Jinan Hanmiao Township Booms with Rabbit Farming Under the Trees, Villagers Race to Raise "Fortune Rabbits"
How much can you earn raising a rabbit in a year? Wang Bin, Party Secretary of Hanmiao Township, Shanghe County, gives the answer: 5600 yuan or more! And it also avoids using up land resources, with rabbit manure going directly back to the soil - multiple benefits in one.
In Xiyang Village, Hanmiao Township, the reporter saw this kind of "fortune rabbit" - the rex rabbit. In brand-new, neatly arranged rabbit cages, several hundred breeding rabbits are plump and strong, with fur as white as snow, and a single adult rabbit sells for as much as 70 yuan on the market. Wang Bin explained that raising rex rabbits has become an important path to prosperity for farmers throughout the township, which now has over 200 breeding households, and the scale is still expanding. Rex rabbits have strong reproductive capacity and good returns: one female rabbit can give birth to 10 litters a year, each litter averaging about 8 surviving kits, and they can be sent to market after four months of raising. The pelt of one adult rabbit is worth over 40 yuan, and winter rex rabbit pelts can even reach 90 yuan each. Rex rabbit meat is about 12 yuan/kg, and one adult rabbit can weigh up to 2.5 kg. By this reckoning, the average external sales price of one rabbit is around 70 yuan. Raising one rabbit, not counting the number of kits bred again, brings in at least 5600 yuan a year.
Why was this kind of rex rabbit farming able to take root in Hanmiao Township? It turns out this is also connected to Li Xinghu, Party Secretary of Sun Hutong Village. Li Xinghu previously worked in transport, often going to the Mengyin area to haul gravel, and he gradually discovered that the rex rabbits there had great farming value. After careful investigation, in 2005 he built a 5-mu breeding farm and the following year brought in 2000 breeding rabbits, achieving economic returns of over 200,000 yuan that same year. This figure spurred other local people on, and everyone followed suit, continuously joining the ranks of breeders. This year, the township already has two rex rabbit breeding bases and one processing plant, achieving chain-style development of the rex rabbit industry.
Rabbits are easy to raise, but you need to know how to raise them well. In Hanmiao Township, the reporter saw that the rabbits here are all raised under the trees, without taking up other land resources. One breeder told the reporter that rex rabbits fear heat and tolerate cold, and the shade under the trees in summer is perfectly suited to the rabbits' growth habits. In the past the woods were idle; now with rabbits raised there, land resources are saved, and at the same time rabbit manure and urine become the best fertilizer for tree growth - multiple benefits in one. Now over 40 mu of woodland throughout the township is used for raising rabbits, and one mu of land can hold 600 rabbit hutches, with very considerable economic returns.
Driven by Hanmiao, rex rabbit breeders have appeared in the surrounding areas of Leling, Yangxin, Huimin and other townships in Shanghe. To support the development of this industry, Hanmiao Township has also specially stipulated that for every mu of under-tree rabbit farming a breeder establishes, the government subsidizes 2000 yuan. At the same time, the township's breeding base provides breeding rabbits free of charge to new breeders, and after they reproduce, the same number of breeding rabbits is taken back. The rabbits raised well by breeders can be sent directly to the processing plant for processing, with the plant responsible for sales. Now many customers have begun coming to Hanmiao to buy rabbit pelts, and demand exceeds supply...