Rex Rabbit Spring and Summer Breeding: Key Points for Managing Newborn and Young Rabbits
The warm weather of spring and summer is an important period for rex rabbit breeding. During recent visits to the countryside, reporters heard some farmers say they wanted to newly develop rex rabbit breeding, but knew too little about it, and hoped to find experts to provide some technical guidance. Reporters recently conducted an exclusive interview on this topic with He Guiming, head of the Rex Rabbit Research Institute of the Sichuan Academy of Grassland Sciences and a renowned rex rabbit breeding expert. Following high-quality commercial rabbit production techniques, he introduced rex rabbit breeding knowledge to farmers.
Management of Newborn and Young Rabbits
Newborn rabbits: no more than 7 per litter; surplus kits are fostered to does with kits of similar age, and the weak ones are directly culled.
Start time for supplementary feeding: kits start feeding at 18-22 days in winter; in summer this can be advanced by 5-7 days, and the feed amount should follow the principle of small amounts fed more frequently.
Weaning time: after 28 days, switch to two meals a day as a transition to weaning. The overall feeding amount should be adjusted flexibly according to body condition; weaning time is 30-35 days.
Vaccination: after 35 days, inject the combined vaccine against rabbit plague and pasteurellosis; after 45 days, inject Clostridium welchii vaccine; at 60-70 days of age, give a booster injection of the combined vaccine against rabbit plague and pasteurellosis.
Feeding: kits are fed complete feed continuously until 80 days, twice a day, with no green grass added, at fixed times and fixed amounts (50-150 grams).
Cage separation: do not move cages immediately after weaning; 10-15 days after weaning, once the kits have adapted to weaning stress, the kits can be separated into 2 per cage, and it is best to divide each litter into about 3 groups, to prevent fighting between different litters. After separation, the kits go directly into the growing house to reduce stress (the previous method of separating once at around 50 days and moving them into the growing house at 2.5-3.0 jin involved one extra step). During the process of transferring the kits into the growing rabbit house, males, females and cull rabbits are moved separately into the growing house and housed in individual cages.
Assessment and culling: newborn kits are assessed with 7 as the standard; surplus kits are fostered to other does whenever possible (choose does whose kindling dates differ by no more than 3 days, select the larger kits from those exceeding the standard number for fostering, and keep the smaller ones in the original cage for feeding); the very weak ones are directly culled. After 80 days, commercial rex rabbits with dull coat color, sparse fur, an arched back, weak constitution, malnutrition, or hidden defects such as surface injuries, scabs or cysts are culled, and culled rabbits are handled as meat rabbits. If body weight does not meet the standard, they can be kept together separately and sold once they reach the standard, with no further feeding. After 80 days, culling is carried out at irregular intervals; those with poor fur density, poor smoothness, or an excessively high coarse hair rate are promptly culled and handled as meat rabbits.