Some years ago, rabbit keeping was a children’s activity, with many keeping the animals as pets.
However, with most people embracing rabbit meat and more opportunities arising from the animal’s by-products, farmers are now making good money from rabbits.
Stanley Rono is one such a farmer. For many years, he was struggling with maize at his semi-arid home in Siongiroi, Bomet until he heard of rabbit urine fertiliser.
Still undecided on when to start keeping rabbits, Kenya Com Rabbit Consortium Ltd (KCRC), which makes the fertiliser, set up a small factory near his home.
“I did not need any more convincing that I should start keeping rabbits. I knew I would get money from the animal’s meat, fur, manure and urine,” says Rono, who bought his first brood of 40 rabbits in December last year from a neighbour at Sh200 each.
“To start selling urine, one needs at least 20 rabbits. I had the numbers since my rabbits had multiplied in the previous months to 100.”
He feeds them Black Jack and Pig Weed (Amaranthus). “When I feed them on grass, they produce less urine. Black Jack and Pig Weed are the best.”
He also sells each rabbit at Sh800 each to farmers and hotels. The last time he sold in June he earned over Sh50,000. Robinson Runyenje, the director of KCRC, says they picked on rabbits because they are easy to keep and to encourage farmers to use the organic urine fertiliser for planting.
“The fertiliser is made from a mixture of the rabbit urine and compost manure made from cow dung, wood ash, and foliage from plants. The mixture is put in a special digester and what comes out is an organic fertiliser called Rabbit Urine Extra.”
Rabbit Urine Extra contains nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium as well as several macro-nutrients that are important in keeping plants healthy,” Runyenje says.
The company’s coordinator in Bomet, Moses Langat, says they have registered more than 600 members who currently have over 17,000 rabbits.
To tap rabbit’s urine, a hutch is constructed in such a way that the urine seeps through the wire mesh into corrugated plastic sheets, to the gutter and finally into a bucket.
“It takes three to four rabbits to collect a litre of urine per day,” says Agnes Sorim, the co-ordinating director of KCRC.
The liquid fertiliser, which is sold at Sh650 per litre, is produced through an organic process that takes one-and-a-half months.
Evans Kiplagat, a livestock production officer, encourages farmers to get into rabbit rearing.
“The bunnies reproduce very fast thus multiplying one’s stock is easy. One then gets fur, skin, meat and urine. Not many animals offer such high returns.”
A Kenya Agricultural Research Institute study shows that rabbit urine is a concentrated liquid manure rich in macronutrients for plants and soil.
Reports by Andrew Mibei, Magdaline Wanja and Caroline Chebet
