FAQ

Live rabbits are mostly sold through OLX.uz, birbir.uz, Telegram groups and local livestock markets; selling live breeding stock is much simpler than selling meat, but ask the district veterinary station whether you need veterinary papers. Groups have far more sellers than buyers, so make listings specific: breed, age, sex, weight, vaccination status, photos of the parents and location. Healthy, well-grown and honestly described rabbits sell faster and bring buyers back. Do not sell rabbits from a farm with an ongoing disease outbreak, because that spreads it to other areas.

If possible, pay only after you have seen the rabbit yourself and held it. When buying from far away, ask for a video with a note showing today’s date, and do not send a stranger the full amount in advance. Claims such as pure bloodline or champion are hard to verify, so ask for photos and video of the parents and of kits sold earlier. Ask people you know in the groups about the seller, and be careful when the price is suspiciously low.

Demand for rabbit meat in Uzbekistan is still small and mostly in big cities: families with babies or allergies, people on diets, and some restaurants and delivery kitchens. Supermarkets usually do not buy the small, irregular volumes a small farm produces. Before building a big farm, test demand by trying to sell 10–15 rabbits to people you know and through Telegram. Count on a large company buying from you only with a written contract, not a verbal promise.

It depends mainly on how you sell and on how many kits per doe survive to sale. Feed is the main cost: when meat rabbits are sold live at low prices, feed can eat up most of the income. The biggest gains come from a balanced home feed mix instead of expensive bought pellets, fewer kit deaths, and recording every cost and sale. Do not trust ads promising easy, cheap, high profits; start small and work out the numbers yourself.

Slaughtering at home for your own family is fine, but under veterinary law meat for sale must come from a specialized slaughter facility, with veterinary inspection before and after slaughter and veterinary-sanitary documents. At a market, meat can only be sold from an equipped meat stall after a check by the market’s veterinary laboratory. Selling live rabbits is much simpler, which is why small farms usually sell live. Rules change, so ask the district veterinary station about the nearest approved slaughter point and the documents you need.

In winter kindling, the nest and the mother matter more than the temperature: a doe that builds a good nest and pulls plenty of fur keeps her kits alive even in frost. Kits usually freeze from below, so put at least 1 cm of foam board, or wood shavings between two layers of cardboard, under the nest box floor, add 15–20 cm of dry hay or straw on top, and keep drafts out. A nursing doe’s water must not freeze, so top it up with warm water several times a day. Warm a chilled kit gradually, for example 5–10 minutes in water no hotter than 38 °C with the head kept out, dry it well and return it to the nest; do not use heat lamps in a cage full of hay because of the fire risk. To keep kindling away from the coldest weeks, avoid mating does from mid-November to early December.

Rabbits cannot sweat and cope badly with heat above 28–30 °C: bucks become temporarily infertile and take 8–10 weeks to recover, fewer does get pregnant, and more kits die. Keep the rabbitry in deep shade, insulate the roof from the sun, point fans along the cages rather than straight at the rabbits, give cool clean water, and on the hottest days put frozen water bottles in the cages. Clipping the bucks’ fur in late May helps them tolerate heat. Signs of heatstroke are fast breathing, lying stretched out and hot ears: move the rabbit to a cool place at once, wet its ears with cool (not ice-cold) water, and contact a vet.