Pricing

What should i price my rabbits for? <br /><br /> __________ Mon Sep 14, 2020 6:28 pm __________ <br /><br /> I have Kits on the way and my investors would like to know how much I can sell them for. The doe is a pedigree New Zealand and the buck is a New Zealand Flemish giant cross, I plan on grass feeding them until they are about 10 pounds. Both Dam and Sire are high-quality.

I usually see meat breed mixes go for about $15 (that is for breeding stock - if you're selling at 10 lbs I assume breeding stock. Usually for market they are sold as fryers at 5 lbs/10 weeks, whichever comes first. Their growth tends to slow after that point).

A meat rabbit's bottom dollar is the flesh they are made of, or, in other words, never sell for less/lb than the meat is worth to you.

Grass feeding to 10 lbs may take up to 8 months, as they grow slower on grass than they do on pellets, and grass alone may not have enough calories for them.
You will very likely end up having to supplement with pellets, grains, or other forage at some point. (Especially spring, fall, or winter months, if your region has them. ) There is a lot of forage feeding wisdom in old RT threads!!

In the US, rabbit kits are usually sold around 8-10 weeks old, and many breeders are happy to buy them at that age, and raise them themselves.
If you are selling for meat, 5 lbs is the standard processing weight, and meat buyers do tend to like them under 12 weeks, as they are more tender at that age. Someone wanting organic or grass fed would probably be willing to buy older.

I personally value rabbit meat at around $4/lb. (As in, that's what it's worth to my freezer.)
A 10 lb rabbit will reliably produce at least 5 lbs of meat, regardless of breed.
So 5 lbs at $4/lb comes to $20.

I do sell purebred rabbits for more than that, but I've never sold a 10 lb adult meat rabbit, even a mutt, for less.

Here in Kansas the price of a meat rabbit is sky high!
I go lucky finding the ones I have for $15 everything else I have seen has been pushing the $30-$40 range.
It’s been crazy! I’ve been looking for meat rabbits for 9 months because I refused to pay that for meat rabbits.

Get a pedigreed NZ buck to breed to your doe and sell the kits as purebred breeding stock. You'd get more for them.

Although, if you're breeding rabbits to sell live, get some sort of small pet breed, they sell for crazy amounts. My friend raises Holland Lops and Netherland Dwarfs and sells them for $100 to $200 each. And has a waiting list. As small pet breeds, they eat less, but they also have much smaller litters than meat rabbits. So, check how much pet bunnies sell for in your area, calculate how many kits your meat rabbits can have and how much they'll sell for. Then figure out how many kits a smaller pet bunny can have and how much they will sell for. Add in feed expenses, then you'll know which is more profitable.

However, there's a totally different customer base when dealing with pet bunnies verses meat bunnies. Pet bunny people will want them to be tame and friendly and want to gush over how cute and adorable they are.

We sell angora rabbits to folks who will harvest the wool and make yarn. They're the excess for when I'm breeding rabbits for my own herd so we're just selling them to clear out hutch space. Bucks are $50 each and a doe is $75. Plus an airline kennel, taxi fare to the airport and the airfare if they fly to their new owners. I could probably ask double or even triple that amount if I did advertising, and still sell them, but they're excess and most of the income from the bunnies here is from the yarn made with their wool.