RABBITS FOR FOOD

Sul,—Sir Rowland Sperling's persevering campaign against the rabbit puts the farmer much in his debt, and it is only in the interests of natural history that I feel obliged to demur to some of his facts. The normal weight of a rabbit is 21 to 3 lbs., not 5 lbs. The authorities give 5 lbs. as a record weight, known to have been reached, but the average weight is the obvious one on which to base calculations, and eight rabbits thus weigh from 20 to 25 lbs., not 4o lbs. Further, McConnell's Agricultural Note Book gives Jo lbs. as the daily consumption of a sheep at pasture, so that, if the amount of green food consumed by that sheep would suffice for only eight rabbits, each rabbit must eat it lbs. of grass per day, or from half to .42 of its own weight. Ordinary farm stock, when grazing, consume approximately one-tenth of their own weight per day, and I do not believe there is any mammal which very much exceeds ro per cent, of its own weight as a daily ration. A boa-constrictor which has successfully got outside a goat and gone to sleep for a month probably holds the record for a day's consumption, but he is not a mammal and is irrelevant to the rabbit problem. However, Sir Row- land's estimate of a rabbit's capacity is moderate compared with that of a farming article that appeared on November 4th in another journal, in which it was stated that forty rabbits will eat as much as a dairy cow. Now McConnell gives zoo lbs. per day as a dairy cow's consumption of grass when at pasture, so that the forty rabbits must each eat 21 lbs. of grass, or approximately their own weight every day! When the rabbit observes from his Spectator of November 3rd that he eats ri lbs., and from another journal, The Field, on November 4th, that he eats 21 lbs. of grass per diem, he must surely be saying to himself, like a disciple of Monsieur Cone, " I am getting bigger and bigger every day."—Yours faithfully, Ecchinswell House, nr. Newbury. A. IRVING MUNTZ.

Snt,—I know nothing of wild rabbits, as I would not eat one, and my garden is wired against their depredations ; but the letter headed " Rabbits for Food " may be misread as applying to the tame variety, which possibly some facts may correct.

The feeding value of the tame rabbit, as compared with beef and chicken, is as follows :—

Rabbit Chicken Beef

Water.

64.96

74.80 62.2o

...

-• ...

Protein.

20.92 21.50 ...

19.30 ...

Fat.

6.21 2.5o ...

18.30 ... Ash. 1.30 1.10 0.90

This table is the result of careful research at the National Institute of Poultry Husbandry. I have kept tame rabbits ever since the Government's request during the last war, and I reckon a fair-sized carcase to be equal to 5s. worth of butcher's meat, and the wastage is fed boiled to the fowls. The value of the pelt is 3s.-8s., and the manure has a very high nitrogenous content second to poultry.

The cost in grain and hay is 6d. per head per week. The green-stuff is largely garden waste.

£750,000 is spent annually on imported rabbit flesh. Possibly in the present circumstances it would be wise to grow some of it at home.—Yours faithfully,

F. GERTRUDE LATHAM.

The Old Rectory, Offord Cluny, Huntingdon.