Texas professor teaches rabbit farming in Haiti

By LAKENDRA LEWIS, Corpus Christi Caller-Times

ADVANCE FOR SUNDAY DEC. 9 - In this Nov. 14, 2012 photo, a pair of cross bread rabbits sit in their cage at Texas A&M University-Kingsville in Kingsville, Texas. The research rabbits are bread from the New Zealand white rabbit, and can withstand the hot South Texas summers, making them ideal for raising, selling and consuming in developing coutries.   MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT; TV OUT Photo: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Michael Zamora / AP

ADVANCE FOR SUNDAY DEC. 9 – In this Nov. 14, 2012 photo, a pair of cross bread rabbits sit in their cage at Texas A&M University-Kingsville in Kingsville, Texas. The research rabbits are bread from the New Zealand white rabbit, and can withstand the hot South Texas summers, making them ideal for raising, selling and consuming in developing coutries. MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT; TV OUT Photo: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Michael Zamora / AP

KINGSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Steven Lukefahr has always had a fascination with rabbits.

It’s a passion he’s fueled since he was a little boy raising the long eared furry creatures in his backyard, and one he is now using to aid impoverished families by training them to raise their own rabbits.

Lukefahr, a regents’ professor of animal science at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, recently traveled to the 10th World Rabbit Congress in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, a tourist city on the Red Sea, where he presented the latest results of a rabbit project development he implemented in Haiti after that country’s catastrophic earthquake in 2010.

The project’s aim is to help numerous impoverished residents in Haiti — the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere — by training them to build their own rabbit hutches and raise rabbits as a source of meat and extra income for families, many of whom still live in tent cities.

Many Haitians moved to rural areas after the earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000, deeming it safer than living in cities, Lukefahr said. Most of the men stayed behind in the cities to work, while the women and children moved to the country with little to eat.

“The project in Haiti is exploding right now,” said Lukefahr, who currently serves as the World Rabbit Science Association‘s general secretary for developing countries. “We started with 100 families in the beginning and now we have grown to thousands each month who are adopting rabbit production, and they realize the benefit in just a few months.”

Lukefahr said farmers have grown to embrace the rabbit projects and residents have become more willing to raise rabbits and consume the meat on a regular basis. To date, Haiti’s regions have more than 1,700 rabbit producers, with a 142 percent increase in the number of breeding rabbits, according to a university news release.

The average increase in monthly income from rabbit sales in the last two and half years is $19.55 per family, Lukefahr reported in his presentation, with some earning more than $200 a month from sales.

“Families can recover faster with a species like rabbits, which can be harvested at an early age and eats grass and garden wastes,” Lukefahr said, adding that rabbits are becoming popular here and abroad as a low-cost food source. “A cow or a goat has to be older when you harvest them and they don’t produce much offspring, and when you have an emergency like the earthquake in Haiti you need something that can produce food fast.”

An internationally known rabbit expert, author and former president of the World Rabbit Science Association, Lukefahr has traveled to more than 30 countries implementing and evaluating ongoing rabbit projects. He spent two weeks in Haiti in the summer of 2010 training students, professionals and local residents to develop the rabbit project there as part of the USAID Partners of the Americas Farmer to Farmer program.

Lukefahr also oversees the rabbit research program at the university that involves the breeding and care of 300 rabbits, and conducts research on sweet potatoes, the leaves and vines of which are gleaned from plants and fed to the rabbits as an healthy, economical alternative to commercial pellets.

“There is virtually no cost in feeding the sweet potato forage to rabbits, making it a good option for farmers with rabbit projects in developing countries, as well as for families in the U.S. with gardens,” said Lukefahr, who was rabbit superintendent for the Kleberg-Kenedy County Junior Livestock Show for 10 years.

Greta Schuster, an associate professor of agriculture at the university who assisted Lukefahr in gathering his research for Egypt and helps plant, fertilize and grow the sweet potatoes, said students gets hands-on experience in every aspect of the research.

“They’re working and seeing the end result of their endeavors, watering and controlling the weeds, learning what farmers do,” Schuster said. “It’s not just putting (a sweet potato) in the ground. It’s a lot of work to keep the rabbits clean and healthy.”

Share:

Author: `