Can I just tell you my least favorite part of raising rabbits? Selling rabbits.
I know this may sound silly, but selling rabbits ranks right around cleaning out the waste pile for me in terms of favorite activities. Partially because there is no right or wrong rule with setting prices, and there is a lot of back and forth variety in what breeders do in specific areas. Add in flaky buyers who fall through at the last minute and, in general, it’s a challenge!
We’ve just upped our prices a tad – it’s the first time in three years we’ve done so. It’s always hard to consider raising prices, and I want you to know we are doing so intentionally, not because we suddenly want more bang for our sales.
Since we breed rare breeds almost entirely, we keep availability in mind. Yes, it’s extremely difficult to find some of these breeds – and truthfully we have paid a top dollar for most all of our foundation animals. However, we would love these rare breeds to gain in popularity, which means that if you price them too high you run some serious, great breeders out of the game with a high price.
We’ve also become pretty choosy with our keeper/sellers and in the past two years we’ve culled hard, which has improved the quality of our herd overall. When I think back to the rabbits we had several years ago, I’m proud of the progress we’ve made with the breeds, and there is a dedication to care and analytical breeding that has been proven in the test of time. Are we perfect, not at all! But do we have better judgement than we did when we were starting out? Absolutely. Are we producing higher quality animals? Yes, we are. People who buy a Mad Hatter Rabbit now receive the benefit of the education we’ve gained over the years – and there’s value to that.
I believe you’ll still find us on the “reasonable” spectrum of the prices for our breeds, as our goal is still to provide a quality rabbit at a decent price to encourage other folks to raise these heritage and rare breeds. We thank you for your patience and look forward to working with you!
Mad Hatter Rabbits & MicroFarm 