By Beverly Bizeki
Zimbabwe Commercial Rabbit Breeders Association (ZICORBA) trained 100 rabbit farmers in Masvingo on April 13 at Francis Aphiri Primary School in Mucheke as part of its national programme to promote local farmers to venture into commercial farming.
ZICORBA National Organizing Secretary and Masvingo Coordinator Joyce Tamirepi said the programme which is funded by the Chinese Embassy was fuelled by the inadequacy of rabbit meat at commercial scale in the country as most farmers were limited to backyard farming.
“As ZICORBA we have noted the inadequacy of rabbit meat in the market and we are failing to meet demand. The challenge is that most farmers are not into commercial farming but are rather backyard farmers with a little know how on rabbit farming for commercial purposes.
“The programme is aimed at grooming farmers that can venture into commercial farming hence the training on management, housing, breeding and feeding of rabbits,” said Tamirepi.
National Training and Technical Advisor Garisanai Mudzingwa said the shortages were linked to lack of knowledge on commercial farming which has led to high mortality in kits.
“There was a high mortality for kits so we have also been teaching them on how to manage the kits and to select breeding stock. The mortality rate of kits reached about 70 percent previously and this was because most farmers could not identify breeds, diseases and maintain feeding programmes so we are here to teach them to maintain feeding programs and maintenance of the rabbits.
“Most farmers assume that rabbits can be fed anything so we are introducing them to commercial feeds and proper housing.
“Some rabbits available from these backyard farmers do not meet standard weight for commercialization. We were also teaching farmers on the available markets for rabbits. Currently there is an abattoir in Harare that requires 3500 rabbits for slaughtering for every eight hour shift and we cannot meet the demand hence the need to rope in more commercial farmers,” said Mudzingwa.
Apart from the trainings, Mudzingwa said the organisation had ventured into feed formulation programmes for farmers to lower the costs of production by almost 50 percent. There is also a programme by one of the sister companies which is giving out pure breed stocks to farmers for startups although the farmer is expected to pass on the rabbit to the next farmer after breeding as a way to assist farmers into commercial farming
One farmer who attended the training workshop, Tariro Bwerinofa said the major challenge they were facing was shortages of feeding stock for the rabbits.
“Very few people are into rabbit farming and this has a negative impact on finding rabbit stock feeds in shops, you can go for weeks without finding the feeds. We also have challenges in finding hay for the rabbits and because we do not have knowledge on formulating such.
“In Masvingo we also have challenges in accessing standard pre manufactured cages for the rabbits and we are forced to use cages used for housing broilers which is not ideal for commercial rabbit farming. We are glad that ZICORBA has conducted this training because we have gained some knowledge on getting access to commercial markets,” said Bwerinofa.
The programme is targeting to have at least 3000 farmers ready for commercial farming by the end of the year.
