My stacked cage setup- something different..

This the end of build after many revisions. Its different than most setups but it suits my needs. When I eventually have some extra play money, I will be buying a 12x20 shed with a overhang for the rabbits. My existing shed is falling apart as you can see.
A lot of time went into saving time and making daily care easier. I started building this about a year ago. I built the two stacks of cages first then waited about 9 months to finally get some rabbits. I built the frame and mounted the two cages stacked, I was just using a slanted peice of play wood to direct the waste.

I bought some more rabbits and needed to add more space. I decided instead of building another structure, I built another cage and stacked it.





I made some steps to make it easier to get to the upper cage when cleaning. The top step opens to a storage compartment. Its nice and easy my wife to help with the rabbits too.

Each cage has a 3" deep waste tray, that slides on a track and can be removed to the compost pile. I usually bring the yard cart over and fill it up.

I bought a inexpencive automatic water on amazon, $15 or so. 10 nozzels, 10 t's. I ran it to a 5 gal bucket with a lid. Getting 5 gals of water up high enough for gavity to do its magic, is not fun. I put a pully system to make life very easy. I put a loop on the one end of the rope, which goes on a nub on the frame, and a carabiner on the other end hooks to the bucket. I have a plug I put in to keep the water from pouring out. I am going to get a quick disconnect to make it a less wet job when connecting the hose.


The tempature started dropping and the lines froze and I started changing the water 2x a day. That lasted 3 days and decided to find an alternate method to heating the water. I have seen the idea of putting a heater in the bucket and then running a circulation pump. Great idea but a little more than I needed and some of the heaters are from 250v-1000v.

I found some water pipe heated cable and secured it to the water hose using zipties. I made sure that the cable was in not in the rabbits reach using some metal twists. The cable waterproof but not chew resistant. I ordered 30ft which was enough to run all aloung the lines plus 5ft or so extra. The extra 5 ft would wrap around the bucket. The end of the heated cable I wrapped in velcro. Then out some velcro on the bucket.

The powder consumption is 210v which is about $20 a month, assuming it is on all the time. It does turn itself off when the air tempature gets about 40 degrees.






I wanted to make sure that the cable wasn't getting too hot or spots weren't too cold. I brought out the tempature gun.

Here are the tempature readings: (20 degrees outside when tested)
Hose- 45-70 degrees- Average was about 50 degrees
Nozzel- 40-55 degrees
Heat cable- 70-80 degrees
5 gallon bucket-50 degrees

Heat cable
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000D ... UTF8&psc=1


Maybe you can help me identify what types of tabbits I have. I know I have 3 NZ but the rest I bought from so guy on craigslist. He had no idea what they were. I assume they are muts. 2 large, 3 medium and 1 small one. A few of them were pretty fat, I am trying to get the weight off of them.

Silver Female


This one is pregnate. Hopefully she will kindle any day now.



she is a big girl. I haven't had any luck breeding her, likely due to her wieght.









MY NZ just had her first litter 3 weeks ago. Good mother of 5 healthy bunnies.

Throwing her toy around.

Wow, it's obvious you been working worked really hard to make yourself and your rabbits more comfortable!!!

Here's my guesses for you buns:
Mostly new zealand and new zealand crosses. Both tort(the brown one with dark ears) and chestnut(wild looking) are common colors from crossing new zealand blacks with whites
I think that chocolate might be a satin.
I wish I could run my hands through the fur though, there are breeders down that way that work with chocolate silver fox too, and the lines share some blood with satins. Her face looks a LOT like the chocolate-carrying Silver Fox doe I had. She was very lightly silvered too.

The chinchilla (what you called a silver) colored one might be some kind of chinchilla or cross.
There are three chinchilla colored meat breeds, and the color also frequently turns up in flemish giant crosses. Yours doesn't look like a flemish cross to me...but new zealand crossed to a chinchilla breed is possible.

Where you are in PA, I know that there are actually a lot of breeders who work with purebred animals and show rabbits. You might have gotten some purebreds that were culls because they were unshowable colors or just didn't have the most perfect type.

Tort and chestnut new zealand, silver fox with too light of ticking (or just being chocolate to begin with)...stuff like that

Thanks for the pics of the watering system! Nice job.

As to the breeds, I agree with Zass, especially about the one you say is pregnant- NZ or a NZ cross. Looks like a smaller version of my Daisy.

TT, what are the dimension of your nest boxes?

The link below is what I used to make them. They are 10x18. I would take some pictures but all the nesting boxes I made are being used right now.


I used a brad nailer with 1 3/4" galvinized brads. It made attaching the sides very easy aand quick. A trick I did though was attach screen door mesh and then put 1"x1/2" cage floor on the nesting box. I used a air stapler to secure it. This makes it so that if the mother digs to the bottom of the nesting box, she won't have them on bare wire. In the winter time I also put a fitted peice of cardboard down. This seems to help. Cleaning the nesting boxes is pretty easy, even with the screen door material.


http://www.azrabbits.com/useful-informa ... boxes.html

I have a couple smaller nesting boxes in the cages but those I leave in the cages to hold hay or give the rabbits some shelter if, that want it. They usually just stand on it. It did save a litter though today. That really fat brown one, wasn't just fat. She was pregnate as well. She gave birth this morning. Luckily I had that small nesting box in it. She didn't pull hair last night but this morning it was full of hair and 3 healthy bunnies. I am surprised she was even able to get pregnate with her wieght. She did build a nest in the front of the box and one in the rear. I transfered the kits to the larger nesting box, and fixed her nest and added a bunch of hay.

TriumphTriple":2bbfb3oz said:

The link below is what I used to make them. They are 10x18. I would take some pictures but all the nesting boxes I made are being used right now.


I used a brad nailer with 1 3/4" galvinized brads. It made attaching the sizes very easy a quick. A trick I did though was attach screen door mesh and then put 1"x1/2" cage floor on the nesting box. I used a air stapler to secure it. This makes it so that if the mother digs to the bottom of the nesting box, she won't have them on bare wire. In the winter time I also put a fitted peice of cardboard down. This seems to help. Cleaning the nesting boxes is pretty easy, even with the screen door material.


http://www.azrabbits.com/useful-informa ... boxes.html

I have a couple smaller nesting boxes in the cages but those I leave in the cages to hold hay or give the rabbits some shelter if, that want it. They usually just stand on it. It did save a litter though today. That really fat brown one, wasn't just fat. She was pregnate as well. She gave birth this morning. Luckily I had that small nesting box in it. She didn't pull hair last night but this morning it was full of hair and 3 healthy bunnies. I am surprised she was even able to get pregnate with her wieght. She did build a nest in the front of the box and one in the rear. I transfered the kits to the larger nesting box, and fixed her nest and added a bunch of hay.

Click to expand...

Congratulations on the KITS!!!! The only time I've ever had wire born kits was when I had does who came to me pregnant, and the breeders INSISTED that they couldn't possibly be. It was smart of you to have that box in there for her.

10 to 12 lbs is the weight you'd expect for mature meat types. If she's made up of the breeds I think she is, that is about what you'd want her to weigh.
You can breed her back as soon as you are comfortable doing so to help keep her reproductive system working.

Being pregnant while nursing only three kits would not be tough on her, and might help prevent her from putting on any more fat.

Yay!!! Popples! Congrats on your tubby bunny baby catch!!!
Thank you for the link, TriumphTriple! I'm building nest boxes today and have screen on hand from our break-in last year. I've been using pieces of the same screen to sift the fines out of the food in the bottom of our feed bin. I've been drawing out a double stacked hutch idea and it's almost identical to yours. Reinventing the wheel, I guess!

I'm excited about the NZR I'm to pick up this week; she'll make the third bunny and I'll be set for my little operation!

Thank you. I was going to start weighing her. Thanks for the numbers Zass. I had one litter born on wire and I will try by best to not have that happen again.


Great news about the NZR. I am still working on getting my smaller. I have 6 does and 2 bucks. I want to get it down to 3-4 does and 2 bucks. I want to give it 2 breedings cycles before I decide which does meet the freezer.

-- Fri Jan 09, 2015 5:52 pm --

I have to admit that my heated water lines failed when it dipped below 20 degrees about 4 days ago. Its been in the teens since then. Back to filling water bowls again.

I figured that it wasn't a problem of the water lines getting hot enough but that they aren't retaining the heat. I ordered some pipe insulation and the insulation thickness was 1/2", I figured that would be thick enough. I installed it along all the lines and installed a small section of insulation to where the line t's to the nozzel. The hopes was that it would keep the nozzels from freezing.



After 20 mintes, I checked the nozzel flow and tempature. It was at 120 degrees. Turns out I now have the exact opposite issue, the lines are too hot, lol. I removed the insulation near the nozzel and it helped. It is at 60-80 degrees coming out the nozzel. Sucess!!!

I am going to check it every couple hours to make sure it stays consistant.

I also made a quick disconnect for the bucket. I was getting tired of getting wet everytime I removed the hose to fill the water bucket. I used air compressor couplings, that I had extra of. No more having to plug the thru barbed adapter, when changing the bucket.







Wow they eat a lot more than I was expecting. Considering growing a 12'x12" patch of timothy hay in my back yard in the spring.