If you only have one rabbit, or two, you may have them inside with a nice cage and a tray. This will need to be emptied every day and filled with shavings or you can use pine pellets. Do not use cat litter, it will get gross, trust me. You can train your rabbit to use a litter box as a cat would. All you need to do is get a small litter box and place it in their cage in the corner they seem to use the bathroom in. Then open the cage and let them run around the room a little, keep them from chewing on wires by getting a special spray from a vet that you can spray on the wires, and if they bite it, they will leave it alone. I’m sure every rabbit will have a few accidents, so make sure you have paper towels handy. If you see the rabbit fixing to go somewhere on the floor, push them into their cage into the litter box. Soon enough your rabbit will know to go in that litter box. Then you can let your rabbit run around the house like a little dog or cat.
If you have an outdoor hutch, good ventilation is very important. You can have fans to blow air around for them. And in the summertime you can save your old plastic coke bottles and put water in them and freeze them. The rabbits will lay up against them to stay cool.
Cage sizes depend on the size of the rabbit.
*for small breeds———24x24x18
*for medium breeds——–30x30x18
*for larger breeds——–36x36x18 or 40x30x18
You can use this to figure out how big or small to make your cages. We don’t have wood near our cages. We have them hanging from the ceiling with strong wire, so the rabbits don’t have anything to chew on and get sick from.
It’s always important to keep the cages clean. Make sure no droppings are hanging from the cages. About every month or so, I have to clean the droppings off the ground and put them behind the rabbit shed. They are usually used in the flowers after that, they are very good fertilizer.
Hutch Plans
There are a couple of different types of hutches that you can make for your rabbit(s). If your rabbit is going to be inside, you really only just need the cage, then you can let the rabbit run around the house some if you make sure you keep him away from plants, wires, and all other hazards. One of the most popular outdoor hutches is an indoor building or a shed. These are usually only used when you raise rabbits or you have a lot of them as pets. It is also how my hutch is. But if you’re not lucky enough to have a building and just want the hutch alone, here are some good plans to help you.
First of all, a hutch us a small unit of solid construction used for housing a few animals on a backyard scale. A hutch can be made of wood and chicken wire, but I prefer one inch by two inch wire for the walls, and then 1 inch by half inch wire for the floor. You can also used 3/4 by 3/4 inch wire for the whole thing. It is best to have the floor as high up off the ground as possible, this keeps the animal from walking in their own waste and keeps any predators away from them.
The most important thing to remember, rabbits are very adaptable and can be raised in many types of hutches as long as they have ventilation and are easy to clean and keep them warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and dry when it rains. So you see, a hutch can be made of really anything. Just make sure that the wood the rabbits can get to to chew on (try not to put it near where they even can) but if they do, make sure it isn’t pressure treated, or they will be poisoned. I have added a drawing of an ideal hutch, remember when making the roof to put it at a slant so that the rainwater won’t build up on top.
A section on Hanging Cages has been added.
