It’s no more controversial than keeping feeder rodents, really. Everything needs to eat. Welfare wise, it’s important that they have the best quality of life they can all the way up until they’re death (which needs to be made as humane as possible, whether being used as meat for people or for other animals). They need adequate space to preform regular rabbit activities and exorcise, they need quality food to keep them healthy, which is important for them but also the health of whatever they’ll be feeding, they need enrichment and stimulation. Efficiency, wise, I really don’t know. I’ve never raised an animal for food… To keep costs lower, you could buy their hey and other feed in bulk (as long as you can keep it from going bad before the rabbits have a chance to need it, of course), and caging/housing could be hand built. Enrichment and the like is easy enough; rabbits love cardboard boxes and oversized toys. Honestly, to keep a rabbit, let alone many, ethically and efficiently, you’re going to have to be willing to put in time and work.
It might be worth finding someone who breeds feeder rodents and see what their suggestions and tips are. I say rodents, rather than rabbits, purely because I think you’ll have an easier time finding rodent feeder breeders. There’s a few around tumblr that take very good care of their feeders.
As usual, suggestions and positive comments that might help anon out are welcome!
If you’re raising them as feeders, kill them humanely before you feed them to something. It’s more humane for the animal, and it removes all risk of the feeder potentially injuring the predator, plus you can freeze the feeder to kill most potential pathogens. Death via predator (especially constrictor snake) is slow, painful, and terrifying. If at all possible, if the predator can by any reasonable means be coaxed to eat a dead thing, feed pre-killed prey and learn how to humanely kill it.
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