The first litter of rabbits have now been processed. Some of the meat has been frozen; some has been eaten fresh, and I have canned some of it.
I have never canned bone-in meat before. All of my prior experiences have been with boneless beef or chicken.
My first attempt worked out okay, more or less. The instructions for all meats are pretty similar. Boneless are processed for 75 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts. Bone-in meat is processed 65 minutes for pints and 75 minutes for quarts.
I had two rabbits to can. They were in the refrigerator, so I decided to go ahead and use the boneless time. Two rabbits, roughly four pounds, went into three jars.
For raw pack, no liquid is added, so what you see in the picture cooked out of the meat. A couple of days after processing, I opened one up to see how it turned out. The meat was fine. As with all canned meat, it was somewhat over-cooked and a little on the dry side, although it wasn't objectionable at all (rabbit meat is thoroughly cooked when it reaches a temperature of 165 degrees Farenheit, so heating it up to 240 degrees is definitely overdoing it from a taste standpoint--but it's the only realistic way to get it done). The main problem was the bones: they more or less crumbled. That made deboning a little tricky. I'm pretty sure that's due to the extra processing time that I built in. Next time I'll do the 75. Overall, though, this is definitely a viable way to preserve the meat.