I decided to create a page to keep our Cull Records that can be accessed on the side sliding menu. I wanted to keep all the records together to see the comparisons of live to bone-in dressed weights between the different kindles.
Three rabbits of BGG4 were culled yesterday at 15 weeks old. (One of the four rabbits was passed on to be a brood doe for another breeder when she was 8 weeks old.) The average live weight of the three was 6 lbs. 6.5 oz. and the dressed weight average was 3 lbs. 4.8 oz. so the average percentage of dressed weight to live weight was 51.6%.
These rabbits were NZW/SF 75/25 hybrids on organic pellets without a supplement. This is a starting baseline that sounds reasonable to me. Now I begin working toward my goal of 55% to 60%.
The breedings and age will be watched for best dress weights, but I also am going to be playing with supplementing the rabbits' feed to see if that makes a difference as well.
We ended up culling at 15 weeks instead of 12 or 5 pounds because of our schedules. So, there will be many factors that can affect the weights and percentages, but I am hoping the more data collected, the more likely it will be to see a pattern so I can see what actually improve results.