indoor bunny pens

akane · Sep 9, 2011

Mostly completed the indoor bunny pens. Some still need higher wire sides and/or roofs but the rabbits are content to stay where they are despite the rushed cage job and openness. 2 are coroplast panels (cheap but I'm guessing won't last more than 2years) and 1 is wood originally coated in polyurethane and then repainted in enamel because it's been in use for the past 5 years with guinea pigs, chickens, and then rabbits so the white polyurethane was a little stained. I found wire cages inside allowed for far too much bunny urine to get all over even with urine guards and couldn't hold enough bedding to keep smell down without constant cleaning. The far left is the sugar glider cage.

This cage was suppose to be empty for growing out offspring of the netherland pair and Amako my pet mini rex doe who is in the bottom cage but then the weasel attacks happened and I decided a tiny 2lb rabbit was better off inside until every thing is weasel proofed.

cmabb · Sep 10, 2011

very nice!

PulpFaction · Sep 12, 2011

ok, this may be a stupid question, but how do the rabbits know to not eat the wood bedding pellets, since they're really rather bunny pellet-like?

akane · Sep 12, 2011

I've never had anything eat much of the pellets. The horses will grab a bite out of a bag and then spit it out but that's it. Animals don't identify food just by looks. They often don't even use that as their main sense. Most use smell over everything else and pine pellets smell like wood. They'll easily pick rabbit pellets or for the horses spilled grain out of the pine pellets without eating any. I have heard it is a major issue with pellets made out of corn though. Someone had a horse eat several bags worth of corn pellets.

ladysown · Sep 12, 2011

rabbits have a good sense of smell and wood pellets don't smell like anything you'd want to eat.

(at least that's my best guess)

Pickles · Sep 12, 2011

Nice set-up!

palmettogirl · Feb 13, 2012

I took in a stray holland lop. I don't know why people put all the bedding down. I find my lop pees in it but if I just put one or two litter boxes with hay attached just above, he only pees in the litter box. He really hates laying on bedding. He would push it out the way and lay on the bare floor so I just removed it. Things are so much cleaner and nice now. I only have to clean out 2 litter boxes instead of a whole pen. I have a 3x6 area pen so i use 2 litter boxes. Bunnies like to eat and poop at the same time so i just put litter boxes under a hay bin and the other under the feed bin. Some people put litter boxes full of hay but I could not stand for my bunny to pee in the hay and eat it...yuck. This system works better. He occasionally gets poop outside the box but more from knocking it out. I use just rectangle boxes and he sits in the box and poops and eats at the same time.

akane · Feb 13, 2012

Mine looove their bedding. Digging, running in it, laying on piles of it sometimes and dips other times... I do not have time daily to clean a litter box frequently. I have time once a week to strip a whole cage. Only on my worst doe do I find time to scoop her pee corner because she really soaks it and you can smell it through the whole house. Otherwise minus that you wouldn't know there were over a dozen rabbits and twice that in gerbils in the house. Right now it just smells like hyacinth.