Several common taboos for beginners in rabbit keeping

Many beginners, in the early stage of raising rabbits, for example, after asking around here and there, finally buy 30 to 50, or even 100 breeding rabbits. When they start raising them, the first to second litters, estrus, mating, and breeding are all fairly smooth, and the litter rate is also relatively high. Although they have done little of the necessary immunization and management chores, the survival rate is still very high, and in some cases can even reach about 95%. Looking at litter after litter of little rabbits as cute as elves, they are truly lovable. When it is time to sell, they cannot bear to sell any of them. Even rabbits that absolutely cannot be used for breeding and those carrying all kinds of pathogens, they cannot bear to sell either. They all want to keep them for breeding and expand the population. And they secretly feel pleased: raising rabbits does not seem to be that hard after all. I have no experience or skills, yet I am still raising them very well. But do not celebrate too soon. By the third to fourth litters, estrus becomes difficult, mating becomes difficult, and the actual conception rate is even rarer than hen's teeth. No matter how they mate them, even mating three to four times, they cannot conceive, and all kinds of problems on the rabbit farm follow one after another. After much tossing back and forth, they simply cannot figure out the reason.

In fact, the reason is not complicated. The first to second litters are easy to bring into estrus, mate, and successfully conceive because these beginners generally bought commercial rabbits (nominally all breeding rabbits, and they even paid the price of breeding rabbits) to use as breeding stock. Because they had never been bred, the nutrients accumulated earlier could basically ensure normal estrus and breeding. By the third to fourth litters, because they did not understand epidemic prevention and management earlier, and because pregnancy and lactation overdrew the body too much, their nutrition was basically severely deficient. In addition, prevention basically had not kept up at all, various pathogens and viruses invaded from all directions, and what needed nutritional supplementation could not be replenished in time. In the later stage, the body was already completely out of balance. Basically, nutrition could not keep up and many diseases were also present, so it became very difficult to again have the normal estrus, easy estrus, mating, and smooth breeding that occurred in the earlier stage. You should know that once a female rabbit lacks nutrition, it is very difficult for her to recover to normal or near-healthy condition in less than half a month, or even longer. This requires coordination and follow-up in several aspects before she can slowly recover to her former state. (For specific supplementation and care, see my article: Pregnancy Management of First-Litter Does.) If timely remedies can be made at this time, it is still not too late. Unfortunately, many beginner rabbit raisers do not follow up in time to mend the fold after a sheep is lost, identify deficiencies, and make up for them. Instead, they desperately want to develop and expand, and are unwilling or cannot bear to cull diseased rabbits and rabbits unsuitable for breeding that should have been culled long ago, and to sell the commercial rabbits born in the first few litters to ease economic pressure and unreasonable expansion of the population. Just like this, developing for the sake of development, the result is that there are more rabbits, but feed, preventive medicines, labor, water, electricity, and unknown risks are all gradually increasing, leaving them exhausted and under sharply rising economic pressure. Only then do they feel that raising rabbits is not easy, and even less easy than they originally imagined.

If your financial capacity is enough to support rapid development within a certain period without needing to rely on selling rabbits to recover funds to support it, to ease economic pressure, and is enough to support your long-term steady development, then you can completely focus only on production and not sell. However, if you do not have considerable financial capacity, the most scientific method is this: when you should sell, you must sell. If you want to develop and keep breeding stock, you should also select a small portion from each batch and slowly supplement and expand. While supplementing, try as much as possible to gradually cull old, weak, sick, and disabled does or breeding rabbits, and those with poor maternal behavior, and promptly supplement and add young reserve does or bucks, and thereby develop and expand the population. This way, not only can you reduce economic pressure while having income, but you can also expand while experience continuously accumulates and matures. After you have a certain amount of experience or skill, then develop and expand, and it will not be so easy to get overwhelmed or even suffer losses. Is this not easier and also very safe? When a person has normal economic income and basically equivalent expenditures, you will not feel much pressure, let alone during this early stage when you must accumulate experience.

I have been to countless rabbit farms. Upon entering and taking a look, I would ask the people at the rabbit farm: In your rabbit farm, the young rabbits that are not yet one month old or around one month old often get out of their cages by themselves and run around all over the ground. After you catch the young rabbits and put them back in the cages, generally within three days, these young rabbits that were caught and put back in the cages immediately die, and the mortality rate is as high as over 96%. Upon hearing this, they immediately say: "Yes, yes, how did you know?" Why is this? The reason is very simple. The immunity of these young rabbits was not properly established, and conventional antibodies were not produced, while disinfection at your rabbit farm cannot keep up, let alone thorough disinfection. Although the surface looks very clean, bacteria cannot be washed away or killed by ordinary water. Bacteria, viruses, insect eggs, and so on on the ground naturally breed and spread wantonly. These young rabbits, lacking their own immune antibodies or having relatively weak ones, are extremely susceptible to invasion by harmful bacteria, viruses, and insect eggs. On ground that has not been thoroughly disinfected or has been disinfected incorrectly, with attacks from both inside and outside, they quickly cannot resist and die rapidly. These rabbit-raising friends do not understand the reason, and often judge it as caused by problems with the feed, or by this or that problem, but they simply do not know to examine themselves. They are unwilling to carefully investigate the internal causes, yet like to shirk responsibility, always looking for external causes, thereby subconsciously finding themselves a reason they consider reasonable, and completely shifting away the result of their failure to raise rabbits well, in order to achieve peace of mind.

I can often see that many new rabbit farms develop relatively smoothly in the early stage, even though they have not done systematic epidemic prevention at all, or even basic prevention procedures, and the environment and so on are also relatively poor. But mating and breeding are still fairly smooth. After their population reaches a certain amount or a certain scale, they immediately fall into difficulty. The clever ones look everywhere for causes, hoping to make up for their deficiencies as soon as possible. The muddled ones blame heaven and others, and even push all problems onto others. Subconsciously, they want to shift away all problems cleanly, regardless of whether it is someone else's responsibility. Even if it is completely unrelated, they can still blame others. Such behavior is actually irresponsible to oneself, because before you have figured out the cause, the first thing you think of is shifting responsibility rather than responsibly finding out where the problem lies. In order to shift responsibility, it is naturally hard to analyze the cause carefully anymore, and naturally one will ignore the root of the problem. A responsible person, when problems appear on their own rabbit farm, should first look for causes in themselves: prevention, environment, disinfection, feed and feeding amount, and so on. Have I done enough? If I have done enough, then analyze external causes: Could there be a problem with the feed? Were the vaccines fake or expired? Was the method correct? Was the dose insufficient or missed? After analysis and elimination, then find the root of the problem. In this way, it is easy to determine what caused the above problems.

[Article contribution] Guangzhou Juyuan Rabbit Industry