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 Why ducks and rabbits? I see more and more people raising smaller animals rather than cattle. Why is that? Is the yield on meat or something else? 
 Unique to each individual and their resource base, but the cattle market being at all time highs likely has something to do with it for some folks.  
 It's just very easy to start with them. Rabbits in particular take very little space and you can feed them for free or nearly for free if you have access to a bit of forage. You can scale up or down very quickly (31 day gestation, so with just a bit of planning you can quadruple your meat production in a matter of months). Also I think that rabbits are actually the best converters of leaves into meat of nearly any animal besides fish.

However - beef or lamb/mutton is SO much better than rabbit! You just need more land, decent pasture (or be ready to supplement with hay for a while), good fences, and a watering system. Some folks want to work up to that, and many have larger animals as well as the smaller ones.