Key Technical Points for Sanitation Management and Disease Control in Intensive Rabbit Farms

An intensive rabbit farm is a large-scale rabbit product enterprise operated with factory-style management, featuring standardized management, high stocking density, rapid herd turnover, and high operational efficiency. Intensive production has many advantages: relatively enclosed production buildings, frequent breeding in all four seasons, efficient cyclical use of equipment, and balanced batch marketing of products. The disadvantages are: frequent high-speed operation puts pressure on disease prevention, making a high incidence of disease extremely likely.

Disease control in intensive rabbit farms differs from traditional @#@248@#@ farming; any disease that may cause a decline in operating profit, including acute and chronic infectious diseases, stress-related diseases, nutritional diseases and various types of injuries, is key to disease control. The target of prevention and treatment is not a single rabbit but the entire population. Therefore, prevention first and prevention outweighing treatment is the fundamental principle of sanitation and disease prevention work. Technical measures such as purifying breeding stock, optimizing the environment, improving equipment, strengthening management, increasing nutrition and enhancing immunity can be adopted to cut off horizontal and vertical transmission. Disease control is not a single measure, but rather a system in which various measures are interconnected, mutually constrained and mutually interpenetrating, forming an inseparable whole.

1. Establish a strict disease prevention system

1.1 Scientific and rational layout

The rabbit farm @#@185@#@ should face south with its back to the north, be far from roads, towns and villages, and be situated on high, dry terrain with good lighting and ventilation. A perimeter wall may be built or a ditch dug around it to isolate it from the outside. In principle, the farm layout is divided into four zones: the production zone, the auxiliary production zone (feed processing and warehouse), the administrative zone, and the living zone. The production zone must be strictly separated from the living zone and the administrative zone. The breeding rabbit houses and reproduction rabbit houses in the production zone should be built on the upwind side of the production zone, and outsiders must not be allowed to visit. Fattening rabbit houses and commercial production rabbit houses should be located on the downwind side of the production zone. The remaining three zones are best built to the left of the production zone, and the administrative zone, living zone and auxiliary production zone should be arranged in sequence front to back (north to south) according to wind direction. Feed produced in the auxiliary production zone is transported to the rabbit houses through windows connected to the production zone. Road layout must be rational; the routes for incoming feed, outgoing manure and rabbit sales must be separated to avoid crossing. Harmless treatment of dead rabbits should be located at the most downwind position of the farm to prevent disease transmission. A disease prevention distance must be maintained between each rabbit house, usually greater than 6 m, and concrete ground should be minimized as much as possible to avoid heat radiation. A small number of large trees may be planted in the open space between two houses to block direct summer sunlight, and the remaining open space can be planted with forage grass to provide a source of feed. The quality of natural ventilation inside and outside the rabbit houses is directly related to production costs, and whether the indoor environmental climate can be effectively regulated is directly related to the health status of the rabbit population and disease control. Rabbit cage design and layout must be scientific and rational, focus on production efficiency and conform to the biological characteristics of rabbits, but must not leave any blind spots for disease prevention. Reproduction rabbit houses must be hygienic, with complete heating and ventilation facilities; young and fattening rabbit houses use multi-tier cage rearing, with 1-4 rabbits per cage being appropriate.

1.2 Strict disease control

Build disease prevention walls around the production zone to prevent personnel from outside the production zone from entering or leaving. Inside and outside the disease prevention walls, establish shrub green isolation belts, and set up a disinfection pool 3-4 m wide at the gate for vehicles to enter and exit, using 2% caustic soda, replaced regularly twice a week. Set up a disinfection room at the dedicated personnel passage; all personnel entering and leaving must change clothes and shoes here and undergo ultraviolet irradiation before they can step through the pool, wash their hands and enter the production zone, and a disinfection basin or pool must be set up at the entrance of each rabbit house. Feed is best self-mixed and self-produced, and sent directly by machinery into the feed tower in the production zone, or enters the rabbit houses through transfer windows in internal dedicated burlap or woven bags, to prevent sources of infectious disease. All production personnel are assigned to fixed posts and duties and must not move between posts at will. Tools in each rabbit house must not be used interchangeably; personnel entering and leaving the farm area must be strictly controlled, and random entry and exit from the farm is prohibited; production materials and the like are delivered to the disinfection room by designated personnel. After production zone personnel return from vacation, they must be isolated for one day in the collective dormitory in the living zone before they can enter the production zone.

1.3 Adhere to self-breeding and self-rearing

For relatively large rabbit farms, a nucleus herd and a multiplication herd should be established on their own. Commercial meat rabbit farms use crossbreeding combinations to make full use of hybrid disease resistance advantages. Under normal circumstances, the annual culling rate of breeding bucks is about 100%, while that of breeding does must exceed 100%; if it is too low, the reproduction rate will decline. A production line with a herd of 1000 does can regularly add 6-8 reserve bucks and 60-80 reserve does each month. Reserve breeding rabbits must undergo strict selection in three stages: 0-28 days of age, 29-84 days of age and 85-140 days of age, and those outstanding individuals that are robust, fast-growing, highly feed-efficient, from high-reproduction maternal lines and with obvious breed characteristics should be selected. When the nucleus herd needs to introduce outside blood for breeding improvement, before introduction the region where the introduced rabbits come from must be investigated for relevant diseases, the introduced rabbits must undergo veterinary sanitary quarantine, and they must be isolated and observed outside the farm for more than two weeks. During the isolation period, relevant disease vaccinations must also be carried out, and only after multiple disinfections can they enter the farm for rearing.

1.4 Optimize the production environment

Intensive rabbit farms have high stocking density, large output of feces and urine, and abundant harmful gases, microorganisms and dust, so maintaining good environmental sanitation inside and outside the rabbit houses is very important. Therefore, underground pipeline waste removal should be used as much as possible to prevent cross-infection. Weeds in the open space outside the houses must be removed regularly. The inside of the houses must be cleaned once a day, kept clean and dry, with no spider webs or leftover moldy feed. There must be no accumulated manure in the manure channels; cage bottoms must be cleaned frequently, with no residual dirty hair. Indoor sanitation can be broken down into several small items, linked to post bonuses, checked promptly and supervised regularly. In winter, cold protection and heat preservation work must be done well, but doors and windows must not be tightly closed just for insulation; an appropriate amount of ventilation and air exchange must be ensured, and exhaust fans used when necessary. The hydrogen sulfide concentration in the houses must be lower than 10 mg/m", and the ammonia concentration must be lower than mg/m". If coal stoves are used for heating, the relative humidity must be controlled at 50%-80%, and dust in the air should be minimized as much as possible. Being in a low-quality air environment for a long time makes rabbits prone to deteriorating constitution and declining resistance, with a marked rise in respiratory system diseases and an increase in mortality, and this effect is not easily noticed and is often overlooked in production. During high summer temperatures, every effort must be made to do well in heat prevention and cooling work, using natural ventilation as much as possible and, according to different rabbit breeds, combining mechanical ventilation, spray cooling and other measures. In particular, heat stress in breeding bucks and breeding does must be prevented.

In addition, rodent control is also very important. Rats not only consume feed but also spread diseases. Large-scale rabbit farms must carry out regular rodent extermination, twice a year. At the same time, production should also implement a registration system for the recovery of production waste such as empty medicine bottles and discarded brooms, and promptly centralize the harmless treatment of production garbage such as medicated cotton, waste paper and dirty hair, which is of great benefit to purifying the production environment of the rabbit farm.