cage stacker ideas

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shazza

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currently i have hanging cages in my rabbit barn. it is not a very big barn; i only have space for nineteen 30x30 cages. i thought this would be fine, but i filled this space up within months, and i am finding myself unable to make space for the animals i need to pursue breeding goals, so i'm looking at going back to stackers so i can double my cages. back in texas i had stackers and it was a pretty standard design made with PVC, so they were easy to move around. i HATEd having to scrape the trays out though. especially when i had does with kits that produced just absolutely astronomical amounts of poop. i've gotten so spoiled to hangers and how minimal the maintenance is. i suffer from chronic pain and anything i can do to lessen my workload directly impacts how much enjoyment i get from my animals and aside from not knowing where i'm going to put my keeper kits, i've been having a wonderful time not having to clean cages every other day.

i suppose i'd be okay with going back to the stacker design i used to use, but if anyone has any other/better suggestions for easy to clean stackers (or some way to 'stack' hanging cages??? one can hope.) share with me your wisdom!
 
Have the pans under the top cages slant back to a large PVC pipe cut in half lengthwise so the bunny berries roll to one area to be cleaned out. Before I got the fancy hutches, hubby rigged up huge trash bags (55g drum liners actually) under the top row of cages to drain into a 5g bucket.
 
Keeping each rabbit in it's own separate space takes up a lot more room than keeping large spaces for multiple females. I can have up to two dozen females in one of the big modular hutches and the other hutch has the same amount of space but only houses six bucks. Each hutch is based on a 12' wide by 3' deep frame and has an upper level and a lower level. There's removable floorplates and walls as well as removable doors in the front. The hutch configuration can be changed from six smaller spaces, to four medium sized spaces or two large spaces in each hutch. Three of the floorplates have a dropped nesting area, but most of them are flat.

Between the upper and lower layers of the hutch is a layer of roofing tin which directs droppings to the back. Since this is an outside hutch, the droppings just fall to the ground under the lower level. If they were being kept in a barn, then there would be some sort of additional something to catch the droppings.

By having the females live in a large group, they take up much less space per bunny.
 
the last time i tried group pens/colony rabbits (with growouts,) almost all of my animals died tragically from disease. i am not willing to group-house my rabbits again.

dfr: my old stackers had slanted trays, not pull-out ones, but i still had to scrape them out every couple of days because the poops wouldn't roll down reliably and turn to goop the second one of the animals peed or a water nipple leaked or something. i'm not sure if this was a problem with the trays not being at an extreme enough angle (the top was about 6" higher than the bottom,) or what though?

i forgot in my original post, but how concerned should i be about rats with stacking cages? i can't remember how far off the ground the bottom cages were, but there are some rats in the feed room of the barn (not any real significant amount, but enough that i see evidence of them and they chew holes in feed bags sometimes.)
 
Front to back in a 3' deep hutch, we have about a foot drop and most things will roll right off. It extends out past the back of the hutch enough that the droppings can fall into an area where they can be collected for the garden. Sometimes I put a line of bins there, but these are outside hutches so it doesn't really matter if it falls to the ground.
 
i have had rats steal kits before, so it's a concern. i have caught several in traps and have a cat in the barn but i still see their evidence around despite it.
 
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