Keeping Rabbits At Their Summer Cottage

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

The rabbit is one of the fastest and most prolific animals. From one female during the year, you can grow 20-30 rabbits and get 70-75 kilograms of meat and 20-30 skins. As humorists said: "A rabbit is not only valuable fur …". Rabbit meat is a dietary product, it is well absorbed by the body, very tender, excellently tasty, suitable for preparing a large number of dishes.

In a private household, one or two breeds should be bred. The use of hybrids, as well as outbred animals, is hardly advisable, since they are unproductive, and the quality of the skins of such rabbits is of poor quality.

The following breeds of rabbits are most common in Russia: Soviet chinchilla, white giant, gray giant, silver, Viennese blue, black-brown, white down, white New Zealand, Californian.

Consider some breeds …

Soviet chinchilla. Animals of this breed are large in size with a thick bluish-gray hairline. Rabbits are hardy, early maturing. Average live weight is 5 kilograms.

White giant. Breed of large rabbits. The hair is white without marks or impurities. Average live weight is 5.1 kilograms. These rabbits are well adapted to breeding in the northern regions of the country. Gray giant. Highly productive breed of large rabbits. Coloring of the hairline of gray hare of various shades. Females are highly fertile (seven rabbits on average). Average live weight is 5 kilograms.

White down. Rabbits of this breed are highly productive. By constitution, they belong to the narrow-bodied type. Average live weight is 4 kilograms. The average fertility is seven rabbits. The coat is 92-96% downy hair.

Rabbits are kept in individual and group cages (see Fig. 1). For adult animals, individual cages are more suitable, which can be built from boards, box containers, bricks, slabs, small cinder blocks. In a word, from the material at hand.

Almost any roofing material can be used on the roof of the cage. But in all versions, the walls and the roof must be tight, without cracks. The area of one cell is 0.7-0.8 sq. meters. To save materials and space, the cells are best done in blocks of two or four together. They are installed on pillars with a height of 70-80 cm.

The most convenient for successful breeding of rabbits are cages with a permanent uterine compartment, under which a third of the cage is fenced off with a wooden partition. A hole is made in the partition with a size of 17x17 cm and a height of 10-13 cm from the floor. This threshold does not allow the rabbits to crawl around the cage. The hole is made closer to the front wall so that the female arranges a nest in the depths of the mother liquor, where she is less disturbed. In the nesting section, the floor should be solid, and in the rest of the cage it should be slatted or made of fine mesh.

The nursery (see Fig. 2) for feeding rabbits with grass and hay is strengthened between adjacent feeding compartments, replacing the partition with them. A nursery with a size of 60x50x35 cm is made of two frames, tightened with a mesh with a cell of 35x35 mm or metal rods at a distance of 3 cm from each other. The frames are set obliquely across the cage in a V-shape. From the front, the nursery is left open. It is better to build group cages for raising young animals. Such a cage is designed for the simultaneous maintenance of 15 heads of young animals up to three months of age or 10 heads of older age.

Young animals of the same age are selected into groups, preferably separately males and females. Keeping young rabbits in too large groups in close quarters leads to fights between them and damage to the skin. With group keeping, it is necessary to constantly monitor the behavior of young animals: to identify and remove the most aggressive rabbits in a timely manner. Lagging animals should be raised separately from strong animals. When kept together, such rabbits systematically receive less food, weaken and easily fall ill.

Rabbits are quite hardy animals. When kept outdoors, they can easily tolerate even severe frosts. However, drafts, dampness and dirt in the cells are harmful to their health. Any irregularities in feeding can be very dangerous for rabbits. The diet of animals should only contain high quality feed.

Spoiled, moldy, musty, rotten food causes gastrointestinal diseases, therefore, they should not be given to rabbits. You should also avoid feeding grass covered with frost or mold. Grass that is damp from dew or rain can cause indigestion. It must be pre-dried.

The normal activity of the rabbit's body, its growth and development, and resistance to diseases largely depend on proper feeding. The main types of food for rabbits: green (various grasses, fresh tree branches); juicy (good quality silage, root crops, cabbage); rough (forb hay, dry tree leaves); concentrated (grains of legumes and cereals, bran, fat-free oilcakes, acorns, food industry waste); mineral (table salt, chalk, bone meal); feed of animal origin (meat, meat and bone, fish meal, milk, return, whey, fish oil).

In summer, the most valuable food for rabbits is green grass. Of sown grasses, rabbits very willingly eat alfalfa, sainfoin, peas, sunflowers (before flowering), as well as grasses of natural meadows and pastures. Cereal grasses should be fed before flowering, otherwise their eatability and digestibility is significantly reduced. For feeding rabbits, you can use the tops of root crops. If the tops are contaminated with soil, they must be washed and dried. It is necessary to start feeding the tops with small amounts: 50-60 g for an adult rabbit and 30-40 g for young animals. Large quantities of beet and potatoes fed to rabbits cause indigestion and death of young animals.

In spring, rabbits willingly eat early growing weeds - wormwood, plantain, nettle, burdock, colza, spurge, sow thistle. Nettle, which is fed 2-3 times a week, has a good effect on the growth and development of rabbits. Before feeding, it is moistened with salt water, chopped and sprinkled with bran.

When mowing and collecting wild herbs, it is necessary to ensure that poisonous plants such as dope, henbane, night blindness, hemlock, marigold, poisonous buttercup, white hellebore, poisonous milestone, foxglove, crow's eye, lily of the valley do not get into the hay. They are harmful to the rabbit's body. A good food for rabbits is hay from grasses cut before flowering.

In winter and summer, a variety of branch feed should be fed. Rabbits willingly eat branches of aspen, poplar, oak, acacia, as well as conifers, which are an additional source of vitamins in winter. In the spring, they need to be given buds of various trees. Branches of an orchard (except stone fruit) are also successfully used for feeding rabbits.

Rabbits eat well carrots, beets, potatoes, Jerusalem artichoke, cabbage, pumpkin and various types of silage. Root crops should be fed raw, well washed, potatoes - boiled in a mixture with bran, cake and other concentrated feed. Succulent feed improves digestion of animals, and in winter it replaces green feed. Oats, barley, corn, peas, cakes and bran are useful from concentrated feed. The cakes are soaked and crushed before use. The best for rabbits is sunflower cake, it is fed 10-20 grams per day to an adult rabbit. Youngsters are not given cake for up to two months.

In feeding, kitchen and table waste is of great importance. Fresh leftovers of bread, cereals, soups and others can be successfully fed to rabbits, replacing them with more expensive concentrated feed. It is necessary to add salt, chalk, bone meal to the feed. These mineral supplements are fed with mash. Table salt and chalk are given with water at the rate of 1 g of chalk per 1 g of salt to an adult rabbit. From animal feed, rabbits are given milk, fish oil. The palatability and digestibility of feed is significantly increased if the feeding takes place at certain hours, and the feed is served in small portions, and their set changes with each distribution.

It is necessary to carefully monitor the feeding of the young, especially in winter. The best forage at this time is small leafy hay of legumes. Concentrates are used to produce oats, legumes (peas, lentils), crushed barley and corn, and bran. Legumes are fed very carefully: steamed and in small doses. The bran is given in a mixture with root vegetables, boiled potatoes. Before mixing, they are slightly moistened with salted water. Weak rabbits are fed with milk (40-50 g per day per animal).

… A family of local residents in our village has been engaged in rabbit breeding for many years. And, I must say, not without success. And they make good money on rabbits, and they also have something for themselves. And this is even despite the fact that from time to time, due to epidemics, the number of rabbits is greatly reduced. However, the number of animals is quickly recovering, and rabbit breeding is flourishing again. If we freely paraphrase a well-known saying, it turns out that the fertility of rabbits and the work of their owners will crush all the troubles and hardships.