Commercial Rabbitry

A friend was talking to me this week about my future. I am a stay at home divorced mom. My sole income is child support. I do not work out of my home at this time as I have some kids that are high needs. I need to be able to stop and pick them up when I get a call from school. going back to school is out of the question. about 7 years ago I considered starting up a goat dairy but decided against it. It was too iffy working with goats. I decided I would not be able to be a consistent worker. Since then things have changed and my kids are a bit more stable. My passion has always been animals. I am wondering about starting a commercial rabbitry. I have 2 different processors within 3 hours of me. I was wondering if all you pro's at commercial rabbit raising would give me some information and advice. Since I live in california I would not have worries about the cold but the summers I would have to provide a cooled building. I need to find a way to support myself in the next 5 years. I do not need to live fancy. I do not owe a lot on my home and figure to liquidate my house and belongings when the kids are grown and move to a small trailer. I just need to make plans now and get started in the next few years. The closet processor takes colored pelts and in some instances will pay a bit more.

I'm sorry that I can't help.
There are a few commercial breeders here, but I don't think they come around every day.

I think Pat Lamar may be able suggest resources.

It is not a "high margin" enterprise, and would usually require a substantial investment.

Hopefully someone will have some helpful information soon.

its very funny, I have also been thinking of doing this as iam currently under employed and only working 2 days out of the week. I checked ARBA and there is a processor in Creston, that is a 4 hour drive from where I am, I did some of the math and to make the drive i would have to sell at least 70-100 rabbits to make some profit, but I have not factored in feed cost. the gas alone is $100. How much research have you done?

Figure out how much they'll pay. Figure out how much feed costs. We have 15 working does, around 30 fryers in growout pens and still with moms, 4 bucks. We go through 150 lbs of feed in 8 days. :x

Now figure out how many rabbits you need to sell to break even.

I have found that selling to a processor is going to give you a very low sale price. We process our rabbits ourselves and sell directly to customers and restaurants. You might do better with a heritage breed like Silver Fox and sell the litters as breeding trios.

You will have a big start up expense for cages, waterers and feeders.

The initial cost would probably be quite a bit. Feed is a huge factor.

I have been looking online for all the information I can find. The nearest processor to me pay $1.30-$1.45 a lb. They buy all colors of rabbits. I was thinking if I started small I can work up slowly. I don't need to make much in the beginning. There are grants out there for single mom's and women to help start a business. would not be much but would help. My friend is willing to help design and set up a rabbitry. He is one of those people who can do anything. So far all my close friends are like go for it. they think it would be perfect for me. Of course I would feed pellet for a faster weight gain. I think from what I have been looking at Some leave the kits with the mom till they hit weight. If I did that I would need bigger cages for the does but then would not need to make a lot of grow out pens. Next week I think I will call the local feed mill and see how much bulk pellets would cost and look also on if they deliver. I like the cage designs with the door on the top or at a slant on top so would make my own cages. If I started out with a smaller amount of does I can make cages on the side for when I expand bigger. I am in a agricultural area so should not have as many regulation problems. There is a rural town west of me that would be ideal for a rabbitry. My friend lives there and I would not have a lot of people problems Everyone knows each other and watch out for each other. I am accepted well there so maybe I could get a few acres there. My kids also go to school up that way so that is a plus. I am also thinking if it goes well it would be something my son with Autism could get into if he likes it. I know my oldest grown daughter would help out sometimes as it would be of interest for her and her boyfriend. To process my own rabbits I would have a lot of regulations and rules. I prefer not to deal with that. I also do not want to have to deal with a lot of people. Going by 150 lbs of feed to take care of 15 does and assorted kits and bucks we are looking at 10 pound of feed per doe. I am figuring kits and bucks part of doe. so if I started at 100 does I would need 4000 lbs of feed a month is that correct? I definitely would have to have someone to help me with paperwork till I learned. The last bag of feed I bought was at the feed store for $16. per 50 lbs. that is $1280 feed a month. Of course it would be less buying from mill in bulk. The big expense would be set up. I need to talk to my friend up the hill and see what he meant when he asked if 4 acres was enough for a rabbitry. He might have a place in mind. His wife and him have been wanting me to move up there so my kids and I would have a better support. My mom is concerned with me being tied down as I like to camp. That happens though with any job just more so with a rabbitry. I still have a lot to look into. I figure if I started with 100 doe's I can work up to more slowly.

4 acres is more than enough room for a rabbitry- it would permit you tog rowsome ofyour own hay and personal food, even get yourself a dairy goat and some hens...

I think goat thing is better than a rabbitry. but that is me. I was a commercial rabbitry and it isnt what you might think it is. It take allot of time. It also depends on how you want your cages. With trays with out .. In a barn ....or outside.... 100 does to start up is way to big for a start. if you start small and you have a problem going threw. Then you can start over. If you go to big to fast is a big NO NO.... You cant leave babies with mother until they hit weight. THAT will not work out. Make sure you get your stock from a good breeder. Very Very Very important. As goes for the food. You will need good quality food. And you can buy in bulk. but you need a place to store it with out any rodents. You need a place for manure. Not to mention about cleaning manure everyday depending on set up. There is allot to it. .. How are you going to ship the rabbits in... You need a program to keep track on breeding , cleaning nestboxes and putting in nest boxes, weaning. and you need extra stock for losses.. There is always losses. You have to trust the food company. And what about hay. They need hay. They have to weight a certain weight at a certain time frame. Over that is costing you to much and you will burn out the does faster. So you need replace stock.which means more cages. You have to clean all the time. If you dont breed back 10 to 11 days and if you have to many miss or not enough in a litter. You will not make money. You can make money ,but start small until you are use to it then go larger. But wait a year before you do... Because in a year you might not like it and change to something else. ... With goats you can get a contract for there milk, ect. I had goats. I wish i had the spot to do milking goats i would do that in a heart beat.

Here's a commercial rabbitry near me that has quite a bit of info available on their website, including pictures of the barns and cages: http://crossroadsrabbitry.com/

-Wendy

We have 15 does and 4 bucks plus about 30 kits of various ages - newborn to 8 weeks. We go through 150 lbs of feed every 8 days. 18% protein feed is $18/bag.

Selling to a processor at under $2/lb would be a huge financial loss for us.

Thank you for all your reply's. I am looking at jumping in in about 4 years. So I have time to practice with my rabbits, study and learn. My daughter and her boyfriend are also intrigued by the idea. They are both animal people and hard workers. Who knows how this will go but at least gives me a goal for the future.

Good plan with the time frame

wsmoak":3tuwtg0q said:

Here's a commercial rabbitry near me that has quite a bit of info available on their website, including pictures of the barns and cages: http://crossroadsrabbitry.com/

-Wendy

Click to expand...

Thank you for the link. I enjoyed looking at it. When I got to the page where they sold bunny berries by the 5gal bucket or dozer scoop my jaw dropped. I though our pile from 8 rabbits out back was big

I have been looking into raising rabbits for a living as well.
My train of thought has come to the conclusion,of selling them at our local farmers market.
I have a friend who sells Veggies, eggs and butchered chickens. He is helping me in finding out
all the regulations to sell rabbit meat. If selling rabbits at the farmers market is anything like selling chickens
I should be able to butcher and sell up to 5,000 rabbits a year.I know there is no way I would sell that many rabbits
but it is worth looking into. my biggest problem is the farmers market is only runs 4 months a year.

There is a vendor at my local market who does lamb, beef, chickens and eggs. The people who like her produce go out to her farm when the market isn't open.

I have a email from California dept. food and agriculture. It tells about selling rabbit meat in California. If you would like me to send you a copy send me a message.

I do not have experience with a commercial rabbitry, but I do have some rabbit experience, livestock business experience, and schooling in ag business.

I think the cheapest way you could start is to buy four pedigreed purebred does, breed to a purebred buck or two. Raise them in whatever kind of caging you can find (even if it is a "colony" with just some basic wire cages separated for does kindling). Use the proceeds from your first litter or two to start buying cages. You started with quality animals so a) you will be able to charge a premium for exceptional kits as breeding stock to other growers and b) you will not have to buy future breeding animals, except bucks, which I would suggest replacing every generation - they are cheap and an easy way to continue improving your herd genetics. Then you will keep a handful of "terminal" bucks - these are for your purely meat litters, you will not keep any replacement kits from these litters.

That's the animal side of it, now to the business side.

Unless you plan to hire help or be married to your work for little pay, you better bet on integration of some sort. You're already integrating your seedstock and your production stock. You have built up your herd, keeping about 10% as breeding animals and the rest are being sold as either breeding stock to other producers or as meat kits. By this point each new litter is paying for a cage, feed for the litter, and a little bit of money in your pocket (though not much).

The point is you are slowly using proceeds from each litter to get your infrastructure (cages, etc.) built up. Depending on the size of rabbitry you're wanting a building could cost very little or a whole lot (a simple hoop house structure that you made yourself you could do a very good sized one for under $2500 vs a pole barn building you have to hire out for is going to be much much more).

Rabbits reproduce very quickly so if you stay on top of it you could build up a nice sized breeding herd in only a year or two starting with just four or five doe kits. And if you are buying a cage with each litter no you're not making any profit those first couple of years but soon you will have all the cages you need, you will be feeding enough rabbits to buy your feed in bulk and save money there, and hopefully have learned what you need to tweak to make it work better.

I would HIGHLY recommend investing in an automatic water and feed system (even just a simple slide-pipe would help a whole lot).

(sorry for this post being a bit rambly, I'm Pre-Coffee)

If you have some time before you're going to get started, there are things you can do today to dramatically cut your feed bill.

Since you have some space, I'd suggest planting some trees for fodder. Rabbits can do fairly well (not as well as on a mixed diet, mind you, but they'll do OK) on a diet of 100% mulberry leaves, so if you plant a few rows of mulberry now, you'll have a good supply of them later. Your profile just says California so I'm not sure what climate zone you're in, but you could also probably grow some hybrid poplars (just no black poplars, they'll kill the rabbits) and some willows on the lower parts of your land, and some apple trees.

That'll supplement your feed, if not replace your commercial feed, for most of the growing season and drop your costs considerably.

You might also want to find the nearest SCORE office, they're a group that gets retired executives and they'll go over your business plan with you, and tighten it up, as well as possibly help you find grants.

You will make more money if you sell direct to restaurants, and in California there are areas where there's not enough supply right now. If you are serious, I'd also suggest contacting some of the reptile clubs (dead on the wire and cull kits can be sold as snake food), raw dog feeders, and heck, these days I'd go to the local Crossfit gyms that suggest people follow a paleo diet and see if I can't arrange group buys of organic rabbit meat. Successful agricultural operations need diversified income. See if there's a local-to-you primitive skills group that will buy your furs, or a local boy scout group. There are workshops being held right now for $100 a head to teach suburbanites how to kill their own food, do you have the space to set up for a workshop like that, walk people through dressing out their own animals? You could partner with someone else who has rabbits to supply them for the workshop and use that money to build your cages. Do you have the marketing skills to pull that off, or could you spend the next year learning those skills?

Breeding stock- you can sell high quality rabbits. This will probably require you to go to a few shows to get some champion bunnies to up your price and create demand, or buy from known lines. Do you have connections with the 4H/Future Farmers crowd for producing meat pens? Now would be the time to start making those connections.

There are also grants available from the Slow Food guys, and lots of agricultural grants available if you do something with, say, a heritage breed. Do you want to raise, say, American Chinchillas, Blanc do Hotots, or Silver Foxes?

To raise revenue to build the cages, you can offer a rabbit subscription CSA, where people pay you a certain amount now to get a rabbit a month, or a rabbit a week, at a discount later. That might help with the up front cashflow issues, and you might also be able to piggyback on other CSA's that are in your area. They might be willing to put out a call to their members to raise seed money for you, and handle your distribution at a much, MUCH better return than the large processor will give you. I'd also see if I could find a cowshare group in the area, since those are people that are already paying up-front to get high quality, clean meat.

You've mentioned your son is Autistic. A lot of parents with kids who are not neurotypical are trying to feed them a diet as free from chemicals as they can, since it so dramatically helps some of these kids. Are you a member of any local support groups, or email lists, where you could offer the rabbit meat direct to consumer?

Some cardiologists suggest their heart patients eat rabbit meat. Could you produce a good looking brochure to give to cardiologists about the low cholesterol in rabbits, that they could hand their patients, with your rabbitry's information on it? A REAL, good looking brochure- have a graphic designer tell you if it really looks like crap. I've seen a lot of nearly useless, bad marketing materials out there because the business owner didn't have anyone to tell them it looked bad, or they wouldn't listen. You can get a decent logo for five bucks of Fivver, there's no excuse

Have several paths to revenue. Think of it like prepping- one is none. If all you do is sell to the commercial processors, what would happen to you if they went out of business, or dropped their prices? You'd be over a barrel.

You might want to also plant something to attract people to your location. A few rows of you-pick berries, some fruit trees, heck, some rare garlic varieties,

If you really want to do this, the thing that will make you money isn't the rabbits. It's going to be the rest of the business. There are some books you should read, the E Myth by Gerber is a good starting point. Your local library has lots of books on business, they're going to be worth looking into.

Edit- double post.

Thanks for all the information Mad..... I'm slowing down my pursuit of going big at this time. I'm having some trouble driving more than a hour. Until I'm able to get my health under control all else is on backburner. I will look up some of the stuff you mentioned in the meantime. Thanks for the information.


Walltenter good advice. I've been working on improving my herd. If it doesn't produce well it doesn't stay unless it's a pet. I recently got a awesome buck who I'm looking forward to keeping some daughter's from and replacing other rabbits. Right now meat rabbit sales are down. I quit doing pet sales as I don't have the patience to deal with the idiots that come for rabbits from me. I'm working on building a good reputation in my small town as someone who has good rabbits. 8 of the meat pens at our county fair in May will be from me. I'm making good connections with people in the community which will help in the long run. Bonus is meeting nice people. The local animal control came with his kid and bought a meat pen. He had good remarks about my rabbits. My friend is going to fix up a evaporative cooler so I can breed through the summer. I'm working slow but steady towards my future goal.

There used to be a truck from a procsesser, who stopped in Orland on wed. about 6 am , I used to sell to 20+ years ago-- the price was $1.86/ lb for whites back then.[feed was $5.75/ #50 NSC - and a little less from the mill bulk.]
You will need a biulding, with shade trees, [eucalyptus grow fast in your area, and need little water after the first 3 years]planted on the west, and south side for sure [and maybe on all sides-, you also need 2 swamp coolers with thermostats, to keep the rabbits cool, and well ventilated, the reason for 2 swamp coolers is -if one breaks down , you have time to get it fixed before the rabbits die. also--you can hook the water pump up the the thermostat on one ,and let the fan stay on to keep ventilation at night. [The pump will start when the temp gets too high and run water on the pads, and cool the house] -put the swamp coolers on the end of the rabbitry with the "pure breedstock" in it-- so the air will blow past them then on to the rest of the building, so no disease can blow back past/on the breedstock.
The small amount it costs to keep a swamp cooler blower running is not much when compared to the cost of respiratory problems from too much amonia in the house, --[you also need a back-up generator large enough to run your well and power your coolers]
-- When you buy breedstock, you need to quarentene them and have them screened for pasturella, and maybe EC, before you put them in your herd,[unless you are absolutly sure they are clean] --because when you have 50 rabbits it is not a huge problem to repopulate after an epedemic-- but-- when you have 400 does it will destroy you. [and keep outside rabbits and "un-washed" rabbit people out of your rabbit houses.]- when you buy breedstock, buy at least, 2 separate lines of NZ and 2 separate lines of Cali [or what ever breeds you choose]- that way you can keep a "closed" rabbitry for at least 10 years at a time- [if you pay attention to breeding programs]
--When you set up your rabbitry have it compartmentalized, with about 6 feet between sections, so-- if you get a problem in one section you have a chance to see it, and fix it, before it is spred to the whole house.[I had my pure NZ in one section, the pure Cali, in one and the main production divided into 4 sections. [this also can help with breeding programs]
These are all problems you will not see / deal with, until you have a bunch of rabbits in a house, but when they show up, the learning curve is steep and expensive. -