Rabbit Rearing In Uganda: Learning From Past Mistakes

The business of rearing rabbits has a long, winding history in Uganda. Rabbits were first introduced to the country by Catholic missionaries in the 1870s. In the 1990s, rabbits were hailed by enthusiasts as a quick ticket out of poverty, triggering what many dub the “Rabbit Craze” (Lukefahr, 1998). Encouraged by these claims, many Ugandans turned to rabbit rearing as a get-rich-quick scheme.

The shining bubble around rabbits popped, however, when breeders and feed suppliers raised their prices. This caused the price of rabbit meat to surpass beef and chicken, quickly drying up the already overestimated market. While experts were skeptical about the 1990s hype, they remain adamant that rabbits do have real potential to become a popular source of protein and even lift Ugandan farmers out of poverty.

The Science Behind Rabbit Farming

Today, the rabbit industry faces the question of what role rabbits can play in building the agricultural sector of the Ugandan economy, and the challenge of avoiding the mistakes of the 1990s.

Beatrice Luzobe is a seasoned agriculturalist, specializing in animal science, who has continued to rear rabbits before and after the trends of the 1990s. Luzobe and her husband are the founders of Learn Enterprises Limited, an organization that connects farmers, provides training and has grown from only five rabbits for commercial use to a production capacity of 150 rabbits ready to slaughter per month.

“In the mid-nineties there was some kind of hype about rabbits in Uganda,” Luzobe said.”A rabbitry project was started at [Makere University], a food security project. They were intending to give poor families rabbits. Unfortunately, the goal wasn’t achieved. . . Somehow people started viewing rabbits as a very lucrative business and the rabbit meat became overpriced. The farmers who got rabbits never ate them; they kept them to sell them.”

Why The “Rabbit Craze” Fizzled

In the midst of the enthusiasm, Luzobe and other experts tried to warn farmers that they needed to aim for the mid-market, but they didn’t listen. Sure enough, the “Rabbit Craze” withered and the promises of quick prosperity went unrealized. According to Luzobe, there were several different reasons that led to the downfall of the rabbit industry.

“First, they never broke into the real market. A rabbit was selling at about 20,000 UGX ($7.63) which isn’t even a kilo of meat. Who will buy it, if beef is 8,000 ($3.05) and chicken is 15,000 ($5.73)? We also suspect that inbreeding broke in. Inbreeding is very serious among rabbits. One farmer would buy from another farmer, and there was no following if they were related rabbits or not.”

In 2009 Luzobe and her husband launched Learn Enterprises and in 2010 Luzobe left her career of working with NGOs to focus on the project.

“We had done rabbitry on a subsistence scale, but we decided to start rabbitry on a larger scale. We said, ‘Let’s use the 1990s challenges as lessons learned,'” Luzobe recounted.

Although rabbits didn’t live up to the 1990s hype, Luzobe is not the only one that believes that there are still many benefits that rabbit rearing offers to small-scale Ugandan farmers.

Bosco Kabagambe is the managing director of Kansanga Urban Farmers. Along with his wife Annette and his brother Nicholas, he owns a small farm and raises a variety of animals and crops. Kabagambe has raised rabbits his entire life, and is passionate about encouraging people on the local level to rear rabbits as well.

Finding a Rabbit Meat Target Market

“We encourage people to rear rabbits for income, because there are many benefits that rabbits offer. They are easy to rear compared to other animals, and the rate of production is high as they quickly multiply. The food that rabbits eat is readily available, and the project can be started quickly,” Kabagambe explained.

“Rabbit meat is grouped as a white meat, which is healthier, and rabbits provide natural manures for farmers,” Kabagambe added. Kabagambe’s goal is to encourage more local farmers to rear rabbits so that, as a group, they can meet the demands of the market.

While Kabagambe is generally more optimistic than Luzobe, Luzobe echoed Kabagambe’s confidence in the market. Before launching their commercial rabbitry, Learn Enterprises conducted a market survey for rabbit meat. “The market survey had informed us that there was a market, but no supply . . . I’m not worried about the market,” Luzobe stated.

Armed with the knowledge that there is a market, and understanding the many benefits of rabbit rearing, prospective rabbits farmers need to tame their excitement and intentionally avoid the pitfalls of the 1990s.

According to Luzobe, the first major pitfall was that people who jumped into rabbit rearing never treated the endeavor as a business.

“People had become very crazy about it, and had never treated it as a business. Most people think you don’t need to invest. I’ve told farmers who come for the training that anything you view as a business, you invest in as a business,” Luzobe said.

Investing in Prospects 

The first investment prospective farmers need to make is in educating themselves. According to Luzobe, many Ugandans underestimate the difficulty of raising rabbits.

“Farmers here will go into anything, even when they’re not qualified. Someone can talk about going into poultry when they don’t even know what the bird looks like!” Luzobe laughed. “People don’t expect challenges. We want people to know what it takes and to go in when they’re ready. Rabbitry is a bit more tedious than poultry. Record-keeping is very important — you need to follow each animal . . . Since rabbitry has never been truly done on a commercial level, it can be difficult to get vets who can treat sick rabbits, who know how to deal with the diseases rabbits get.”

In 2013 Learn Enterprises published a “Simplified Guide to Rabbit Farmers” in an effort to give potential farmers the information they need. In the preface, Dr. Samuel Luzobe writes, “There has existed a common belief about rabbits in Uganda; they multiply very fast with the only input being grass. If this were true, how come they have not filled the entire country since they were introduced in the 1870s? . . . What has lacked are simple ‘how-to’ techniques and tips that would help us to harness the rabbit’s potential prolificity into a practical reality.”

While Kabagambe spends a lot of time and energy encouraging people to start rearing rabbits, he also articulated the need for workshops, pamphlets, and seminars to share information. “Every Saturday people come in and we train them at the local level,” Kabagambe explained. “Our goal is to make this farm a training and demonstration farm.”

Another major pitfall the rabbit industry must avoid is misunderstanding the market. Learn Enterprises is determined to avoid this mistake.

“[In the 1990s], people had overpriced the product. We did a market survey to find out how exactly to deal with this. Some things we learned, we already knew. We knew we were in the mid-market, and that we were in the white meat market. The closest meat is chicken, so we looked at the price of chicken, how it is sold, how it is packed. We looked at how much it would take to pack rabbit meat to sell in supermarkets,” Luzobe said.

Today, Learn Enterprises processes and packages their own rabbit meat, selling to several supermarkets and restaurants in Kampala.

The market for rabbit meat appears to be the least of Luzobe’s worries. In general, Luzobe argues that rabbit farmers should focus on production rather than sensitizing the market at this point, since there is still so much work to be done before bringing rabbit meat to the market. However, since rabbit meat is still at a higher price than other meat, the target market for Learn Enterprises is middle-class Ugandans.

“We’re marketing rabbit meat as healthy meat. It’s white meat, it’s lean meat, and has less fat than other meats. It has higher protein, and it is a tender meat that can be cooked like chicken,” Luzobe said. For the second year in a row, Learn Enterprises roasted meat at an agricultural show in Jinja to entice people to try their product.

Kabagambe’s target market is aimed at lower income Ugandan families who will buy a rabbit for slaughter rather than purchase packed meat in the supermarket. According to Kabagambe, local people who aren’t used to rabbit meat can have negative attitudes, particularly amongst older Ugandans. In order to overcome any misconceptions, Kabagambe utilizes creative marketing strategies.

“I give a family one free rabbit to eat,” Kabagambe explained. “They come back and ask for two more for rearing.”

In order for rabbitry to grow as an industry, Luzobe and other experts argue that major standards need to be put in place. Since fresh meat is a sensitive product, standards of quality are imperative. Learn Enterprises has organized a consortium of farmers and individual companies in an effort to lobby government as a collective voice. Organizing breeding at a national level and putting restrictions on feed quality are some of the issues that Luzobe hopes the consortium will be able to raise.

“Our vision is to increase the availability of rabbit meat in Uganda,” Luzobe said. “To have rabbit meat be as available as any other meat.”

Only time will tell if rabbits will live up to their potential to be a regular part of Ugandans’ diets, both for high and low income households. Academic experts and veterans of the rabbit industry, such as Luzobe, are trying to build a solid foundation for long-term sustainable growth.