Who We Are
My name is Jim, and as a young boy my parents started a small farm with a couple sheep, ducks, geese, chickens, a paint stallion and yes, rabbits. Later they purchased cows and pigs, and I had my own horse. Being young and having the responsibility of taking care of these birds and animals is probably where I got my passion for raising them.
After leaving home and working dairy farms and managing some, I took an interest in doing things right. I studied nutrition, breeding and manure handling. So now that I'm semi-retired, I've been taking all these things I learned over the years and putting them to use with the critters my wife and I raise.
Bella's Legacy Rabbitry started out being to raise our own food for our table to be more self-sufficient. Raising rabbits, knowing what they ate and how they were raised means a lot to me. Little did I know that we would be very quickly raising pet rabbits, also. I've often said, "I can be having the worst day ever and when I go to the bunny barn and start grooming these bundles of joy, all my cares go away."
Our bunny barn is 12X20 and has 36 cages in it. One side has 30x36 cages for moms and raising babies. The other side has mostly 24X36 and 30x30 cages. My goal, once we started raising rabbits to sell, was to raise them so any small young child could handle them with some guidance. I've had so many phone calls and texts messages where our customers thanked us for bringing such joy into their homes, and often times will send pictures of the rabbits in their new surroundings. That makes what we do all worth it.
After leaving home and working dairy farms and managing some, I took an interest in doing things right. I studied nutrition, breeding and manure handling. So now that I'm semi-retired, I've been taking all these things I learned over the years and putting them to use with the critters my wife and I raise.
Bella's Legacy Rabbitry started out being to raise our own food for our table to be more self-sufficient. Raising rabbits, knowing what they ate and how they were raised means a lot to me. Little did I know that we would be very quickly raising pet rabbits, also. I've often said, "I can be having the worst day ever and when I go to the bunny barn and start grooming these bundles of joy, all my cares go away."
Our bunny barn is 12X20 and has 36 cages in it. One side has 30x36 cages for moms and raising babies. The other side has mostly 24X36 and 30x30 cages. My goal, once we started raising rabbits to sell, was to raise them so any small young child could handle them with some guidance. I've had so many phone calls and texts messages where our customers thanked us for bringing such joy into their homes, and often times will send pictures of the rabbits in their new surroundings. That makes what we do all worth it.
Much time is spent with these fur balls so that when they're sold as pets, or for breeders, the new owner doesn't have to tame them down, like many of our original rabbits had to be. Having a wild child in the group takes a lot of patience, like the doe pictured below. Melania was a doe that had a huge attitude problem, but the last few years of her life, I was able to use her for demonstrations with people interested in raising rabbits on handling a rabbit. Melania can be seen in the picture below as I was trimming her nails on a YouTube video. How I miss that girl.