Housing your rabbits
Before
we could actually bring any rabbits home, we had to build a hutch. I've
had some ideas in my head for how to
construct one, but, as things usually go, we ended up building the hutch
based on the materials we had at hand.
Dawn had
found two shed doors on the side of the road...and that ended up
determining the dimensions of the hutch we built. We used the shed
doors as the roof, and we'll later cover these with some tin for
longevity.
The hutch is approximately 6 feet by 7 feet, and
it's quartered into four separate spaces of roughly 3 feet by 3.5
feet. The hardware cloth I purchased was 2 feet tall, so that
ended up being the vertical dimension of the living area.
Dawn had also found some scrap 2x4s and plywood that we were able to
press into service for the hutch. The plywood became doors, and 2x4s
became the frame. I
purchased a few more 2x4s and two 2x6s at the local supply house. The
end product ended up being a quite robust hutch that stands about 6
feet tall, with a footprint of about 6x7.
Sorry about the quality of
the photo, it was about 9:30 at night when we
finished the hutch. We used a 2x6
across the lower support so that it will hold up a bit better over
time. The uprights are 2x4s, the roof is 1/2 inch plywood, and the
hardware cloth is 1/2 inch in order to allow the pellets to drop
through.
One of the major goals of raising rabbits here will be
to use the manure in the garden. We have very poor soil, so
anything we can add to it will greatly benefit my plants.
All in
all, I think the hutch cost us under $100 in material. Considering we
should be able to get many litters of rabbits out of it, the structure
will eventually pay for itself, I hope.
Shannon and Dawn will be sharing their experiences with raising meat rabbits on Tuesday afternoons. They homestead on three acres in Louisiana when time off from life and working as a sys admin permits.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Olan, Yes, we made it through the storm OK. Some of my friends/coworkers weren't so lucky though.
Did you see my earlier response commenting about my uncle's cabin near your neck o' the woods?