KENDO: Come with cans to collect rabbit urine

A lone rabbit breeder is breaching the borders of ingenuity, even as his neighbours laugh at his latest fad - harvesting urine from the cat-like animal, for a market he is yet to find.

The neighbours tell the farmer no one they know has grown wealth by rearing chicken, leave alone keeping rabbits to harvest their urine. They say rabbits look like cats. They are not interested in their urine, excreta, fur, meat or milk.

The neighbours also have disdain for pigs. They say pigs are loaded with worms because they forage in filth. 

The farmer’s spiritual neighbours recall Jesus cast demons, which commandeered swine, and then drowned, into the sea. Chickens eat everything, including snakes. But would you stop eating chicken because they eat frogs?

Hillary Ng’weno Ogonda, the rabbit farmer of Kibiri ward, Homa Bay county, is determined to win converts for rabbit breeding. He is contemplating promoting a rabbit value chain.

The man got the rabbit farming idea from a local FM radio programme. Tuning in when the expert was concluding his presentation, he heard the man extol the multiplier value of rabbits.

The farmer started rearing rabbits before getting contacts of the man who was promoting the animals on Ramogi FM radio station. Attempts to find the rabbit marketer, through the radio station, have not succeeded.

Every part of the rabbit, the expert was saying, has value: the urine is a fertiliser and a good organic pesticide. Purse, necklace, bracelet, handbag, belt and some shoe-markers have a value attached to rabbit fur and hides. 

Rabbit waste when composed makes good manure. Rabbit meat is a delicacy in classy restaurants. When this market is established, the farmer says, rabbit breeding is a silver bullet that fights poverty and pollution at once.

Yet no neighbour of the breeder has been converted to the rare rabbit rearing. They consider the lone rabbit breeder a busybody without direction in his income-generating ventures. The man rears rabbits, and harvests their urine for a reluctant market.

A farmer, whose contact he does not have, occasionally sends a broker to collect rabbit urine. This contact has bought rabbit urine from him three times. He uses the urine as a pesticide in his pears farm in Machakos. 

Some consumers don’t buy fruits and vegetables sprayed with industrial pesticides. Rabbit urine fills the gap.

The first time the Nairobi customer bought 60 litres at Sh150 each. The next time a broker collected rabbit urine for the Nairobi contact at Sh130 per litre.  Another customer from Rongo, Migori county, buys at Sh130 per litre. Another customer from Rangwe, Homa Bay county, buys the same weight for Sh100.  

A local newspaper reported a Kiserian, Kajiado, rabbit breeder saying: “ I harvest 150 litres of rabbit urine every week, for production of organic fertiliser. This translates to Sh30,000 in sales per week.” She sells rabbit urine for Sh250 per litre.

The Kibiri farmer sells rabbit meat to a Kisumu restaurant for Sh900 per kilogramme. But he does not have the capacity to sustain the supply to other hotels serving rabbit meat. 

A mature rabbit weighs about 3kg. He would have to slaughter 20 rabbits each week to supply meat to restaurants. His neighbours are reluctant to take up rabbit rearing, so that they can sustain the Kisumu orders. 

The latest check showed the Kibiri rabbit breeder was stranded with about 500 litres of urine. But he won’t give up on harvesting the urine from his stock of 50 rabbits. The man traps the urine by spreading a polyethylene layer beneath the rabbit shed. It has taken him six months to harvest the unsold rabbit urine.

He is considering watermelon farming. Then he would not have to buy chemical sprays and fertiliser for his crop.

Rabbit urine contains a high concentration of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, which plants need to blossom. Rabbit urine is environment-friendly when used as fertiliser. But it will take many farmers to rare rabbits for the fertiliser value of its urine to be exploited in a wider scale. 

One litre of fresh rabbit urine is mixed with 20 litres of water for use as pesticide and foliage. Raw rabbit urine has to be diluted with water to reduce its acidity. 

The Kibiri farmer is seeking converts for a rabbit breeders’ union to expand scale of production. The union would then lobby for price standardisation. He hopes, together, they could open a rabbit urine shop in Homa Bay Town, where customers could make orders for other feline products as well.