Rabbits in Thailand

A few months ago, I thought I had a bright idea for Christmas dinner here in Pattaya, rabbit! I started looking for some information about dishes with rabbit and found out a lot on this Belgian link: www.lekkervanbijons.be

Armed with this knowledge, I discussed it with my wife and that conversation didn't last long: "Thai food not a rabbit, where did you come up with the ridiculous idea?"

The idea

In fact, my wife had suggested the idea herself without realizing it. She had been to a friend in Bangkok for a few days and came back with 4 young rabbits. I immediately thought of Christmas, but she liked those bunnies as pets. Well, pet, not indoors, of course, but the large balcony of our house was labeled a rabbit enclosure. Nice cuddly animals and our dog of 1 peat high also liked those bunnies to play with. A large cage was put together by my brother-in-law where the rabbits could spend the night. Every day my wife bought vegetable scraps from the nearby market and that food was supplemented with rabbit food from the pet store. The long ears grew like cabbage!

Eating rabbit meat in Thailand

My wife did not accept that rabbits are eaten in our country: "You don't eat such sweet animals." Strange statement for an Isaan lady, snakes, rats, squirrels, birds, insects can be eaten well, but you don't touch rabbits. I went looking on the Internet to see if that was really the case and I must admit that there is little or nothing about rabbit meat in Thailand and I have never seen rabbit meat offered in the supermarkets.

Eating rabbit meat in the Netherlands

Believe me or not, I've never eaten rabbit meat. In my youth it was a luxury product and then we talk about rabbits that were caught in the wild. I can still conjure up the image of a poulterer's shop window, where the rabbits, stripped of their skins, hung on a hook head down. The head was still attached and the back legs were not skinned, just to serve as proof that it really was a rabbit and not a cat. I told you it was a luxury product, fitting in a row of turkey, sole, partridge, venison and so on, not affordable for my parents. I made up for that loss later, you know, but the rabbit was not among them.

Rabbit industry

But just like poultry, pigs, calves, the rabbit did not escape the industry. Large rabbit farms were established in the Netherlands and Belgium, where meat rabbits were bred on a large scale. I will not go into that further, because there is now also a change to report there. Due to actions by “Lekker animal” and other animal protectors, who complained about the appalling conditions for those animals in the breeding farms, less and less rabbit is being eaten. Almost all supermarkets have banned the rabbit from their shelves. Now the rabbit in the supermarket was usually not a Dutch rabbit, but imported from, for example, Eastern European countries and even from China. You don't even want to think about the conditions in the breeding farms in those countries.

The Netherlands still has about a hundred rabbit farms, almost 100% of which is exported.

What do rabbits do?

Well, not really much I would say, eat, drink, copulate, shit and sleep. Also on our balcony, the bugs grew, quickly became adults and after some time the first female was pregnant. The first litter was 4 little mutts, the second female produced 9 new young bunnies. Cute how my wife takes care of all the animals and how the girls next door enjoy it too. In the meantime, our herd has grown to about 25 rabbits and collecting vegetable waste from the market in the morning is no longer an option. The greengrocer comes every other day with his motorcycle and sidecar to bring a box or four of beautiful waste.

Rabbits in Thailand

Those 25 rabbits of ours are really the only ones in Thailand, there are hundreds of thousands, but they only live as pets. I read somewhere that up to 100 are sold every weekend at the Chatuchak market in Bangkok. It's nice to have such a critter at home, especially for families with young children. It is good for upbringing, because the rabbit teaches children to take responsibility for providing food and drink and keeping the rabbit enclosure clean.

Of course there are farms in Thailand for rabbits, but as far as I have been able to find out, exclusively for breeding the rabbit as a pet. Two varieties are the most important, namely the Holland Lop and the smaller Netherlands Dwarf, which, as the name says, originally come from the Netherlands.

And if there is no room for a rabbit at home, the Thai can always visit a Bunny Farm or Rabbit Farm with his children, which are located throughout the country. Large farms with a spacious area where rabbits roam and children can play with them. You can find them, like some videos, on the Internet.

Finally

But what should we do with 25 rabbits, because if we wait there will soon be 50. Well, quite a few will soon go to my wife's village in the Isaan, where they will be sold as pets. They must not be eaten, my wife says, but I fear that some of them will go into the pan anyway, there in the Isaan!