Bryan Allen Long is preparing to start over, but in his business, it doesn’t take long before you’re fully stocked again. Long has been raising rabbits at his home near Vardaman for a few years now. He sold more than 50 of the irresistible little bunnies in the two weeks leading up to Easter.
“I had some people come from Ackerman to buy rabbits from me,” Long said. “I told my wife there has to be nobody else around here fool enough to sell rabbits.”
Long’s venture into the rabbit business was spawned by tragic circumstances. He lost his son Michael seven years ago to brain cancer at the age of 37. Two years later, Michael’s youngest son Ty nearly lost a leg in a four-wheeler accident.
“The reason I got into rabbits was (my grandson) Ty,” Long said. “He got hurt and I wanted something for us to do, so we got into the Beagle business. And the Beagle business brought rabbits on to train the Beagles.”
“Ty and his daddy had always had the Running Walkers where they could deer hunt and competition hunt,” Long said. “So we got Beagles together, raised two litters and sold them just like that.”
“Ty loves animals just like I do. We have horses. We’ve tried the mule business, raised goats. We’ve done all kinds of things and I’ve loved every minute of it.”
They still raise Beagles, which is more Ty’s passion. The rabbits have become “busy work” for Bryan Allen.
“It’s all therapy for me. If I sit and dwell on some of the things that happened over the past seven years, it would run me crazy,” Long said. “Losing a son is devastating. All me and my wife could do was sit down and cry about it, pray about it, just ask God to help us through it.
“There’s still a lot of times when you’re sitting around idle. It’s hard. People will ask me what you work so hard for? It occupies my mind. I do everything I can to stay busy. If it’s nothing but washing out dog pens and tending to these rabbits.”
Long has had up to 75 rabbits at a time.
“We had 45 babies at one time this go-round,” he said. “I don’t like to sell them until they get four weeks old, so I held a few back because I didn’t think they were ready. I could have sold a 150 more if I had them.”
He sat on the Calhoun City square one day and sold almost all he had.
“Around Easter everybody seems to want rabbits,” Long said. “I’ve had so much fun selling those things.”
“Around Easter you can pretty much name your price, but I like to sell them at $10 a piece. I’m not in it to hold anybody up,” Long said. “In the offseason, I sell them for $5 apiece.”
He carries a lot of rabbits to Trade Day at Wren to sell them throughout the year and is always in the market to buy new ones.
“I know there’s a lady at Pontotoc that raises the white ones (New Zealands). I’d like to get some of those,” Long said.
This isn’t Long’s first go-around with raising rabbits either.
“I raised rabbits a long time ago when Mr. Norman Inman had the grocery store at Vardaman, and I would sell him rabbits dressed,” Long said. “I sold a many of them dressed for a dollar and a half. I would carry them in there and say ‘Mr. Norman we have some rabbits for you’. He’d say ‘alright boys’. If we tried to do that today they’d probably put us under the jail. It was a different time.”
Now his rabbits are strictly for Beagle training, Easter pets and his own therapy. He primarily raises Florida Cottontails.
“That’s the wild looking rabbit,” he explained. “That’s my favorite.”
“Every now and then I have the black ones and yellow ones and blue ones, but 95% of them will be the old gray color – the old hillbilly rabbit is what I call them.”
He says rabbits are “no problem to raise.” He buys a sack of $10 rabbit feed that will last a few weeks depending on how many head he has. He keeps everything clean, re-purposing the droppings as fertilizer for the yard and garden.
“It’s better than that fertilizer you buy in the store,” Long said.
He built all his cages himself inside his barn to keep the rabbits dry. He covers the open side of the barn with canvas in the winter to keep it warm and uses heat lamps when his does are having babies.
“I ween them at four weeks old and then breed them back and they have babies again,” Long said. “You can raise them as fast as you want to, but there again you want to take care of your does, too.”
The Easter season has essentially wiped him out of rabbits currently.
“I’m down to six does and my buck right now. In fact, I have someone coming out this weekend to pick up two does I don’t even want to sell,” Long said. “He’s got Beagles, too.”
Long’s rabbit herd is certain to grow quickly, creating more opportunities to sell and plenty of work for him. But that’s the way he likes it.
“We’ve enjoyed fooling with them,” Long said. “I can’t sit up in that house. I have to stay busy.”