“He who chases two rabbits catches none.” –Confucius
IT DOES not take much to grow rabbits.
All you need is a little space and a shed to grow your herd, according to Mr. Ballud Prudencio.
He hastens to add that rabbit meat is healthy. It is white meat, like that of chicken meat.
Prudencio knows that many Highlanders are meat eaters.
“Rabbit meat can be a healthy alternative to red meat,” he said, adding that “you do not violate any law if you serve or eat clean and safe rabbit meat.”
But he adds a precaution. “Rabbit pet lovers can be offended if you butcher the animal and serve it to them.”
Just be sensitive to people who pet rabbits, he advised.
Prudencio served as a laborer with the Department of Agriculture-Cordillera Administrative Region (DA-CAR) Research Division for 20 years.
Over the last two years, he was tapped to assist in the day-to-day activities of the division’s rabbit project.
According to Dr. Magdalena Wanawan, Research Division chief, the project is in operation for six years now. It has been dispersing rabbits to farmers ever since she reported.
At present, the project is growing 52 heads of rabbits.
From Mr. Prudencio’s experience, you can breed your rabbits if they reach their eighth month in age.
“On the average, a doe or dam can give birth to 7-9 kittens. After 40 days, you can have your dam mated again,” he said.
Depending on the available space and your purpose, rabbits can multiply fast if you let them.
Cordillera farmers can feed rabbits with commercial feeds, and the leaves and fruits of chayote.
Rabbits can be fed with the leaves of Madre de Agua or Napier grass too.
“In my practice, I feed rabbits alternately with feeds and the following day with chayote or other plant feeds,” Prudencio said.
From birth, it takes at least one year before a rabbit can be butchered for its meat.
Aside from its meat as healthy food, the rabbit dung is good fertilizer when composted.
The research division is currently working on a concoction from rabbit dung as foliar fertilizer for vegetables.
Growing rabbits is not difficult. But you must focus on your purpose for doing so. It is hard to eat a rabbit pet and vice versa, it is almost impossible growing a pet to be butchered.
On this matter about rabbits, follow one in preference to the other. Follow your rabbit, not both. It would be too bad when growing rabbits you become someone who cannot decide.
It would be great if in doing so, it helps you make a clear decision, commits your focus and action to the path you have chosen. I am sure that either way, you will make a good contribution to quality living.
Have a good day!