I have been keeping 10 rabbits for 3months now in Nyeri on commercial TEST purposes. My thinking changed on 30th April when I met a gentleman on a rabbit site visit we attended at Kasarani through introduction by his nephew who is my friend.
The guy has about 30 HUGE HUGE rabbits (6-7Kgs) at Kasarani and some more at Red Hill. After seeing his and talking to him I decided to go into rabbit farming commercially now, starting with a few. I’m currently gathering funds to build proper cages for them back in Nyeri and buy new breeding stock from him. The guy sells the mature ones for meat at between 6,500sh-8,000sh and the small ones (starters) for 2,500sh.
I was very skeptical about rabbit farming since I had read this thread by Djinn last year. So I posed some of the questions to him.
Question: How come everyone is selling breeding stock and nobody is selling the meat at any restaurant I know of?
Reply: He went to Safari Park some months ago and asked if he could supply them. They were ok with the idea and suggested that they could include it in the menu. For it to be included, they need to have a contract with him to supply 20rabbits/week for starters. So guy wondered where he would get 20rabbits/week considering the number he had. What if he was sued for breach of contract? In short,….. nobody has the numbers to supply on regular basis. If for example Kosewe added it to their menu and guys started flocking to buy 100rabbits/week…..where would he get supply after 2months? He also told me that the Chinese Gvt had placed an order for 40tonnes of rabbit meat. The Ministry of Livestock & Kenya Rabbit Breeders Association held a meeting and could only come up with 10tonnes.
In conclusion, he told me that the market in Kenya was too young for anyone to start talking about meat supply. We first need enough rabbits so that if a big hotel in Nairobi e.g Kosewe told you to supply 300rabbits/week you’d manage to do it. He is working with a group of 20women in Kiambu through donor funding to rear rabbits. The same donors are also taking the initiative to Nyeri, Embu areas etc to create a steady supply for meat & rabbit fur which is used in the fashion industry especially in China.
I hear frozen rabbit meat is also being sold at Naivas, maybe someone could confirm. A friend of mine who accompanied me for the visit also sold some 34 of them to Carnivore 3 months ago.
I could have been “pyrabbited”…….but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. I see it as following in the footsteps of Kenchic & Farmers Choice in the early 90s. I will go into it still on commercial test basis. Maybe I can report back here next year and see if I was really “pyrabbited”.
I also came across the following links this morning and some could be useful:
http://in2eastafrica.net...riving-family-business/
http://www.standardmedia...7&catid=259&a=1
http://www.globetree.org/africa/rabbit-net/