Grow 3,000 LB of Protein (in a Carport)

Daniel Salatin of Polyface Farms shows us a system where theoretically you could grow thousands of pounds of protein in your garage. Back in the Racking House with Daniel. He's saying this is a home run for urban homesteaders. Why?

Well, yeah, well, when you think about it, I mean, this building right here is 30 by 50. Yeah, so when you put that in, in context, 30 by 50 is basically 3-car garage.

All right.

So when you think about a building that's the size of a 3-car garage, all right, it's producing 300 chickens.

What?

There's 300 chickens in here. They're producing anywhere from 8 to 12 dozen eggs a day.

Okay.

We have the rabbits. It's got 40 does. That's mother rabbits, if you're not aware of that. And all their bunnies.

Okay.

So 40 does. Each doe is producing between well over 25, say between 25 and 30 rabbits each per year. So if you say, let's just say 25, make it easy. That's 1,000 rabbits a year, all right, at 3 pounds apiece, that's 3,000 pounds of meat protein per year out of a 3-car garage, 12 dozen eggs a day, all the compost to put on a half-acre garden, okay, the chickens can eat all the table scraps from, and yard waste, and leaves, and trimmings, and whatever, from, you know, we're gonna spitball it, 20 households.

Yeah, yeah. Okay?

So if you think about the concept of like a 20-household subdivision having one of these, it's kind of the whole bring a bucket, get a dozen eggs. So every week you bring your bucket of table scraps that would typically go in the landfill, or down the garbage disposal. That becomes a huge percentage of the chicken's food source. You get all the eggs that your family needs, plus you can sell some. If you don't mind eating rabbit, which it's delicious, you know, there's no reason to mind eating rabbit, but if you eat rabbit, it produces a large portion of the protein needed for the average family, all the while producing the compost needed for your community garden or your kitchen garden or your vegetable garden in your home, turn your front lawn into garden, you know, blah, blah, blah, wherever you want to put your garden. So every 20 families, that's their food footprint. That's it.

That's incredible.

And they're employing a full-time farmer to run this one building operation, and they could probably tend the gardens and, you know, help with the compost. So that's kind of why we feel like, you know, that's never been done anywhere. But conceptually, yes, it's a no-brainer. It's quiet, there's no smell, there's, you know, you bring in chicken feed, some rabbit feed.

And in the urban setting, you're gonna have— or the suburban setting anyway— you're gonna have this stuff because people in the fall are throwing away their leaves.

Yes, they're throwing away their leaves, they're throwing away their yard. I mean, they're gonna be mowing their grass, yeah, they're trimming their hedges, they are putting together together their chips. I mean, again, there would be nothing wrong with this person that's managing this having a small little chipper and everybody just sets their stuff out by the driveway. Womp, chip, you got it.

Inspiring. If you could somehow get the entire community to commit to giving you the grass, giving you those— even they're setting it out, even if they're setting it out for the trucks, you could go around and get it from the back. You know, they've set it out convenient bags, you know, and anybody can pick up one bag. It's not like crazy heavy.

No.

And they can dump it in here. I dare somebody, I dare somebody, a to do this. Be the first to do this. You're looking at this, it's just this in a garage.

Yeah, exactly. Yep.

And people, there, people have 3-car garage, that's not that uncommon. But there, 2-car garages are even more common, and that's still a lot of rabbit and a lot of chickens.

Yeah. And so, you know, then you've got a constant supply of fresh bunnies.

Oh my gosh, let's see here. There's more.

Yeah, this is huge litter.

Huge.

My gosh. Because, because you know what, they breed like rabbits.

Yeah.

Exactly. I mean, she's got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Oh my word, 12!

So she just had 12?

She just had 12 babies.

Where's the male? Where's the lucky male?

The male, um, I'd have to check the records, uh, but there, there's a lot of males in here too.

Okay.

Um, but the females go to the males. The male has his own place and he hangs out and the female comes to his house.

Are these males?

Uh, the males, um, you really can't tell.

Okay, okay, okay. Um, so say he's a male, you're gonna bring the female.

Here's a male. Here's a male. Yeah.

And do you just breed all year round?

Yep, we breed all year round.

Now what to do with the offspring? Those are just the breeding stock, so They're gonna have babies and those are gonna end up being what you eat. Here's Joel Salatin himself on the hairpins that you could put in just a yard. A yard like this. A little tiny yard.

These are what we call the hairpins. So these are for the rabbits and so we move these once a day and these are so light that they don't require a dolly. They just slide. I mean, a, you know, a 10-year-old can move these real easily. The Hairpin and the Millennium FeatherNet are probably the two models that we have here that are the longest evolution. I mean, years, decades in getting to where we are today. I could tell you stories for a long time about all the trial things that we did, but When we finally came to this, it really worked.

Why did you start with rabbits, and why did you insist on putting them on grass?

Well, Daniel— this was Daniel's entrepreneurial project. We're big believers in child entrepreneurship, and so he started with rabbits when he was 8. And he, you know, my older brother had had rabbits when we were kids. He saw those rabbit shelters hanging up in the rafters of the barn, you know, "Ah, I think rabbits would be fun for me." We had some friends that were moving from a country house rental situation to an apartment in the city, and the owner wouldn't let them have animals. So they had to have someplace to take their rabbits. Right when he was 8, and about the time he was starting to get interested, he said, "Ah, I'll do rabbits." So that's how we started. And of course, everything here is on grass. I mean, that's just, you know, we're a cult on grass. So, you know, from the get-go, the whole idea was, so how do we run these, you know, on grass?

Will they actually mow somebody's lawn?

Well, yeah, you can, you can go up here and see where they've been. So we're moving them, you know, we're moving them downhill. And, um, so you can see the squares. So you can see the squares where they've been. 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, they're not mowing it like a mower mower. But they're definitely mowing it, you know.

You can walk on it.

You can walk, absolutely you can walk on it.

It's not a golf course.

And it's not like cow pies.

Yeah.

You know, rabbit pellets are not like cow pies.

It's almost cute.

Yeah, it is cute. You heard it, he said it. It's like you spread breakfast cereal, you know, out here.

And they're walking right on it, it's not burning it like the corn is crossed.

No, that's right, that's right. Yeah, that's right, that's right, because the rabbit manure is not— because rabbits pee.

How much can they eat from the land?

Daniel figures that they're picking up at least 70% of their diet on the land. So, we figured up one day, just for fun, and figured up that 1 acre of grass put through rabbits is worth about $50,000.

So speaking of dollars, what's your input on this thing? What can one of these pens do by way of cost and by way of—

Yeah, so we bring them out at 6 weeks, they get weaned, and then we dress them at 12. So they're in here for 6 weeks. And so, you know, each rabbit sells for about $25. They're about $8 a pound times 3 pounds. So for sake of discussion, well, for sake of discussion, we could even just say $20, you know, make it, make it simple. And, and so each one's big enough for a litter. And so we can put anywhere from, from, you know, 2 to 8 or even 10 if the litter is real big. We try to put each litter— that's what this is, this is This is the bunnies. This is the bunnies of number 45. That way we can select for genetics if we want to keep for breeding stock. We can track the litter all the way through to slaughter. So that's how we identify for genetic selection. So if you figure 6 weeks apiece, and again, this is a deal like 24 weeks they can be out here in the summer. So, 24 divided by 6 is 4 rotations. If you say the average is 6 bunnies per rotation, that's 24 bunnies. 24 bunnies at $20 apiece is $480 per one of these.

Wow. This could be in somebody's yard.

Absolutely. We call this nook and cranny farming. This is nook and cranny farming. I mean, this is cool because all the infrastructure is portable. You can move it from yard to yard. Yeah, you could do it in a suburb. Why, you know, with chickens and rabbits, you could hook together, you know, 2, 3-acre suburban backyards and be in the farming business.

I've heard that rooster. I don't even know how far away that rooster is, but I've heard him like 3 times. I haven't heard a thing out of these guys.

No, they're quiet. That's the beauty of rabbits. They're quiet. They're very, very quiet.

Culturally, why don't we eat rabbits?

Bambi, Thumper, Peter Rabbit.

Disney and they're cute.

Yeah, Peter Rabbit. Yeah, yeah, but there are a lot of cultures that do eat rabbit. I mean, the British culture certainly does, French. Yeah, rabbits are eaten well all over the— all around, but yeah, they are kind of— they're a little bit like lamb. They're a little bit of an ethnic That's the kind of thing.

And you got 6 rabbits in here?

How many are in here? 1, 2, 3, there's 4 in here and these were small litters. So a litter can be anywhere from, you know, 3 or 4 all the way up to 10. So, I mean, we've had 10 in there. And obviously they would mow more. You know, they would mow more if you had more in there.

Yeah, thank you. And if there were less, they would eat more off the land, more of their own food off the land, and less supplement. Yeah, you have some supplement right there, right? In an automatic feeder under the shed. And then your water. Water. Cool. That's really cool. Thank you. I first published this system on the channel and just have been waiting for somebody to do it. Somebody has done it on the small scale. But hey, we forgot the paper inside. One second. All right, I'm back, I'm back. No, I got him. Thank you, Breck, offered to hold him. Here it is. This is exciting. Can you guys see that? Boom! It's not a garage, maybe even better, it's like a covered, uh, carport. You know I'm into carport farming. Now you'll need a physical holding for the pigs. You could use something like this, a pig port, where we just converted a carport into a pig port. Took half of it, put them on deep bedding. There you go. That'd be great for piglets. That'd be great just to raise them all the way to the end on. Yeah, I raised 2 pigs in a carport and it was just fine. Notice, notice on the side of this, uh, ventilation, and it doesn't look very expensive. It just looks like They might even manufacture that themselves, uh, just like storm windows or something. Now here's the beautiful stuff. Oh, stay with me, guys. You're on this glass table. Are you really—

are you—

are you really doing exercise in the background? You trying to get Henry happy? Okay, so then here's the system. There's the rabbits in the hutches. They probably built those from Polyface Design or similar. And notice down below, see the chickens down below on deep bedding? That's the key. Here's a better picture, maybe more chickens. Look at all those chickens down there on deep bedding. The rabbits manuring down in there, and then the offspring run in the grass. Lily's been wanting rabbits. We're gonna do it. But good job, Lonnie. Uh, he's in our member area. He has that— you just crushed it, buddy. Good job, Lonnie. Very proud of you. As far as I know, this is like the first I've been able to see of somebody else doing this on the homestead level. Good job. And if you guys are interested in doing this, I've got a bundle, a free bundle from Joel Salatin. Lots of stuff from him, a master class, uh, some samples from his book Polyface Design, and a link to his book should you want to buy it. But go ahead and get the free bundle. I'll leave the link for that down in the description, or it's at polyfacedesigns.com. Here, you know— oh, there it is! Did you hear that? So I'm at, I'm at this, uh, we're at Homesteaders America Spring Edition and we have this rental. But I'm looking at that like, really, you could have a couple of rabbit hairpins in here. I don't think there's a garage here. There's not a garage, but you could do it. You could do a 10 by 10 tent and have some rabbits. Lily is a nice system. In Joel's new book, he talks about an urban situation where you could have 4x4, 4 foot by 4 foot, 2 chickens underneath and a breeding pair. That's what we're gonna do. So I'm not above this. I'm going to take it even smaller scale than that. Uh, Lily will get some rabbits, she'll get to keep the breeders, and then she knows we will eat the offspring. She has no problem with that. So how exciting! Let's get on this journey together. Hope you enjoyed this video. Do check out that link for more free resources and an opportunity to get Joel's book, Polyface Designs.