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video Increasingly, household animals can be seen in the farmsteads of private households and even summer cottages. Breeding rabbits attracts the unpretentiousness of this species, the rapid growth of animals, their active reproduction and quick return on investment.
The cost of keeping rabbits is small, and in exchange for care and attention, the animals will provide owners with 4–5 kg of meat from the carcass, fur skins and down.
What are the peculiarities of breeding, raising and feeding rabbits in a private garden?
How to keep rabbits?
In the literature there are descriptions of several animal housing systems. By historical, previously used, can be attributed to controlled grazing with content in the pens. Someone is mastering the popular breeding of rabbits in the pits, but most experienced breeders tend to use cages.
This method has several undeniable advantages. First of all, the cellular content helps:
- to track the condition, fatness and health of each animal individually;
- feed the rabbits on demand and on time, if necessary, adjust the diet;
- to mate animals in the best possible time;
- selected for breeding rabbits on the basis of long careful observation;
- to get strong young;
- to effectively combat diseases and parasites, to establish prevention.
Thanks to these possibilities, which make life easier for experienced breeders and beginners, keeping rabbits in cages has become widespread throughout the world.
A comfortable rabbit cage
One of the weighty advantages of using cell content is a long, almost year-round exposure of the population in the air, which:
- has a good effect on the body's defenses;
- gradually improves the quality of fur and the fatness of animals;
- has a positive effect on productive qualities;
- prevents the reproduction of pathogenic microflora and the spread of disease.
If there are mobile cages, livestock or individual rabbits, for example, in winter, when the temperature approaches –25 ° C, or during the mating and okrol, it can be translated under the roof.
Having decided to start breeding rabbits at home, an aspiring rabbit breeder should take care of home improvement for the wards.
To save space, make stationary rabbitks long-range, having 2–3 cells above each other. Adult and young stock are kept separately, rejected in their own or in group cages at the age of three months.
Permanent and temporary structures should meet the requirements of safety and convenience of eared guests.
The most important thing for domestic rabbits is maintaining cleanliness, warmth and dryness. This is taken into account when choosing the design of rabbit houses and their future location on the site. For breeding and keeping rabbits in the open air inside the houses provide insulation. And in order to facilitate the maintenance of cleanliness, the floor in the cage is made netted or slatted with small intervals for dumping litter and debris.
Cleanliness and other conditions for the successful breeding of rabbits
Rabbits living in cleanliness and comfort are not susceptible to diseases, quickly gain weight, build up good-quality fur, and willingly reproduce. How to keep rabbits in private homestead? What conditions are fully suited to furry animals?
Unpretentious, hardy animals in the open air survive in thirty-degree frosts, and in the summer endure the same unbearable heat. However, the task of the rabbit breeder is not to test the animals, but to grow them. Both heat and hard frosts make their adjustments in breeding, raising and feeding rabbits, therefore:
- in the winter time necessarily provide for the protection of cells from frost and icy winds that are harmful to animals, they put more straw inside;In summer,
- transports portable cells to partial shade, and stationary structures protect canopies and awnings, use moisture for irrigation from animals to overheat.
As a natural shelter, you can use branches, fresh mowed grass and hay. On the hottest days, the roofs of the cells are doused with water in order to quickly and effectively reduce the temperature inside and somewhat raise the humidity of the air.
If the breeding of rabbits is carried out indoors, the animals need a long day of light, ventilation, comfortable temperature and humidity within 60–70%.
Rules for the care of rabbits when breeding at home.
There are several rules that observers who are experienced, and especially beginners to breed rabbits at home, can achieve consistently good results:
- The cleaning of cages, drinkers and feeders should be daily and very thorough.
- Disinfection of cells and all equipment in them is carried out at intervals of 10-14 days.
- Ventilation, maintaining acceptable humidity is just as necessary as a clean and balanced feed.
- Rabbits, when cultured in cages, must be protected from drafts.
- Continuous availability of clean water and fresh, matched feeds according to age.
- Animals are regularly examined, and if a disease is suspected, a weak rabbit will be quarantined.
Breeding rabbits at home is not complete without necessarily vaccination of livestock, as well as adding vitamin supplements to drinking and feed, especially necessary for pregnant females, young animals and all individuals in the winter.
Hay and water in the rabbit cage must be constantly present. In addition to animal feed, animals are offered fresh grass, roots, grain, apples. If juicy feed mowed independently, you should not choose areas near roads or industrial plants.
Cage troughs, nurseries for hay and drinkers should be clean and stable so that mobile animals do not overturn them.
How to breed rabbits and get offspring from them?
In order for the male to fertilize the female, she must remain in the hunt. Regardless of the season, this state lasts up to five days with a break of 8–9 days. Just a day after the birth of a new generation of rabbits, the female is ready for a new fertilization.
The signal that the female is ready to go into the cage to the male can be considered disturbed behavior, loss of appetite, and the surest sign is a rush of blood and swelling of the genital loop.
Adult males are no less active. During the day, the rabbit covers up to four females, coming to the hunt in just a few minutes after the previous mating. To the manufacturer is not weak from exhaustion, females in the cage sit down with a break of two days.
Breeding rabbits are selected according to external indicators, age and breed characteristics. Sick, weak, too young animals to mating do not allow.
A nest is waiting for the litter of a rabbit in advance. When the rabbits appear, they need special care and attention.
If the animal is not intended for breeding, rabbits aged 3-4 months are castrated, which leads to an early weight gain and improved meat quality. Slaughter of livestock is carried out, starting from 4 months of age. But to get a thick strong fur it is better to wait when the animals moult. This happens half a year or more later, depending on the breed of animals.
Video about breeding rabbits and all the nuances of their feeding, maintenance and breeding will be useful for beginners and already venerable breeders. Such information helps to replenish knowledge and avoid annoying mistakes, sometimes leading to undesirable consequences for the entire economy.
