My husband and I didn't enjoy the rabbit organs very much so I decided to make them into cat food this time around. 5 rabbits plus 6 eggs made about 4 days worth of food and I'll probably only do one serving a week to prevent overdosing on the vitamins. I hope she likes it!
I processed 5 rabbits today and really enjoyed a mustard sauce recipe I found online. What a great end to the day!
It turned out so good and I had it with my sourdough bread and green beans!
Hey everyone. I've tried tanning my rabbit hides with bark tanning but failed because I didn't flesh well enough. My process was thawing the hides, then immediately trying to flesh while the hides were wet, and I spent over an hour on each hide with terrible results. I tried using a butter knife, my hands, and a fleshing tool, but I couldn't get near enough of it off to actually tan it. After that I tried to just put it in the bark tan but eventually I started getting some hair slippage and it was obvious that the only thing tanning was the outer membrane. I've seen people do pickles and that seems to make hides much easier to flesh but I haven't seen pickles used before bark tanning. Another issue I have is that my rabbits are about 12 weeks old when butchered so I'm not sure if that's messing up the hides but I know some people tan at 12 weeks.
My questions are:
Am I even understanding the process correctly or am I missing something?
Would doing an alum pickle then a bark tan even work? My main goal for the pickle is to make the hides fleshable and to prevent hair loss.
Would it be better to do the alum pickle and then do an egg or brain tan? I picked the bark tanning because I want to make a hat and would like the fur to be waterproof, and I can't smoke the hides in my backyard because of my location.