Key Technical Points and Detailed Methods for Free-Range Meat Rabbits

Free-range meat rabbits means changing the farming method to free-ranging in the wild, releasing them back into nature, so that the rabbits themselves can eat all kinds of fresh green grass in the wild, enriching the nutrition of the rabbit meat in every way.

Free-Range Meat Rabbit Technology

1. Site: use idle empty houses (currently rural schools, pig farms, processing rooms, dwellings, etc.), preferably with dirt floors. No need to build rabbit cages.

2. Breeds: use crossbreeding to produce meat rabbits.

3. Method: 20 sq m can house a group of 10 female rabbits and one male rabbit, mating freely; use palpation to predict the kindling date, move does about to kindle into kindling cages three days in advance, and after kindling and nursing put them back into the rabbit group, nursing once a day; young rabbits must be kept in cages. Only after they reach 2.5 jin are they put into the meat rabbit group.

4. Scale: 50-100 breeding does is suitable.

5. Feed: plant a few mu of grass, collect crop straw and stack it up, and buy commercially produced concentrate supplement.

6. Feeding: collect green and dry grass, tie it into bundles for free feeding, and appropriately add concentrate supplement. Provide plenty of drinking water.

7. Disease prevention: breeding rabbits are immunised twice a year (rabbit plague, pasteurellosis, Clostridium welchii disease). Meat rabbits are immunised at 35 days with a bivalent or trivalent vaccine. At 60 days, a booster injection of monovalent rabbit plague vaccine is given. Deworming: anti-coccidial and anti-parasitic.

8. Disinfection: clean up droppings at any time, and disinfect and sterilise.

9. Sales: because costs are low, you can wait for a good price before selling.

10. Notes: disease prevention, disease control, moisture protection.

Free-Range Methods for Domestic Rabbits

1. Selection of farming site: grassland, mountainous land, semi-mountainous areas, orchards, forest transition zones, barren hills and slopes, saline-alkali land, etc.

2. Ratio of farming site area: build a temporary small rabbit nest within a 20 sq m area.

3. The specification of the rabbit nest is: 2 m * 2 m * 0.5 m.

4. Materials for building the temporary rabbit nest: any material that can build a wall will do, red bricks, cement, river sand, scrap building materials, cement tiles, etc.

5. Building the small rabbit nest: four walls, and the roof must be rainproof; leave a 10*10 cm small door on the sunny side of the wall for the young rabbits to go in and out.

6. Taming process: put one male and two female young rabbits into the rabbit nest, and place food, water and a salt lick block outside. The young rabbits just put in are very timid, poking their heads out at the entrance, occasionally stepping out of the nest, but immediately returning inside. After many explorations and observations, they gradually become bolder and dare to go one or two metres outside the nest to look around; when they see food they can take a few bites and then immediately return to the nest. After repeated practice over many days, the young rabbits can go out onto the grass to nibble green grass, drink water and lick the salt block, and their courage is further trained; they can run farther away to nibble green grass, fight and play, and can actively find water to drink. When the young rabbits reach one month of age, the food can be cut off, leaving only the salt lick block. The rabbit nest and the salt lick block are the most ideal things to attract rabbits; no matter where the grown rabbits run, or how far they run, they must come back to lick the salt block, which is also the trace element that rabbits like to eat most. When rabbits are frightened, or when a dog chases them, the rabbits first run towards the rabbit nest to hide.

Advantages of Free-Range Rabbits:

1. High-quality rabbit meat is an excellent dish in all kinds of restaurants, and can also be sold in barbecue shops and cooked food shops.

2. Free-range rabbit meat is especially fragrant, tastes better than both wild hare meat and rabbit meat from closed farming, and has great market sales potential, with demand exceeding supply.

3. Free-range meat rabbits can have good physique, strong disease resistance, and increased meat texture and taste.

Disadvantages of Free-Range Meat Rabbits:

Free-range meat rabbits have a large amount of activity and eat more, and they grow slowly with low feed conversion rate. The most critical point is that free-range meat rabbits easily transmit diseases to each other; once a sick rabbit is found, it will affect the health of the whole group of rabbits, bringing difficulties to treatment.

After reading the above free-range methods and the advantages and disadvantages of free-ranging, you should have a weighing in your mind about whether to free-range rabbits or not.