Perhpas you've heard of the famous Cat & Rat scheme, if not here's a link to it.
http://www.snopes.com/critters/disposal/catrat.asp
That was set up when I guess cat fur or pelts were all the rage for clothing and of course it is a scam but,..........
I have taken that theory, on a smaller scale of course, and have produced cats as a potential survival food source. IT WORKS!
One day I watched as a few cats were in my pole barn cornering a rat and then ate it. I remembered this scam thing and thought "this may work". I bought some rats and waited until I had a few dozen then caged them. I started feeding my cats the rats. My cats came to me from somewhere I'm not sure they just wandered in and stayed but they were not "fixed" I had two males and three females. As time passed one female had a litter of 3. Usually litters are 3 to 5 and a kitten/cat can get pregnant around a year old. I'm thinking the other female can't get knocked up.
Now my rats were multiplying at the same time but more babies than the cats so I fed rats to the cats. That's all they were fed nothing additional. I had seperate cages for the rats and cats and kept the young ones seperate. It seemed over the period of the last two years that this may be a viable food source.
Yes I tried eating cat and no it didn't taste like chicken, hey in case of survival I needed to know. It was a bit like rabbit and actually a bit gamey and a little tougher but food is food and it's renewable. I've eaten some cat along the way just to keep the population in check and a couple I've given away as pets.
I have another project going involving chickens but not enough data has been documented for me to post on.
So has anyone played with anything like this?
My next attempt will be aquaculture with carp.
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