Seely’s Ark: Raising Rabbits 
By Deborah Wechsler (2004)

Beth and David Seely
Seely’s Ark
Dunnellon, Florida
Seelyark1@aol.com  

A few pet rabbits started Beth Seely on the road to rabbit ranching in the 1980s. Now she’s experienced, knowledgeable, and one of the larger rabbit producers in the Southeast. Raised on a dairy farm in New York, she and her husband, David, moved to St. Petersburg, Florida more than 20 years ago. Seeking a good place to raise their two children, they bought a farm in Dunellon, about an hour from Ocala. Here she worked as a hospice nurse, while the family kept a parade of pets, animal foundlings, and small-scale livestock at their farm—hence the farm’s name, “Seely’s Ark.” Explains Beth, “We were natural farmers but we didn’t have enough land to do much.”

When their pet rabbits followed the fabled reproductive habits of rabbits, she began to research what to do with the offspring, Says Beth, “I thought, ‘I can do this; it’s something well-suited to a woman and good for the children to be involved in.’” And, it didn’t require a lot of land.

She contacted a small rabbit farmer in the community, purchased appropriate breeding stock, and was on her way. When the population had risen to 50 individually caged rabbits, and it was taking her about an hour a day to feed and water them, she “decided it was time to get serious.” She visited a couple of larger rabbit farms for ideas, then started building sheds to house the operation. In 1995, she decided to give up her nursing work and became a full-time rabbit farmer.

Seely’s Ark currently houses about 600 producing does, with about 6000 rabbits in-house at any given time. Because careful breeding is important for efficient weight gain and a quality product, Beth maintains purebred lines of three varieties to crossbreed for production stocks: First, she breeds a New Zealand White mother to an Californian father to create production does with added hybrid vigor and strong mothering instincts. She then breeds these to an Altex terminal sire, adding rapid growth and meaty body type. Any culls from the breeding program or unwanted cross-bred males join the triple crosses to be grown out for meat. She sells a small quantity of purebred stock to other producers and is considering supplying crossbred does to producers who find it difficult to manage a breeding program, but can handle the simpler operation of raising meat animals.

Florida’s sultry summer climate is stressful for rabbits, so Beth has located her barns under shade trees and learned to build the sheds with higher peaks so warm air chimneys up from the cages and doesn’t collect over them. Her breeding program takes note of heat tolerance and retains those animals that show the most tolerance.

Each doe produces 7-8 litters a year. Beth finds she manages to wean 6 per litter in the summer and 10-12 in the winter. (Experts have calculated that you need to raise at least eight per litter in order for rabbits to be profitable.) It takes about six months for a doe to reach maturity and about twelve weeks to raise baby rabbits to slaughter weight.

Fine-tuning the nutrition of the rabbits to avoid deficiencies is also key to good management. After struggling for a number of years with other sources, Beth has worked out an arrangement with a local, family-owned feed mill to produce a ration to her specifications. The Seelys use about half a ton a day of bagged pellets, hand-fed to each cage once a day.

As a way to utilize to the rabbits’ rich and copious manure, which drops under the wire cages, the Seelys raise worms. Originally they planned to raise red wriggler compost worms, but after they received a shipment contaminated with African night crawlers, these large, highly marketable fishing worms soon became their worm of choice. Worms are collected weekly through the spring and fall and wholesaled to a supplier to small stores and bait shops. The manure/worm beds themselves must be maintained weekly and the manure is either sold to home gardeners for $30/pickup load or spread on the Seelys’ own pastures. Seely’s Ark takes in about $20,000 a year in worm sales, enough to pay the feed bills for the rabbits through the summer months when both production and income from the rabbits are lower. “The worms feed the rabbits, and the rabbits feed the worms,” says Beth.

Marketing has been an up-and-down roller coaster ride for Beth. At first she was able to find a local processor who would buy all her live animals when ready. Then, when her second barn was half-filled with rabbits, he retired. Over the next decade she tried working with about a dozen different processors, some as far away as Canada. For a while, a processing plant in Ocala would allow her to rent the facility over the weekend. She processed rabbits on Sunday, chilled the meat, then ran a delivery route on Tuesday to restaurants, meat markets, and small supermarkets. In 1998, the plant suffered a disastrous fire, destroying her equipment and their workspace. The owner closed down, but allowed Beth and her husband to restore and use a portion of the remaining plant. Taking a big economic risk, the Seelys then purchased the processing plant and the 28 acres of land around it in 2000 . They have renovated and rebuilt the plant to meet USDA standards and all meat is USDA-inspected—a crucial qualification for successful marketing.

Beth has found that issues of both oversupply and undersupply characterize the rabbit market in the region. Florida’s population is seasonal, while rabbit production is year-round. If she focuses on the peak demand of buyers such as restaurants, which cater to the seasonal residents, then she faces a surplus when the snowbirds or tourists leave. On the other hand, she has never been able to meet the peak needs of the supermarket chains, and they have been reluctant to buy from her if she couldn’t fill their needs year-round. She has realized that diversified market outlets, facilities for freezing and storing meat, and a larger pool of producers are all necessary. “We can’t support the market without other people coming into the business,” says Beth.

Beth has worked for many years to try to get rabbit producers in the area to work cooperatively. She is a founding member of the Southern Commercial Rabbit Producers Association, helps organizes its educational programs, and freely shares her expertise with new rabbit farmers. Other growers benefit from being able to get their rabbits processed--and sometimes marketed--through Seely’s Ark. She and her husband have assumed the risk of owning the processing plant, but they know that they need to work with other producers in order for it to be economically successful.

Beth markets Seely’s Ark’s rabbit meat as “Ranch Raised” and the company as “locally family owned and operated, providing products of superior quality, reliability, and wholesomeness.” Her literature takes pains to assure buyers that the rabbits are “Southern Farm Grown,” rather than “imported or relabeled.” Meat is packed on distinctive pink trays, so it stands out from others commonly used in Florida supermarkets. She packs the rabbits whole or cut-up and sells fresh or frozen. Specialty cuts, such as boned meat, are sometimes requested by chefs and sell for a higher price reflecting the additional labor. Currently, her best markets are high-end restaurants in Orlando, a wholesaler who serves smaller supermarkets, and a Miami-based broker who sells to the cruise ship trade. Producers as far away as Alabama now sell under the Seely’s Ark label.

Beth and David aren’t just about rabbits, though. They have many plans keeping them busy. They are expanding the services of the processing plant to include pastured poultry and small livestock. On land at the processing plant, they are working with Heifer Project International to set up a weanling rabbit and vermicomposting demonstration and collaborating with the New North Florida Co-op to grow vegetables for the local school system. They are training their processing plant workers to take on more responsibility and manage all these projects. They’d also like to restore an old home on the same site to become part of a local farmers’ market.

“We are excited, we have a lot of options,” says Beth. This kind of enthusiasm, and vision—plus perseverance and some hard-won experience--make Beth Seely a leader not just in rabbit production but in sustainable agriculture. 

Location: Central Florida, near Ocala. Processing plant in Ocala.
Climate zone:  9 Soil type: Sandy loam.
Years in commercial production: 18
Acreage: 10 at farm with 8 acres fenced pasture; 28 acres at processing plant, with 20 acres fenced for livestock.
Crops/products: Fresh and frozen rabbit meat, rabbit breeding stock, fishing worms, compost, rabbit processing byproducts. A few Katahdin hair sheep.
Value-added products: Specialty cuts for restaurants.
Notable facilities and equipment: 3 open-sided pole barns and 12 canopy barns for rabbits on farm; processing facility in Ocala, including storage warehouse, closed pole barn, coolers, and freezers.
Weeks in production: Year-round.
Markets: Wholesale to supermarket chains, restaurants, and smaller grocery chains and through brokers. Worms wholesale to local dealer.
Labor: Beth and David Seely full-time, plus 10-12 local workers when processing plant is in operation. 
 
Southern Commercial Rabbit Producers Association, Inc., c/o Maureen Daniels, 7082 SR 6 West, Jasper, FL 32052, www.florida-agriculture.com/rabbits