What is a Gnomish Giant
Discover the ultimate meat rabbit
At Gnomestead Farms, our passion has been ultimately rabbits. Yes, we enjoy other animals such as our free range pastured poultry too. But rabbits to us are supreme for meat, pets and even trimming the grass if you wish (just watch out for the burrow pits).
Why did we set out on this journey to create the ultimate meat rabbit? We started as you may have read, to feed our family clean, sustainable, healthy home raised meat in the middle of a recession when my health failed me and we had to re-invent how we lived.
Fast forward 11 years and our goals are coming to fruition. In fact, we just had a customer report her 4 month old Gnomish Giant Doe had a litter of 14 babies at 4 months, 3 weeks old. Now that is not something any other giant breed can offer. But also, we honed in on the fact that commercial meat breeds, even the New Zealand white, had a flawed body for meat production. The back half was great. But what about the front of the rabbit? Small, thin front legs seemed to be the norm and I wasn't thrilled with spending time and effort to eat half a rabbit. So I decided to work on the bulldog of the rabbit world and name it after my childhood nickname and our farm Gnome aka Gnomish and make it a giant rabbit, with amazing silver frosted rex fur. People said this could not be done. Well we did it. The adult fur took us about 11 years to get solidly into our work with both size and growth as well as body type, ear type and the dark meat our rabbits are known for.
An average Gnomish junior should be hitting 6 to 8 pounds by 8 to 12 weeks. Commercial standard is 5 pounds by 10 to 12 weeks. By developing a breed that thrives on hay over pellets, we have reduced the costs for raibbit enthusiasts from birth to table. Hay costs far less than feed if you aren't buying it at retail stores and go farm direct. A large (called a small bale by the hay growers but compared to what a store sells for double the price I call them large squares), is around 4 to 6 dollars each. The Gnomish Giants have been developed for a great feed to meat ratio.
Also, we had bred new Zealands for about a year when we first began thinking we could use them to develop the breed. All we found was gut issues, fertility issues and slow growth. Which the last piece, yes could have been remedied with proper breeding but the poor gut health (and we had tried many from different breeders withall the same issues) was a deal breaker just like with Flemish, the high bone density and hip issues feom being back heavy was a huge turn off for us so we took the long way, and worked our way up from 6 and 7# slim Rex and 9# silver fox.
