Up front, the two tractors: the May Olive Eggers — our dragon-egg hatchlings — and the seven-week kits, both putting on size and getting moved across fresh grass. Out on the mulch mound, the ducks have claimed their spot and are running it like they pay rent. Back along the fence, the mature layers are doing what mature layers do — quietly out-earning everybody.

In a meat-rabbit program, you don't need many bucks. Keeping every male you raise just to feel kind isn't actually kindness — it's a slow drain on space, feed, and the quality of your herd. The cleaner, more respectful path is to decide early: cull the surplus bucks young, keep the doe kits to grow out and evaluate for breeding, and use what you cull to feed the working animals that earn their keep. Around here, that's the dogs. We opt to use a system called the Buck Bop.

We raise meat rabbits and process them at home at 12–14 weeks — the standard time frame where a rabbit has put on good meat but hasn't started eating into its own feed efficiency. The meat becomes raw food for our working dogs. We currently eat very little of it ourselves, because our table is covered by other stock — but a rabbit is also a meal if we ever need one, which is part of why we keep them.

Sunday's butcher day produced 272 ounces of ground raw dog food from seven roosters — heads off, intestines and vents out, everything else through the grinder. Bone, organ, muscle. We keep the good stuff.