Raising rabbits to escape poverty

(Baonghean) - In 2011, after studying documents in books, newspapers and mass media, Mr. Vung and Ms. Hien's family in Dong Song hamlet, Dong Hop commune (Quy Hop) boldly invested in buying exotic rabbits from New Zealand and the US to raise. While raising and gaining experience, this model has now brought about high economic efficiency and is an open way for many farming households to escape poverty.

Rabbits are gentle animals, easy to raise, with little investment in building cages and buying breeds. Their main food is sweet potato leaves and tubers. Rabbit meat is quite nutritious, easy to prepare, good for children and nutritious for people with diabetes, debilitated people, and weak bodies. Realizing the demand for rabbit meat in the market, in 2011, Mr. Vung's family bought 4 pairs of parent rabbits for testing. After 5 months, the adult rabbits can mate, and each month the rabbits give birth to a litter of 7 to 10 rabbits. After about 3 months, the rabbits can be sold for meat. From the initial testing, Mr. Vung's family has now invested in closed cages, with an average of 30 pairs of parent rabbits and meat rabbits in the cage to supply the market.

To meet market demand, Mr. Vung's family went to the Animal Breeding Institute in Hanoi to buy foreign rabbits to raise. These are large rabbits, with an average weight of 4 - 6 kg depending on care conditions, and their meat is more delicious.

Currently, his family sells rabbit meat for 120,000 VND/kg, and a pair of breeding rabbits for 200,000 VND. With the current scale of raising, the family's commercial rabbits and breeding rabbits are sold out as soon as they are raised. Mr. Vung shares his experience in raising rabbits: "Rabbits are very easy to raise, they mainly eat fruits and vegetables and are very economically efficient. I have 2 types of rabbits: New Zealand rabbits and American hybrid rabbits. When they reach a weight of 4 - 5 kg, some are as big as 6 kg, they are sold. Rabbits are rarely sick, investing in breeding rabbits is cheap, suitable for people's income. You can grow sweet potato, elephant grass, and milkweed to feed rabbits. Every month, rabbits give birth once, on average from 7 to 10 rabbits at a time"...

Mr. Vung and Ms. Hien's family are connecting with restaurants and hotels to not only stably sell their family's products but also be a trusted address for poor households to visit, learn and apply to rabbit farming - an open direction for many farming households to escape poverty.

Thu Huong