Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits: Breeds, Care, Facilities

This book has taught me the majority of what I know about rabbits. It is wonderful and I am glad I made the decision to check it out, even though I only keep rabbits as pets. :-)
Bob Bennett is extremely knowledgeable about rabbits and this book goes to show that. GREAT book!
The only thing about it that I can see would be a problem with most pet owners is the section on rabbits used for fur/food. I understand that this is merely one use for domestic rabbits and I am completely fine with that. But to some other pet owners, this may be found offensive. This is why I must add that for those who are against the use of rabbits for commercial purposes, please either skip those pages or get a different book.
Other than that, I must say that this book deserves more than 5 stars!

I have read at least 6 books on raising rabbits and this one is the best by far! (Bennett's other rabbit books are also great - but there is a lot of overlap so only one is needed.) I used his information every step of the way when building my rabbitry, including building my own all-wire hutches. If you are interested in raising rabbits, be sure to join the ARBA (American Rabbit Breeder's Association at [...] )It is very inexpensive to join and membership includes a free copy of the "Official Guide Book Raising Better Rabbits & Cavies" 256 pages and another great book. The book itself is worth the membership, but you also get a subscription to the magazine "Domestic Rabbits."

If you are thinking of raising rabbits for show or meat and can buy only one book this should be it! It is written is simple plain english with plenty of pictures and diagrams for novice. I highly reccomend this book. If fact all the "Storey Guides" are great for the same reasons.

Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits is one of the better written Storey guides. By that I mean it reads a bit less like a textbook. The author adds a bit of humor, which keeps it from getting boring.

One of the best chapters was the one on Rabbit "Housing and Equipment" as there were several good illustrations of rabbit hutches for the small scale pet owner and the large scale operator in this chapter.

If you're looking to pick a Rabbit breed you like and are looking for lots of photo's and information on each breed, this book doesn't have it. Also, many parts of this book are geared toward larger scaled rabbit breeders and sellers, than for the small-scale hobbyist wanting to raise a few rabbits as pets.

Overall, this is a wonderful reference book on Rabbits and one I would buy again.

I was at the library, wondering if rabbits made good pets, and I picked up this book. It was right beside dog training books, books about cats, etc. But, unfortunately, as I found out when I got home, this book is about raising rabbits to sell for meat. The last chapter is horrific- after going into detail about how to raise these beautiful creatures, the author goes about telling the reader how to destroy it, and which spices taste nice on its skin. No thanks. I just want a Mopsy.

I purchased this book in the hopes that it would provide me with more information than, alas, it proved able to do. Understand that I approach this subject not from the point of view of a pet owner nor that of someone interested in breeding show animals; a cursory look-through of the book suggests that this would be a good selection for someone with less experience with rabbits who nonetheless wants to raise them for meat or pelts or the like.

However, a more thorough read-through shows there are large gaps in the book's offered knowledge. Information on sexing rabbits is absent except for the sage advice of not trying to sex them when they're newborns; wait just a few weeks and then it's 'easier'. That's great. Except that it gives no information for how you're supposed to tell, those scant few weeks later; I have three buns out of a kindle who are now well past newborn status and gradually approaching the point of sexual maturity, and it's still not apparent. It's not the sort of thing you want to wait on, or guess wrong about.

There are other similar blind spots in the book - while the approach is a friendly one, the blind spots are the sort where if you don't have them pointed out by someone else, or by sudden experience (as re: three young as-yet unsexed rabbits), you may find yourself thinking this book has taught you more that you need to know than it actually does. I would only recommend this book as a partial reference material and not as a complete guide on the topic.

We are raising rabbits for food. I actually got interested in this and saw it as a possibility because of one of Bob Bennett's other books: "Raising Rabbits Successfully", which our library had. When I saw he had written the Storey's Guide on the subject, I felt pretty confident that it would be a good reference for the bookshelf. I also expected it to be a more updated version

This book may be adequate, but I found it difficult to chase down specific pieces of information - such as age for slaughter, age for weaning, etc. Mr Bennett is a font of information, and this book does contain valuable information, but falls short of his previous work. Storey's is generally the place to start when learning about livestock. In view of his previous work, I found this book a little disappointing.

This is a book designed for rabbit exploitation- meat and commercial breeding, etc. If you want to keep a healthy AND happy pet rabbit who will become part of the family, this book is not for you. Instead refer to Marnell Harrison's book or Kathy Smith's books on rabbit care and vitality. These books lean toward a stance that rabbits are creatures that should be treated like dogs or cats, and NOT like livestock, which they SHOULD!

Storey's Guides are primarily written for producers and breeders of livestock, not for "pets" (although most deal with livestock animals as pets), and most Storey's guides give a certain amount of slaughtering information as well as recipes. Don't even pick this book up if you are offended by the concept of eating rabbits- this isn't the book for you. For people who want to raise, breed and eat rabbits, however, it meets a need. I've always found the Storey's Guides to be pretty good informationally speaking and the authors usually have extensive experience raising the animals concerned. This book may have a few light sections, but I think it's a good starting reference, perhaps the best out there at present. It's certainly better than any other rabbit book I've seen so far.

I find this book in my hands every couple of days. When I first started with rabbits, this was the first book I bought, and I don't regrete it at all. Some of the reviews complain that it doesn't go into specifics of this or that, but if you want to learn specifically about tanning, then buy a tanning book. This book, as the title claims, is about raising rabbits. It talks about all sorts of things, and I have yet to run into a problem this book couldn't either a)answer b)give me enough of a guided idea to google and find my answer. It covers cages, care, keeping them healthy rather than trying to recover them, breeding, kindling, babies, ages to butcher (if you are into that), what to feed, what not to feed, showing, how to sell them, how to butcher them, and some recipes. I'm sure I'm missing more. The author does love his rabbits, but also views them as livestock. If you want to potty train your rabbit, this is not the book for you. But this is a good book to have on hand, if you have a house rabbit, and an excellent book to have if you have breeding/showing/meat/many rabbits.