Rabbit breeding is a new livestock industry and an important part of the modern stockbreeding. Domestic rabbits can be divided into three categories, i.e., for meat, skin and fur. There is a good foundation in breeding rabbits in china with a long history, especially in north provinces and the southern areas such as Guangdong and Sichuan, where the development is so fast as to be the corner stone industry of some regions, with some poverty stricken areas in particular. There is a much great potential in China to develop meat rabbits, with far reaching significance.

Nowadays, the productivity of meat rabbits is very high, due to development of science and technology, which has resulted in the improvement of breeding conditions. For instance, a rabbit of 70 days is grown for market, weighing over 2.25 kilograms, with a coefficient of feed consumption less than 3, i.e., every increase of 1 kilogram requiring a feed consumption less 3 kilograms. One female rabbit can produce 50 babies and one cage (several pregnant and not-pregnant rabbits take one cage) can supply 90-100 weaned rabbits.

The bright future of meat rabbit breeding are based upon the following points:

1. Meat rabbit is a typical grass-eating livestock of odd stomach, which is more able to bear coarse feed than others of the domestic rabbit family. According to statistics, grain takes only 23% on average of the feed composite while those for pigs and poultry take 60%. Experiments tell that meat production of rabbits is 5 times that of a cow, using a same quantity of feed to feed a group of rabbits and a cow separately. It means that meat rabbits have a higher efficiency of translating grass into products than other livestock including cows and sheep of compound stomach. So, it is realistically significant to develop largely meat rabbits in our country, where there is rich grass resource but not too much grain.

2. Meat rabbit breeding is an important approach to enrich people’s meat food, in comparison with other rearing of livestock, for meat rabbits have a high production of multiple births and a short period of growing. Normally, the rabbit will get sex matured in 3-4 months. Its first mating starts 6 months after birth. One birth can be 7-8 babies. It can have estrus and do mating after giving birth and give 6 births a year. The baby grows very fast and can be weaned one month after its birth. It takes another 60 days to grow up to the weight of 2.5 kilograms. One parent rabbit can have yearly 35-40 her successors, the total weight of which will be 20-25 times the weight of the parent rabbit, while the ratio of a cow or sheep is only about 0.35-0.63.

3. Meat rabbit breeding requires a little investment but provides a high ratio of input and output and has a faster effect and greater profit compared to breeding of other animals. For a rural family, the investment covers costs of stock rabbit, feed, epidemic prevention and shed facility. Taking 2 male and 10 female rabbits as one unit, the input and output can be described as follows:

(1)    Input

Cost for stock rabbits: one rabbit of 2.5 kilograms in weight is charged 100 RMB, and 12 such rabbits require 1200 RMB. Because the average utilization of a stock rabbit is 2.5 years and so the yearly allocation of the investment is 480 RMB.

Cost of feed: one rabbit consumes daily 125 grams of compound feed (grass and grain straw can complement other nutrition) and yearly 45.6 kilograms or 547 kilogram for 12 rabbits. Every kilogram of feed is calculated 0.9 RMB and the total yearly cost is 492.3 RMB. One baby rabbit uses approximately 5 kilograms of feed in 60 days after it is weaned when it is one month old. One parent rabbit can give birth of 35 rabbits and then 10 parent rabbits can produce 350 rabbits. Then, the total feed of a year to be required is 1750 kilograms, requiring 1575 RMB.

Cost for epidemic prevention: one stock rabbit needs 2 RMB in this aspect and a commercial rabbit costs 0.5 RMB. So, the yearly sum is 199 RMB.

Cost of shed facility: shed can be built using old existing bricks and tiles of the household, stones, clay, cement and lime, or using steel bars to be welded into a frame, which is weaved with steel thread into a cage. If a cage is 30 RMB, the total investment will be 960 RMB for 12 cages of stock rabbits and another 12 cages for growing rabbits. If the cages can be used for 8 years, the annual depreciation would be 120 RMB.     

The total input: 480 + 492、3 + 1575 + 199 +120 = 2866.3 RMB

(2) Income

Commercial rabbits: one year will have 350 rabbits ready for market, each weighing 2.5 kilograms, to be sold at price of 7.5 RMB/kilogram, according the mean annual market price. The total income is 6562.5 RMB.

Stock rabbit disposal: the stock rabbit will be disposed commercially when its utilization period is expired. If calculated according to 12 RMB/kilogram, one rabbit can earn 54 RMB based up each weighing 4.5 kilograms on average. And if allocated into 2.5 years the annual mean income is 259.2 RMB.

Rabbit dung: in one year, 12 stock rabbits and 350 commercial rabbits generate 2.5 tons of dung, which makes 125 RMB according to computation of 50 RMB/ton.

The aggregate income: 6562.5 + 259.2 + 125 = 6946.7 RMB.

(3) Gross profit

According to estimation, one parent rabbit can bring about a profit of about 400 RMB and 10 parent rabbits generate 4000 RMB. So, the ratio of input and output is 1:2, no comparison in the livestock industry and even other industries. Therefore, a family of 3 members can get rid of poverty in the same year when they start to breed 30 female rabbits at their spare time, with a profit of about 12,000 RMB.

4. It is possible for every rural household to raise meat rabbits, which do not require a large piece of land and much labor. It is possible to keep them in cages at one level shed or pile them up in several decks, on or under ground, inside or outside of the house, and even on top of the house. The yard or idle room(s) is suitable to a small scale of breeding. Generally, a rural house yard is good for breeding rabbits with 30 stock rabbits. Because the work does not demand much labor, old people and children can take care of it. The rabbits like to play during night time. There is no contradiction in doing farm work and breeding rabbits, leaving the spare time for the rabbits. Rabbit meat has many advantages, such as high protein, high lysine, high rate of digestion, as well as low fat, low cholesterin, low energy, and other values of compound nutrition higher than those of pork, beef and chicken. Besides, the meat fiber is fine, easy to be digested, so it is a good food for old people, children and patients. You may keep fit and healthy if you have the meat often, due to its positive function in atherosclerosis, high blood pressure and heart disease. As it is liked in some western countries, it is “healthy meat” and “beauty meat”.

5. Rabbit meat has a great market potential, as it has many advantages as mentioned above---there will be more and more people preferring to eat rabbit meat, like in Sichuan, Jilin and Guangdong provinces, where the consumption is in a great quantity and even short of supply in autumn and winter seasons. The meat is also exported to other countries.

6. the contradiction between feeding sheep and developing forest can be relaxed, especially in mountainous areas, as it is so sharp as described “it is impossible to plant trees while sheep is there”. Because rabbits are raised in shed and the rich grass resource can be fully utilized. 　　

So, in short, meat rabbit breeding has a bright future.