Breeding rabbits

Rabbits stand out among all animals primarily by intensive breeding. One female can give six acres a year. This is an average of 100 kg of meat and 50 skins. Is it worth convincing you that breeding rabbits can become a very profitable business?

Rabbit meat is a dietary product. It is tender and juicy, reminiscent of the taste of poultry meat, but containing much more protein. Especially valuable is its very low content of cholesterol and fat. In addition, it is easily digestible. This is why it is recommended to children, elderly people, and pregnant women.

Feeding, breeding rabbits is not hard work. And such work is available to almost anyone. About how to breed rabbits and will be discussed in the article.

Start by selecting a breeding pair. Choose healthy animals, with characteristic pedigree signs. Pay attention to the weight, length of the trunk, coat color. Bear in mind that for each breed there are standards and indicators of growth, weight, color. If you want to know what the offspring will be, then take for breeding adults. An adult, healthy animal has clean living eyes, a strong trunk, a dense shiny pile. They are well-nourished and mobile. Refuse to purchase rabbits with unsatisfactory physique, extended head, protruding hips, sagging belly and back, incorrect ear set, dropping ruffled pile. Even if they are assigned a very low price. Their treatment will cost you much more, and not always be successful.

Housing for a rabbit should be spacious, light, dry, easy to maintain. They can be built independently or bought cells installed in the open air, or in a covered room. Take care of the feeding troughs, water bowls, nesting rooms (carefully insulated) inside the cage. The floor in the nest should only be wooden hay.

Breeding rabbits (mating) can begin no earlier than half a year (the age of the female) and seven months (the age of the male), although sexually mature these animals can already be up to three months. Early birth will harm the health of the rabbit, and the young will grow weak and often unfit for further breeding. That is why when the rabbits reach the age of two months, they must be sorted by sex (to protect males from females). Determine the sex at this age is no longer difficult: pull the skin on the abdomen near the genitals - the males are visible tube, the females will open a triangle with a longitudinal incision. It is generally accepted that breeding rabbits can begin when 75% of their live weight is reached. Thin and poorly developed rabbits can not be allowed to reproduce. For six females one male is enough. The feces last for the rabbit for not more than five days, with a periodicity of 9 days (a little less often in winter). A day or two after the birth of the female, the estrus resumes and it is again ready for mating, which is permissible, but undesirable.

Check before hunting for female hunting: the sexual loop should be swollen and pink. For a young female, choose a male older, for an older female - younger. Before pairing, rabbits are strengthened with food, but they should not be brought to obesity.

The mating is carried out in a separate, cleaned, disinfected and absolutely empty cage. Drinkers and feeders clean. To cover the female, only the male's cage is sufficient. A sure sign of a successfully completed pairing is the fall of the male back or to the side and its quiet content rumbling. On the day the male should not cover more than two females. Start a notebook or notebook where you will mark the dates of the mating and childbirth.

Pregnancy (sucrubrity) lasts for a month (from 27 to 35 days), fruits the size of a cherry well are probed already on the fifteenth day after the mating. But you need to do this very carefully. Guard the pregnant rabbit from noise, screaming, barking dogs. Rabbits are timid by nature, and frightened, they make sudden movements and jumps, which can provoke a miscarriage.

Before giving birth, put a mat (small house) with a litter in the cage and ensure the constant availability of fresh water, as the rabbit will be thirsty. It comes usually early in the morning, or at night and lasts no more than two hours. The rabbit can bring up to 15 rabbits, and sometimes more. She bites the umbilical cord herself, licks the newborns and puts them in the nest. But at this stage breeding rabbits can be a surprise for you, and unpleasant. The fact is that some females abandon toddlers. Try to remove the female from the cage, pull out the fluff on her abdomen and lay out their nest. Fold the rabbit there and plant the female. Even if she does not start feeding the babies, put them to another female with rabbits of the same age. It is for these purposes that it is desirable to have two females with a difference of no more than one day.

The lactation period in rabbits lasts about a month. From the age of two weeks, the young begin to try the feed that feeds the mother. Rabbits are fed with oats, mixed fodder, wheat bran (80-100 gr), fodder yeast (5 g), bone meal (4-5 g), fish oil (2 g). During lactation, the norm should be increased. Taking into account each baby, who "helps" mom at the age of two weeks to eat food, 30 grams of hay and concentrates are added. This is the approximate norm. As the rabbit grows, the amount of hay is gradually added. At the age of 45 days old, the rabbits are planted from the mother and divided by sex (females and males are kept separately).

Breeding rabbits is not limited to the correct selection of pairs for mating and proper feeding. It is necessary to conduct annual vaccinations, which are not 100% protection against possible infection, but will give a chance of recovery in case of illness.