by The products of the peasant (farming) enterprise “Krolstadt” occupy a significant share of the dietary meat market of Belarus. The owner of the enterprise Pavel Elizarov told about the organization and nuances of private rabbit breeding “BSH”.
The breeding reproduction farm-workshop is located in the Narovlya district of the Gomel region on the territory of the former sanatorium “Polesie”, which Pavel Elizarov acquired by chance:
— We went looking for a paintball site for my brother, we came across it. We bought it. There was a place, meadows, forest. Some small cattle breeding was requested. That’s how it started.
“Krolstadt” specializes in the production of Californian rabbits. The choice of breed is determined by pure pragmatism: meat and early maturing.
Animals become sexually mature at 3,5 months, and in terms of meat yield they surpass the Belgian group of breeds (grey giant, white giant, Flemish).
According to the farm owner, the average yield of a Californian carcass at 85 days is 53%. If the slaughter is done independently at 120 days, the figure increases to 58%.
“The Californian is compact,” the farmer says. “Many people, when choosing a rabbit, say, ‘I want one with a bigger face.’ I always ask, ‘Do you want the face or the rump?'”
In general, the Belgian’s maximum yield is 48%, while the Californian’s is 58%. This is for a ton of carcasses – 200 kg of meat. Is there a difference?
The key to success, as everywhere else, is food
— We buy feed at any price, — explains Pavel Elizarov. — It is a strategic resource: being without grain is worse than being without electricity. You can live without meal, without vitamins, but if there is no grain, then production will simply stop.
Only raw materials are purchased from outside, from which the farm prepares its own compound feed. At one time it was purchased ready-made, but economic feasibility and the fight for quality forced us to set up our own production.
— No one will take the best grain to the grain processing plant, and I want to feed my rabbits good grain, — the farmer argues. — It’s economics: if the grain is of slightly better quality, then you can buy a premix a little cheaper.
In addition, it may happen that at the factory they first make someone else’s batch of feed with the addition of meat and bone meal, and then mine. Some of the “garbage” ends up in my feed.
Meat and bone meal has a high content of pathogenic microflora: all these bacteria that were “undercooked” or developed again on a protein-rich substrate.
So, the rabbits start having problems, so you start feeding them antibiotics, and then the production resembles a T-34 tank. Just imagine: if you roll it out of the museum now, it will drive and even shoot, but two mechanics will have to run around with wrenches and welding.
Why do I need this headache?
It takes 90 days for a rabbit to reach marketable weight. This results in 2 g of live weight, of which 700 g is meat. Average daily gain is 1 g. Daily feed consumption is 400–30 g per kilogram of live weight.
Thus, the entire herd requires 300-400 kg of feed per day. The recipes are our own, chosen by trial and error.
The ideal composition of rabbit feed according to Krolstadt looks like this:
- 20% sunflower;
- 10% soy;
- 1% premix “Consul”;
- grass meal and 3-4 types of good grain.
You can’t feed rabbits rye, but you can feed them any other grains without restrictions.
“If there is no money, then you can survive on grain alone,” the farmer reasons. “But then there will be no mating, there is a problem with lactation and kindling – the young animals are weak.”
Two or three years ago, we put hay on top of the cages because we didn’t know how to add it to the feed. Now we know: we’ve learned to crush it. If I had the money, I’d grow my own feed. I’ve already thought about what and how to sow, where to put the wood-fired dryer…
However, there is a chronic shortage of free funds. According to the owner of Krolstadt, as soon as the business took off, he sold his apartment, summer house, garage, and for many years now, he immediately invests any free sum over a hundred dollars into the business.
Soviet improved
Krolstadt uses improved Soviet production technology. The solution is obvious at first glance, but the company did not come to it right away.
Initially, they tried to work according to the Mikhailovsky rabbit breeding scheme. But it quickly became clear that this move was obviously wrong: what suits amateurs is not suitable for large-scale production.
— Mikhailovsky rabbits reproduce and grow normally, — comments Pavel Elizarov. — But the technology is very labor-intensive, material-intensive and poorly scalable. In addition, there are questions about feed production and veterinary science.
For example, the Mikhailovsky system recommends refusing vaccinations. But there are diseases that you can’t escape: viral hemorrhagic disease of rabbits, myxomatosis, pasteurellosis, which occurs only in large herds.
If we are talking about a garden plot, yes, you can work using Mikhailov’s methods. But nothing more.
The next step was an attempt to apply Italian technology in Belarusian forests.
We worked on the nuances for almost 2,5 years, gained colossal experience, “left our mark”, but ultimately came to the conclusion that the European system is not suitable for our country.
— The French-Italian path of development with the use of artificial insemination works perfectly, — the farmer shares. — But for Belarus it is premature, since it places increased demands on feed and technological discipline.
The farm is supposed to keep a virtually disposable herd, since artificial insemination involves hormonal therapy, which does not pass without leaving a trace. But the main problem is that the method implies serious cooperation.
If slaughter is done, the entire herd is removed together with the ewes. If insemination is done, an inseminator arrives. Breeding young animals are brought in anew in each batch. There must be a slaughterhouse, well-established sales, a breeding center, a supplier of compound feed, etc.
French rabbit breeders cooperate to form a production conveyor: every week, according to a schedule, someone inseminates the herd, someone slaughters, someone sells them, and someone “charges” the cages with new livestock.
As a result, wholesalers are guaranteed and regularly supplied with a certain volume of products.
The profit is shared by everyone, and the cost price is low due to the fact that the process is divided into phases. It is difficult to repeat all the stages and establish uninterrupted production of rabbit meat alone.
Having failed with the European system, Krolstadt returned to the Soviet technology of the 1980s and modified it to suit their needs. The equipment was manufactured independently according to Italian models.
— Our zootechnical plan is the same as in the USSR, — the rabbit breeder says. — Only seasonality was removed from it, because we have a heated rabbitry. Lactation is 45 days, then a 5-day rest, on the 50th day we begin mating and cover the queens in 5-10 days.
The enterprise uses lactation control, which makes it possible to control mastitis, the condition of the herd at the age of 10-20 days. This increases the safety of the breeding stock and the reproductive capacity of the mothers.
The technology of leveling the kindling has been created and is in operation, the diet of the female rabbits is controlled. The farmer personally checks the condition of the herd every day.
— After the rabbit breeder has closed the cages, I make my rounds. I can ask about each rabbit. This gives a better attitude to the nests.
Was the rabbit milked or not? Why is the litter skinny? Maybe she doesn’t want to feed? Maybe oxytocin isn’t being produced and needs to be injected?
The director should not sit in the office. The employee does not care what the production efficiency is, he has only one motivation: to avoid punishment.
The average breeding stock on a farm is now 600–800 rabbits. They are served by one to three women. To feed a herd of 2 heads, one worker spends about three hours, and watering takes an hour and a half.
“Usually there are two workers,” says Pavel Elizarov. “If I need expanded reproduction, I hire a third. If I need to cut costs, I leave one, but then the livestock gradually falls.”
Veterinary issues
The owner himself is in charge of veterinary care at Krolstadt. If necessary, he turns to outside specialists for help, but notes that there are no specialized doctors for his production in Belarus:
— There is general knowledge and an idea. But as for practitioners — alas. I have to personally. Of course, I am an economist by education, but in the 15 years that I have been working with rabbits, I have already studied veterinary science and zootechnics. Of course, I don’t know Latin, but there are no questions about feed production.
The farmer claims that in rabbit breeding there are well-documented diseases that de facto do not need to be treated.
But the most problematic issues, primarily the viral infections that have been circulating throughout the country since the late 80s, have not been sufficiently studied.
— Almost all common diseases are cured by banal culling. Kill it and solve the problem: no spread, no treatment costs.
But myxomatosis, VGBK, and opportunistic microflora, i.e. those diseases that are caused when immunity drops, are a disaster.
Immunity can decline due to dozens of factors: there’s feed, and housing conditions, and God knows what else. When the whole herd has diarrhea, when you’re rushing around, changing feed – that’s the problem.
The farm uses different vaccines: Czech, Russian, Ukrainian. The farm owner did not notice any particular difference between them. But he found out through experience that if there are other rabbit farms within a radius of 5 km, any vaccine can fail.
“Isolation saves,” explains Pavel Elizarov. “A competent owner acts in the event of a viral disease according to veterinary and sanitary rules: destroy, burn, vaccinate.”
But a private owner might feel sorry for him, and the virus carrier will crawl around for another month, or – even worse – the animal will be released into the wild. Then the pathogen is preserved in some swamp, and we wonder next year where everything comes from.
At Krolstadt, the herd has been filtered for years, leaving animals with reduced susceptibility to diseases for reproduction. As a result, the survival rate of rabbits aged 0–30 days on the farm reaches 70%, and that of animals aged 30–90 days is 90%.
By the way, another veterinary difficulty for rabbit breeders is that few drugs have dosages for rabbits. Usually pigs or cattle are mentioned.
“It’s good if the drugs are calculated per kilogram of weight, but that’s not all,” says the owner of the production.
— For example, the feed antibiotic “Flavovit 8%” — it was specifically written there: 200 g per ton. When we had wooden floors, we used it to prevent coccidiosis. Now we have abandoned wooden floors and there is no need to do prevention. But other diseases remain.
You have to experiment. What to do if a rabbit is closer to a bird in terms of metabolism and body temperature, to a cow in terms of intestines, and something in between cattle and pigs in terms of feed?
In the future, Pavel Elizarov would like to put prevention and treatment on a more serious basis.
— You know, I want to control a lot of things, even somatics, but, unfortunately, there aren’t enough hands for everything.
Rabbits are not only valuable fur
The slaughter is done traditionally: they tried using electric current, but a knife turned out to be more effective. The skins and entrails are cremated.
When asked why valuable fur should be destroyed, the farmer waves his hand: Rabbit skins are not in great demand in the country. Several years ago, Krolstadt sold skins for $0,5-$1 each. But now some buyers have closed their business, while others have switched to more profitable products.
— If you want to get some kind of economy, — the rabbit breeder explains, — you have to make the finished goods yourself: hats, slippers, even fur wardrobes — whatever. And sell them. Where exactly — that’s another, simpler question: there’s the Internet, shops, markets.
But to start producing finished products, you need to freeze the money for a year. Because collecting raw materials and drying them takes a month, dressing takes a month or two, and production takes another couple of months.
Then we give it all to retailers, and while it’s being sold there… Hats and fur coats are seasonal goods, they can lie in the store for half a year. The funds are frozen.
There is one more nuance: fur that can be sold immediately must have a magnificent pile, i.e., essentially arctic fox at the price of a rabbit. But such fur requires a great deal of investment at the production stage, and then it will no longer be “at the price of a rabbit.”
Currently, the main sources of income for the farm are meat and breeding stock. The meat is sold to stores and partly to restaurants. One of the main consumers is Euroopt.
The farmer negotiates directly with each network. Wholesale prices are 101–106 thousand rubles without VAT. Retail prices are up to 120 thousand per kilogram. The whole carcass is sold cheaper, but the cut one is more expensive.
Krolstadt sells 400–500 kg of meat per month. Profitability fluctuates within 10–20%. Production costs are distributed as follows: feed – 50–60%, staff salaries – 25–33%, electricity – 10%.
If zootechnical shortcomings arise, for example, the fight against a disease is not started in time or low-quality feed is purchased, you can end up in the minus. On the other hand, there are periods when profitability reaches 20%.
“When the breeding stock was up to 100 queens, each of which I personally looked at, the profitability was 50%,” says Pavel Elizarov.
— But the larger the production volumes, the stronger the influence of negative factors and the lower the average profitability. A small herd does not have the same diseases as a large one.
By the way, Krolstadt products are now more expensive than Chinese ones in terms of cost price. However, they have an important advantage: Chinese rabbits are small – the carcass weight is about 800 g, while Belarusian ones are 1-200 g.
It is interesting that the Mikhailovsky technology assumes obtaining carcasses weighing more than 2 kg, but here the rabbits from Krolstadt win due to their smaller size.
The purchasing power limit of Belarusians is on average 10-12 dollars per carcass, and two-kilogram “beasts” are too expensive for the budget of a typical consumer. The farmer also sells offal, but sells it privately, mainly to local residents.
— I went to the shops for the first time with only two carcasses, — he recalls. — I came to the area: there was a local chain here. I asked if I could try. “Let’s do it.” I gave him two rabbits.
A couple of hours later they called me and said, “Bring some more.” And so it went. At one time, they sold it through ads. In general, rabbit meat is mainly baby food. It’s not a very capacious market, I alone currently occupy about 20-25%.
Competition for rabbit meat on the Belarusian market is weak, which is due to the low purchasing power of the consumer. Rabbit is a specific product.
When a person comes to a store and sees a chicken for 30 thousand, and next to it a rabbit for 140 thousand – the choice is obvious. Pavel Elizarov believes that the rabbit meat market volumes will not grow anytime soon.
At the same time, it is possible to significantly reduce the cost price (and therefore the price of meat) only with serious investments in production.
Ten tips for rabbit breeders from Pavel Elizarov
Rabbits are a capital-intensive business. To save on mistakes, I advise not to immediately chase exclusive breeds, but to work out the technology, starting with elementary things: a male and two females, for example.
I had no one to follow as an example, I am self-taught. But now I have someone to learn from and something to learn from.
- You need to take a tough approach to your staff. Demand compliance with technology. I am a soft person and somewhat missed this point. But then my wife came out of maternity leave and helped a lot. She created a “Gestapo” here (laughs).
- Think about scaling up production. When I had a dozen rabbits, I had enough feed for a year ahead. But now: for a week is good, for a month, I think, is great.
- Improve forage production. A doe never tramples a baby rabbit: it was either stillborn or too weak. If so, you are probably just not feeding the herd well. The same applies to diseases caused by metabolic disorders: cannibalism, dermatitis, osteoporosis, etc.
- Cages should not have solid floors. The net solves the problem of worms, coccidiosis and much more.
- The meat can be delivered to a meat processing plant, However, it is more profitable to work directly with stores. But not with all of them, but with those that are guaranteed to pay.
- It is better to receive less money, but on time. When working with networks, you need to be prepared to compete with other manufacturers.
- Fall in price and everything will be fine with you. If you can’t do it cheaper, no one will refuse you, but the sales volumes won’t be pleasing either.
- Sales need to be increased gradually. If you produce a lot of meat at once, you will sell it at the “Chinese” price. And if you gradually grow in volumes, the market will catch up.
- Don’t be lazy to pay attention to the little things. Here are keychains made from paws: each costs 25-50 cents. Not much? But that’s an extra $1-2 per rabbit.
- Product appearance is the key to success. If on one counter there is a carcass with washed snow-white paws, and on another the same one, but the paws are dirty and covered in urine, it is not difficult to predict the buyer’s behavior.
