What is your market? Live rabbits, breeding stock, selling to a processor, pet food, etc?
Your markets can and will have different pricing. As Michaeil pointed out processors will pay a set amount. Most pay more for fryers and less for roasters.
Before you can figure out your pricing, if not selling to a processor you need to run some numbers. Normally it takes 4 lbs of feed for a 1 lb weight gain in a rabbit. I am talking meat rabbits here. You need to figure out how much your feed is per lb so you know what $$ it takes to grow them out. Also my time is money and I do figure in my labor also as well as electric, etc.
So for me as an example a 50 lb bag of food is $8.72 divide that by 50 so my cost of food is .1744 per lb. I will rouund this to .18 lb so in order to get a 5 lb rabbit it will take 20 lbs of feed or $3.60 per rabbit. Now this is not counting the breeing stock that also needs food so you need to figure in the costs here as well. This will vary depending on how many rabbits you have. I figure in about 1/2 lb day [again this will vary depending on does nursing litters,etc.] For 100 rabbits [breeding stock] I use 50 lbs per day. If I take the $8.72 per day. $8.72x7days=$61.04 per week [feed cost] and multiply this by 8 weeks [I am using 8 weeks as a figure for growing out a fryer, my fryers are 5 lbs at 8 weeks but if you have slower rabbits this might be 10 or even 12 weeks] $61.04x 8=$488.32. Divide this by the rabbits you have so in my case 100=$4.88 per rabbit in feed for an 8 week period.
I add the $3.60 fryer feed cost and then calculate a percentage of the breeding stock feed. I figure my does normally produce [low end] 8 kits per litter so I will take the $4.88 and divide it by 8 so this comes to .61 and this is what I figure in additional feed costs for the fryers so bottom line feed alone will cost about $4.21.
As you can see not a lot of profit in rabbits so you need to watch costs. That being said though, you can make aprofit but have to have good management. You need to cull HARD. It costs more to feed a bad rabbit then a good one so if you have marginal breeding stock that is only raising a few kits you are loosing money. I do not keep stock that can not raise at least 8 kits minimum.
Also if you are dressing the rabbits you have weight loss from the hide, guts etc. My markets are pet food so I have less of a loss then a processor that sellds for human consumption as we use the organs and head as well. I expect about 30% loss from hide, intestine and stomach. The ears and feet are saved to make dehydrated dog and cat treats. So this live 5 lb rabbit dressed for dog food is now 3.5 lbs. I sell dressed rabbit for $2.39 lb so for 3.5 lb that would be $8.36 minus $4.21 [feed]=$4.15 profit BUT WAIT. Before everyone starts seeing dollar signs this is unrealistic because now the other costs start coming into play. MY electric bill runs $500 per month 90% of this is business related as I have commercial freezers running. I also am to the point where I could not keep up by myself so now I am paying an employee so now I have workers comp insurance, business taxes, etc. Dont forget to figure in your pacakaging materials. My bags run .04 each. They add up. Also the equipment that is needed. I have 2 grinders 1 is a 10 h.p the other 5 h.p which cost thousands. The freezers [walk in] also thousands. These also run on 3 phase electric and I had to purchase a converter to run the equipment so again THOUSANDS. Also I euthanize the rabbits with co2 which is $106.00 per tank. [I also use co2 to make dry ice for shipping] My co2 cost runs me about $700 per month.
There are many people that will try to undercut my pricing. I try to be fair but bottom line is that this is a business so I have to make a profit or it wont be a business for long. Most people that start advertising really low prices on rabbits [dressed] have never ran the numbers and I know darn well that this is not competion as they will loose big time and will be out of business very soon.
Any one who is interested in raising rabbits for a living needs to keep good records.
This can be done as I am living proof. But it is not a get rich quick thing and will require lots of hard work. I mean HARD WORK.
I have developed this business because I do what I say, believe costumer service should always be 100% and supply what I say when I say I am going to do it. Because of this I have many loyal customers. The worst thing in any business is not being able to consistently supply a product.
Hope this gives everyone some food for thought.
