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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

A new simplified performance referencing system adapted to organic rabbit farming

Résumé

A referencing system to collect and analyse performances of French organic rabbit farms was created using an Excel sheet. Performances of reproduction were compilated on 6 farms over 3 years of production (2015-2017). Does are housed in movable cage on pasture or in individual paddock, the livestock size averages 33 does. The productive time of a doe averaged 374 d. and was variable (75%). Female mortality averaged 17% over the period, while culling reached 10%. With 4.8 matings, 2.7 parturitions per female/year were obtained (60% fertility rate), for a total of 21.6 rabbits born alive and 16.7 weaned (26% mortality from birth to weaning). The yearly turnover of a full-time rabbit farmer (80 females) would potentially be around 26.3k€/year. The database is actually extending to a larger number of farms, thanks to the deployment of a smartphone application (GAELA), that enable a management assistance of the rabbit farm and data collection, synchronized to a national securised database. Introduction: Organic rabbit farming (ORF) is still a niche market in France, but the consumer demand exceeds the supply from about fifty farmers. ORF French specifications contains several rules, such grazing, natural breeding, slaughter from 100 days of age (photo 1). In conventional rabbit farming, the referencing of breeding performance in a national database has been practiced for more than 30 years. This allow identifying the technical progress or difficulties of rabbit farms, and to guide development and research efforts. In independent or organic rabbit farming there is no performance benchmarking. This lack of technical references is an obstacle to the development of the "alternative" rabbit sector, since this information allows farmers and supervisors to establish, organise and size an installation project. Our work (CUNIPAT project) thus aims to develop a computer tool to build a first referencing system for ORF Material and methods: The study belongs to the CUNIPAT project (INRA-ITAB), and was carried out in 3 steps: selection of farms, development of an Excel application and data collection from farms, and finally compilation and analysis of performance data. From a first list of organic rabbit farms (Roinsard et al., 2016), 6 were selected ccording to several criteria: organic certification, located in France, 3 years of performances saved, voluntair to participate to the study. The second step consisted in developing a computer tool, based on the Excel software, easy to use (called RTS2CuniBio), to collect technical data from the breeding books of the 6 breeders. RTS2CuniBio allows compiling data from several farms and over a flexible period of time (1 month to several years); for instance we have selected a 3 years period (1/01/2015 to 31/12/2017) on 6 farms. Our analysis was restricted to reproductive performances (Table 1). The Excel application is organized into 8 sheets: a menu to easily access the other sheets; a sheet for farm description; a "breeding" sheet listing females and males and their performances (Figure 1); a "reproduction" sheet to track matings, palpation, births and weanings; a "fattening" sheet to track batches that arrive and leave fattening; a "feedlot management" sheet to monitor crawl spaces and their occupancy rates; a "technical performance" sheet, which automatically calculates various indicators (Table 1) for a flexible period of time; and finally a "data quality" sheet which allows an analysis of the validity and reliability of the data (number, quality, etc.)). Check formulas have been added to sort and correct any wrong data (e. g. input error on delivery dates, or mating dates, etc.). This Excel spreadsheet (with instructions) is available on request from the authors.
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Dates et versions

hal-03644561 , version 1 (19-04-2022)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03644561 , version 1

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Thierry Gidenne, Davi Savietto, Laurence Lamothe, Antoine Roinsard. A new simplified performance referencing system adapted to organic rabbit farming. 20th Organic World Congress, Sep 2021, Rennes, France. ⟨hal-03644561⟩
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