How to hammer and cut a rabbit?

The table of contents

• When breeding rabbits for meat, slaughter time is not of fundamental importance. The main thing is to get a rabbit enough mass. Rabbits are suitable for slaughter from the age of four months. With the right content, the weight of the animal should reach 3-4 kg by this age. When selectively slaughtering the largest and most healthy animals is better to leave for breeding.

  Connoisseurs of skins, it is desirable to select rabbits born in the winter. These animals have the best and high-quality fur. Skins of young animals, as well as rabbits, born in the summer, have a low cost.

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  Rabbit skin during shedding is not worth the time spent on its dressing.

  A rabbit breeder should know that eared molts occur:

  • Age - two in the period from 1.5 to 6 months from the moment of birth;
  • Seasonal - the first usually occurs in March-April, the second in September-October.

  It is easy to determine the end of molting in a rabbit. To do this, gently pinch eared by wool. Thick and durable hair is held tight, but if the hair falls from a blow or a light touch, this is a sure sign of a pet's molt.

  The best time to slaughter a fur rabbit is December-January. During this period, rabbits do not shed, and the fur is the most dense and valuable.

  Choosing a rabbit for slaughter

  Preparing for slaughter: age for slaughter

  The process of slaughtering, skinning and cutting a rabbit should not be delayed. It takes about 5 minutes for professionals. Therefore, the availability of everything you need will significantly speed up the process and will not affect the quality of meat and fur.

  Preparation for slaughter is as follows:

  • Rabbit is deposited and does not feed or water for 10-12 hours. It is necessary to clean the intestines;
  • Immediately before slaughtering a rabbit, wash and wait for the skin to dry.

  For slaughter will require:

  • Stick-strut;
  • 2 knives. One should be sharp for cutting, the other slightly blunted - to work with the skin;
  • Several enameled bowls( pots or other similar containers);
  • A bowl of clean water and a few wiping rags;
  • A slaughtering tool that is selected or manufactured based on the method chosen;
  If you have to watch or hold a face for the first time - it is desirable to have a bottle with liquid ammonia.

  Before slaughter it is worth watching the video of the correct slaughter and cutting of the animal. If you have friends who hold rabbits, then it is advisable to carry out the first procedure under their supervision and guidance.

  Rationally made stick-strut greatly facilitate the removal of the skin and cutting of the carcass. Usually it is made of metal or wood.

  The length of the flat bar is about 20 cm, the edges are sharp and preferably curved around the circumference( at an angle), upward ends. The total length is about 30 cm. In the middle of the bar there should be a hook for its hanging, as well as a groove, which clearly marks the center of the bar.

  Scheme for driving and skinning a rabbit

  How to hammer a rabbit:

  slaughtering methods

  Now consider how to kill a rabbit. In practice, six fast, effective and bloodless methods of killing a rabbit are widespread. The choice of the most convenient of them is determined by the presence of experience and improvised means:

  1. The bloodless method( muffling) of is traditional for our country - that is, a blow to the rabbit on the head with a blunt object. Its advantages are simplicity and the absence of the need to acquire complex devices. Death occurs quickly enough within a few seconds.

  For the humane killing of a rabbit, you need to raise it on your hind legs, let it calm down and hit the back of the head with a wooden stick. For this, a piece of cuttings from a shovel 40-50 cm long is perfectly suitable. When striking it is important to correctly calculate the force. A strong blow can crush the skull and complicate the process of cutting. Even worse, it is too weak a blow, as the sight of the beating briar is not for the faint of heart. If this still happened, you should deliver another blow.

  1. The French method is rarely used here, but it is very common in Europe .They take the rabbit by the hind legs, lay it horizontally or keep it in the air. To kill a crawl it is necessary to lift it up and shake it sharply. For all the seeming simplicity of this method, it has flaws: it requires remarkable strength to shake an animal weighing 7–9 kg with one hand, as well as experience.
  2. With the help of electricity, large farms are slaughtering slaughters. For this, the head of an animal is placed between two electrodes and killed by an electric shock.
  It is not recommended to use electric current at home for slaughtering, especially from a standard network. A voltage of 220 volts is excessive for an animal. A misuse of the household power grid is a threat to the life of the miner himself.

  The warning does not apply to special electrical silencers that are specifically designed for this purpose. The only negative - such devices are not everyone can afford.

  1. Another option is to break the cervical vertebrae. For this, the rabbit is held with one hand on its hind legs, pressing it to itself, with the other tightly covering the head. With a sharp turn to the side, the cervical vertebrae are broken and the rabbit dies.
  2. Using a syringe, you can also pump air into the ear vein of an animal. This method is called air embolism. At home it is used extremely rarely. Most often used in medical institutions. A significant disadvantage is that death does not occur immediately, but the bleeding process does not fully proceed, which impairs the consumer properties of meat and fur.
  3. Shooting a needle - for which a special device resembling a syringe is used. The needle of the device, penetrating into the brain of the animal, contributes to its rapid and humane killing. The most effective is the piercing of the brain on the line from the eye to the opposite ear.

  After slaughtering the rabbit breeder, it is necessary to achieve complete bleeding of the animal’s carcass. For this, the carcass by the hind legs is hung on a special stick-strut. The pointed ends of the stick should pierce the hind legs, spreading them the distance of the width of the frame. The puncture site should be below the knee joint. Ideally, if you can get between the bone and tendon.

  For the flow of blood, special cuts are made in the nose of the animal, or an artery is cut through the neck with a thin knife through the mouth. Sometimes the blood flow is provided by the removal of the eyeball. To drain the croca will take 5-7 minutes Making sure that the blood of the glass is in the container prepared in advance, you can proceed to skinning and cutting the carcass.

  Rabbit before skinning

  How to properly remove the skin of

  For quick and convenient skinning with a sharp knife, make cuts as follows:

  • Above the knee joint of the hind legs around the circumference;
  • From the edge of the patellar incision, a second incision is made along the inner side of the paw, then along the inguinal region to the incision on the other paw;
  • The front paws( below the knee joint), the tail and ears are cut off;

  After making the cuts, the skin is carefully, slowly, separated from the carcass. Reaching the front paws, they are gently released, after which the skin is removed from the head, although this part of the fur is of no special value. For a better understanding of the process, you can use the videos, which are many on the Internet or look at the work of a professional.

  You may also be interested in articles on the rabbit topic:

  • What to feed an ornamental rabbit?
  • Symptoms and prevention of coccidiosis in rabbits.
  • Peculiarities of keeping rabbits at home.

  Making rabbit skins at home for beginners

  Now consider how to make rabbit skins at home. For processing, you need a special fixture - the rule. To make it is not difficult. What is necessary to put together three slats in the form of the letter "A".Moreover, the average bar should be movable. Even easier, you can make a rule of the board width of 25-30 cm. One end is narrowed and rounded. For convenience, you must have a board length from 80 to 100 cm.

  Making the skin is not difficult. Work with it is carried out in the following order:

  1. Soaking is done to pre-remove dirt and foreign particles. Soaking occurs in a container with warm water( the skins should float freely) temperatures of 40 degrees. Experienced furriers add a teaspoon of washing powder to 1 liter of water. For the removal of parasites, you can also add formalin( 1 ml per liter of liquid) or sulfidine( 2 tablets per liter of liquid).

  soak fresh skins must be within 3-4 hours.

  1. After removal of dirt and foreign objects from the skin, aging, , that is, removal of fat and muscle layer, is performed. For what the skin must be straightened on the board( evenly and without folds).Subcutaneous fat is gently removed with a blunt knife. When frying, first begin to clean the skins of the head, gradually moving to the tail. The edges of the skins are cleaned movements to the right and left of the middle.
  2. After dressing the skin should be degreased with .To do this, the skin is washed by hand with the usual washing powder, rinsing is performed. In this case, the skin can not be pressed. The water is allowed to drain, then the core( the inside of the skin is wiped with a dry cloth).
  3. Treatment of the skin with a solution of salt and acid is called pickling. His goal is to remove adhesives, increase the strength and softness of the product. Pickling is performed with the help of:
     1. Souring - soaking the skins for 3-4 days in solution( for 1 liter of warm water 200 grams of coarse oatmeal and a teaspoon of yeast);
     2. Neutralization - carried out for 12-16 hours in solution( for 1 liter of warm water 50-60 ml of concentrated acetic acid plus 2 spoons of table salt are added to the whole solution).After neutralization, the skins are kept for two days in a dry room at room temperature.
  4. Tanning is carried out by applying special tanning agents .Its task is to improve the consumer qualities of the skin, increase strength and elasticity. What is necessary several times to process the core of the warm broth of the bark of oak or pine. The number of times and the duration of treatment is determined by the ability of the core to soak in the decoction.
  5. After the skin has ceased to absorb moisture, carry out the fat, , that is, smear the flesh with fat or cream. Zhirovka necessary to protect the skin from drying out.
  6. The following is the final stage - drying. For what the skin leaves in a stretched form for a day.

  After completing this workflow, the skin can be safely stored or used to make fur items.

  Processed rabbit skin

  How to chop a rabbit for meat

  And now let's talk about how to chop a rabbit. Cutting the carcass requires an incision in the lower abdomen. This is usually done by one gentle movement from the bottom up( provided that the carcass is hanging). Then, it is necessary to break the inguinal bones, holding the thighs with both hands and turn them towards the back.

  After performing this procedure, proceed to the extraction of internal organs. Produced in the following order:

  • Separated bladder and ducts;
  • For a piece of fur remaining after skinning, the intestines and stomach are drawn out;
  • The gallbladder is trimmed along with the ducts;
  • Removed the liver.

  Cutting outline of the carcass of the rabbit

  After removing the insides, the carcass is removed from the strut. The inedible part of the hind legs and head are cut off. Next, the rabbit can be cooked, and if necessary, store the carcass should be placed in the freezer. The meat of a properly treated rabbit is reddish-pink in color with no odor.

  As can be seen from the presented material - it is not difficult to score a rabbit. However, it requires a large stock of moral strength and practice. And immediately it is necessary to decide which method of slaughter to choose.

  Finally, a short training video on how to slaughter and chop a rabbit at home for beginners: