Roman Pudyshev and his wife Anna always wanted to run their own business. The idea to engage in rabbit breeding came in 2010. The rabbit farm changed its "registration" over 12 years - one settled in the village of Sambek, Neklinovsky district, Rostov region. Now the livestock numbers about 36 thousand individuals. The Pudyshevs are promoting their own brand - "Tasty Rabbit", meat can be bought in a popular fast food delivery service, local retail chains, and soon it will appear in chain hypermarkets. Support us https://sobe.ru/na/agrobookru We meet with Roman Pudyshev at the farm building. Talking about the beginning of the business, about the repair and restoration of buildings, he recalls the words of Inga Sysoeva, a journalist from the Krestyanin Publishing House, who interviewed him in 2012. She did not believe that the farm could be restored on their own. Ten years later, all the buildings are functioning properly, and the slaughterhouse building has been reconstructed. In the building where the parent stock lives in cages and the rabbits are raised, the walls are painted white, and at the entrance there is a music center with a radio playing — thanks to the background music, the rabbits are not afraid of voices and noise. Roman Pudyshev is the only farmer in the Rostov region who is engaged in industrial rabbit breeding. The idea came to him... thanks to turkey. In 2010, when he was a representative of the Eurodon company, he noticed that there were not enough other farm products on the shelves. — Having studied the assortment, we settled on rabbit meat. Products made from rabbit meat will be the closest to the culture of consuming farm products and the most accessible, — the farmer explains. In 2011, the first experimental building was launched, which was located in Morskoy Chulek. — There, we fully tested the technology, from home breeding to professional keeping of rabbits, tested the technology of artificial insemination, preserving the livestock after birth. And when we went beyond the local markets, we faced the fact that we needed a certification process. We realized that we couldn’t get by with just one farm building. We needed to build a slaughterhouse, — our interlocutor recalls. According to Russian law, it was not allowed to build a slaughterhouse next to an existing building; ideally, it was necessary to look for a ready-made solution. For example, to buy a farm building that had already been built in accordance with all standards. In 2012, the rabbit breeder contacted the district administration, and they advised him to contact the Kolos agricultural production cooperative, which was selling a farm in the Neklinovsky district. It had previously housed pigs. The buildings themselves were in poor condition, but among them there was a slaughterhouse registered in accordance with all the rules. It was very difficult to launch a rabbit breeding enterprise, as the farmer admits, but everything was overcome. — That same year, a program to help beginning farmers and family livestock farms was launched. Then I won this grant, and the entire grant amount went to purchasing the land and buildings that I was interested in. Then I took advantage of the program to help family livestock farms. The funds were spent on purchasing highly productive imported rabbit breeds. In 2022, with the assistance of the Competence Center, I received another grant for the development of a family livestock farm. In total, I received three grants, says Roman Pudyshev. The farm first introduced the Italian and then the French technology of intensive rabbit keeping. New heads are imported once every 1.5 years. The French hybrid Hicol was chosen due to its high productivity indicators. Among them are the rapid maturation of rabbits, as well as recovery after childbirth. This makes it possible to cover the female 7-10 days after childbirth. That is, the rabbit can still feed the babies, but at the same time already carry new offspring. In addition, the breed is distinguished by high milk yield, compared to other popular breeds, such as the White Giant, Californian. The farm is already in its fifth generation of rabbits. Read the full article https://agrobook.ru/blog/user/katerin...