Rabbit farming for meat purposes

By A. Zotte. 2014

112 citations recorded by the source corpus.

By current zoological classification, the order Lagomorpha is split into two large families: the Ochotonidae and Leporidae. Rabbits and hares are members of the Leporidae family. The taxonomic classification of the Leporidae proposed by Wilson and Reeder (1993) has been accepted as divided into 11 genera, one of which, the genus Sylvilagus, deserves special mention due to the widespread presence throughout the North American continent of its 13 species (known as the cottontail, among which is Sylvilagus floridanus, known in Europe as the “mini-hare”). Two members of the family are the genus Lepus, with its 30 species of hares originally from the Old World, and the genus Oryctolagus, also originally from Europe, which has only one species, Oryctolagus cuniculus, or the European rabbit. The three genera (Figure 1) differ in the number of chromosomes (Sylvilagus 2n = 42; Lepus 2n = 48; Oryctolagus 2n = 44), so crossmatings are infertile and do not generate crossbreeds (Robinson et al., 2002). Members of the order Lagomorpha are indigenous to every corner of the globe except for Antarctica, Madagascar, a few Indonesian regions, and the southern part of South America. They were only recently brought to New Zealand and Australia by humans. The origins of the European rabbit are difficult to pinpoint with precision due to the fragility of its bones (Dawson, 1967). Leporidae remains have been unearthed in Eocene era strata (from 37 to 53 million years ago) in northern Spain, whereas rabbits with structures similar to the species of today lived throughout Europe in Pre-Pleistocene (1 to 2 million years ago) times but went extinct during the Würm Glacial Period (from 20,000 to 75,000 years ago) everywhere with exception of those rabbits living in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France (Gibb, 1990). The oldest fossils of O. cuniculus (from 300,000 to 600,000 years ago) indicate that the original range of the rabbit was restricted to the Iberian Peninsula and the south of France up to river Loire (Branco et al., 2000). The first people to provide written testimony of the rabbit and its presence in the Iberian Peninsula were the Phoenicians (1100 BC), who named the area “I-Sephan-im” (Land of Rabbits), subsequently Latinized as “Hispania.” From Spain, the Phoenicians began trading rabbits along the entire Mediterranean coastline. The Greeks, Aristotle in particular, praised the delicacy of their meat. Ample written testimony to the rabbit is also provided by the Romans (Zoccarato, 2008). The prolificacy of the rabbit has long been a well-known fact: evidence remains of a petition submitted by the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands and the Isle of Lipari to the Emperor Augustus pleading with him to order his legions to free their lands invaded by these animals, which had proliferated from one pair in numbers sufficient to wreak enormous damage on their crops and harvests (Licciardelli and Cortese, 1962). For gastronomic and economic reasons, the Romans began rearing rabbits in special fenced areas, restricting the area of diffusion to the Iberian Peninsula, however. Starting from the 9th century AD, the rabbit (both wild and domesticated) began spreading to other European regions. Despite their expansion from the area of origin, rabbits were rare and only infrequently reared in the nations to which they had recently come, primarily due to scarce knowledge of their habits and nutritional and environmental needs (Licciardelli and Cortese, 1962). In 1309, in England, a rabbit had the same market value as a pig (Licciardelli and Cortese, 1962). British colonial expansion was responsible for a new wave of diffusion of the rabbit to many islands and continents, primarily because rabbits were raised aboard ships as food for the crews.

Subfields: Animal Science and Zoology, Plant Science

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