The first question to ask when you wish to breed a rabbit is why \u2013 if it is because you love baby animals, then ask yourself what you will do with the adults, if you want your children to experience baby animals, buy some at the pet shop or from a breeder \u2013 there are millions of unwanted animals born every year, unless you are willing to commit yourself to the care of the adult animal, do not breed.<\/p>\n
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The commercial rabbit breeder will have to keep a constant supply of young rabbits to replace older ones who\u00a0 have died.\u00a0 With an average life span of 3 \u2013 4 years, you are replacing between 1\/3 to \u00bc of the herd each year.\u00a0 The hobby breeder would have the same problem, only on a more difficult to assess scale, as the does do not breed well once they are over 2 years old.<\/p>\n
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The hobby breeder may have to take only two or three litter a year \u2013 luckily Angora\u2019s are notoriously poor breeders, so you will only get a maximum of five in a litter, three being more normal, however saying that, I have had litters of up to twelve from some does, all were raised and proved to be good wool and baby producers in their time!!<\/p>\n
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Commercially I basically breed my top 60% of the females born each year, they produce one litter of replacements, unless they are very good, that will be the only litter they have.\u00a0 Poorer does are not bred with, and I select 20 top bucks which are used in the breeding to keep the gene pool as wide as possible \u2013 one does not want to lose good traits that may have missed or skipped a generation.\u00a0 The balance of the non breeding rabbits and the older rabbits are kept purely for wool production.<\/p>\n
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As a hobby breeder, you will be keeping as many rabbits as one person can reasonably care for, plus process all their wool.\u00a0 The processing of the wool is the limiting factor, as you have to personally harvest, process and manufacture from the wool.\u00a0 When I started with rabbits I found 30 to be my breakeven point.\u00a0 The care of the rabbits was not the problem, the harvesting and processing was what became impossible to stay ahead of.\u00a0 If that is all you do, you could possibly get up to 50 on your own, but if you have an outside work interest and a family to care for, you will find that neglect starts creeping in \u2013 the worst is that you will in time lose all interest in what you are doing as it stops being a pleasure and becomes a pressure.<\/p>\n
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On a commercial scale, where all you do is the care and harvesting, one person could look after and harvest about 250 – 300 rabbits –\u00a0 this would give about 25 – 35kg per harvest or about 80 – 90 kg per year, taking into account that the wool from under 8 month rabbits is too soft to use, and older rabbits drop in production, any breeding does will also miss a harvest.\u00a0 Although in theory you will expect someone to spin about 1kg of wool per week, this also is nearer to 400g per week, as the wool must be plied and moth-proofed as well, so you are looking at three to four full time handspinners to process that wool for manufacturing.\u00a0 Then you yourself will still need to send out some of the manufacturing to outside workers, you are probably looking at about 8 people to run a 300 angora rabbitry.\u00a0 Of course as you go bigger your ratio will drop, and it could become more viable as long as you have a market for the product.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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