-fat, all protein.

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## DrAndy

> Chicken for eating only comes in packages in the super market. The birds you see running around the country side are not for eating


well, people do eat them but BBQ is no good as they are too tough

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## DrAndy

I will pick up a couple of rabbits this weekend at a local farmers market

ones that have been shot; so I will need carefully to pick out the shot to make sure no-one breaks a tooth

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## toddaniels

The best meat rabbits are those Flemish Giants or the New Zealand Whites. You can find them if you look around as I've seen 'em for sale at Chatuchak (or really Jatujak as the Thai spelling uses J's: จตุจักร). I dunno how well they'd handle the heat as they're big rabbits and "run kinda hot", still you probably could do it.  

I dunno why Thais don't breed and eat rabbits for meat; seeing as these people eat just about anything else which flies, crawls, hops or walks around the country with little or no reticence.

Having bought a few of those wild shot rabbits in the markets up country I can say they're pretty rough fare insofar as they aren't really handled in a way that would want me to buy 'em and eat 'em regularly. 

Conversely, those rice rats (called หนูนา) are pretty good eating IF you get the bigger sized ones. Sadly they don't seem to be as good if they're cage raised. A friend caught a bunch out of the rice paddies and put 'em in a big cage in his back yard and raised 'em for a while. When he butchered 'em they were all fat and no meat. Then again he defeated the purpose by penning 'em up and feeding them table scraps instead of rice shoots like they really eat.

Here in Bangkok at my apartment we have a TON of huge trees which are filled to the brim with squirrels. One fell out of the tree and broke it's spine. The Thais (buddhist to the n-th degree) just let it flop around the yard. I came out a killed it with a swift knock on the head with my cane. The Thais standing around collectively gasped that some one would blatantly kill an animal. Funny enough the lady who sells somtam and grilled chicken had no problem picking it up, skinning/cleaning it and then grilling it. These are some funny people indeed.

In other news, the "thai-engrish" some posters mention their Thai significant others saying about eating rabbits is just too pathetic for words. If I had a Thai underfoot who spoke like that to me, I'd kill myself.

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## DrAndy

> I dunno why Thais don't breed and eat rabbits for meat


because they have never done so before, although it has been suggested

Digestion in the rabbit a new l

most farmers stick to what they know

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## Mozzbie47

People lived on rabbit and spuds in Australia during the great depression, they were healthy and didnt need vitamin supplements like they say we need now.

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## DrAndy

I think mass produced vitamin supplements are more recent than that

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## Mozzbie47

True Dr A, that is why I said ( like they say we need now )

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## Dead Metal

> I used to breed rabbits in the UK for food, out here where the Thais eat cats they look at you sick if you mention eating rabbits or sheep. they claim sheep smells, yet they eat pigs.


..... & Rats !!!!!!!

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## Dead Metal

> anyway, rabbit meat is good, I have always liked it good value too


..especially when my Italian in-laws cook it, mmm, yummy. Italian cooking best in the world.

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## piwanoi

Of course we all remember the classic  movie "King rat", Corporal King and his mates made quite a nice piece of change out of that caper  ,some of the rats I have seen here are huge ,and as Rat is widely consumed here and expensive too ,surely there must be an opening for a rat farm if there ain't any out there already! :Smile:

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## piwanoi

interesting Video!

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## DrAndy

> as Rat is widely consumed here and expensive too


The rats eaten here are Rice Rats from the field; caught by trapping, they are quite tasty and good to eat although a little small

a rat farm would be not much use as the rats would not get the same diet and exercise. I think someone posted that farmed rats are just fatty beasts

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## piwanoi

Just something which went through my mind Doc ,Corporal King (King Rat) and his mates did'nt seem to do bad of it in Changi Jail Eh  :Smile: ,I used to work with a guy when I was a kid who was a "guest" there ,I often think how our servicemen and their ally,s came out of it sane, maybe some did'nt, but Ernie had his marbles alright ,even though his younger brother lost his life on the railway of death in Kanchanaburi .

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## hillbilly

> sheep do stink as goats do...don,t know if you had any 'hands' on work when it comes to butchering, but all animals stink when you get down and dirty


Growing up on a dairy farm that is so true. I learned just to get in there and do it.

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## sranchito

No offense taken.  Don't worry, I've done my share of killing my own food.  Have a freezer full of venison and a yard full of chickens.

And yes, yard birds taste way better.  The taste of the chicken on the side of the road in Thailand is really more to my liking than the commercial crap that is raised in packages over here.  Of course, that is comparing apples and beans.

Where did chickens come from?  Ah yes, the jungle.  Guess that is why we call them jungle fowl?

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