184. In this case, too, the chief use, perhaps, is to give children those habits of which I have been just speaking. Nevertheless, rabbits are really profitable. Three does and a buck will give you a rabbit to eat for _every three days in the year_, which is a much larger quantity of food than any man will get by spending half his time in the pursuit of _wild_ animals, to say nothing of the toil, the tearing of clothes, and the danger of pursuing the latter.
185. Every-body knows how to knock up a rabbit hutch. The does should not be allowed to have more than _seven litters_ in a year. Six young ones to a doe is all that ought to be kept; and then they will be fine. _Abundant food_ is the main thing; and what is there that a rabbit will _not eat_? I know of nothing _green_ that they will not eat; and if hard pushed, they will eat bark, and even wood. The best thing to feed the young ones on when taken from the mother, is the _carrot_, wild or garden. Parsnips, Swedish turnips, roots of dandelion; for too much green or _watery_ stuff is not good for _weaning_ rabbits. They should remain as long as possible with the mother. They should have oats once a-day; and, after a time, they may eat any-thing with safety. But if you give them too much _green_ at first when they are weaned, they _rot_ as sheep do. A _variety_ of food is a great thing; and, surely, the fields and gardens and hedges furnish this variety! All sorts of grasses, strawberry-leaves, ivy, dandelions, the _hog-weed_ or _wild parsnip_, in root, stem, and leaves. I have fed working horses, six or eight in number, upon this plant for weeks together. It is a tall bold plant that grows in prodigious quantities in the hedges and coppices in some parts of England. It is the _perennial parsnip_. It has flower and seed precisely like those of the parsnip; and hogs, cows, and horses, are equally fond of it. Many a half-starved pig have I seen within a few yards of cart-loads of this pig-meat! This arises from want of the early habit of attention to such matters. I, who used to get hog-weed for pigs and for rabbits when a little chap, have never forgotten that the wild parsnip is good food for pigs and rabbits.
186. When the doe has young ones, feed her most abundantly with all sorts of greens and herbage and with carrots and the other things mentioned before, besides giving her a few oats once a-day. That is the way to have fine healthy young ones, which, if they come from the mother in good case, will very seldom die. But do not think, that because she is a small animal, a little feeding is sufficient! Rabbits eat a great deal more than cows or sheep in proportion to their bulk.