Shed Suggestions

I'm looking to actually get started on raising and breeding meat rabbits, and I'd like some suggestions for sheds that'd be easy to ventilate and insulate and preferably wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. I'd also like an opinion on collapsible sheds like the one below. What do y'all think? I think they'd work alright for the summertime but during the winter I'm not sure because I live in a part of Tennessee that gets a bit of snow. (But I could theoretically move the rabbits inside? We have a garage.)

Anyway, let me know y'alls suggestions and ideas! Thank you so much <3

Ferrettz said:

I'm looking to actually get started on raising and breeding meat rabbits, and I'd like some suggestions for sheds that'd be easy to ventilate and insulate and preferably wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. I'd also like an opinion on collapsible sheds like the one below. What do y'all think? I think they'd work alright for the summertime but during the winter I'm not sure because I live in a part of Tennessee that gets a bit of snow. (But I could theoretically move the rabbits inside? We have a garage.)

Anyway, let me know y'alls suggestions and ideas! Thank you so much <3

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It's great that you are looking for input before you spend time and money on your set-up...we spent years learning the hard way!

We started out with free-standing wood hutches in the yard, but things got immeasurably better once we moved the all rabbits into hanging wire cages in a semi-open shed - essentially a roof, three wooden walls and a door. The walls started about foot above the ground and were open again for about a foot under the roof, which overhung the structure by about 18" all the way around. So it was well-ventilated, and it protected the rabbits (and me) from precipitation and wind, which is basically what they need in terms of weather protection. I could shovel manure working from outside of the shed because of the bottom clearance, which was really nice since the shed was fairly narrow inside. My husband wired it so I had light in the winter, which didn't really matter too much for the rabbits but made it a lot nicer for me. The cages themselves were predator-proof, so we didn't do anything special with the structure in that regard, but that's something to consider: everything from snakes, ravens, weasels, rats and raccoons, to foxes and the neighbors' dogs, will want your rabbits. Even squirrels, magpies and jays will try to get at baby bunnies in the nest box if they can.

Our shed was made of wood and clear plastic corrugated roofing, which let some light in even in the winter (where we live, we get precious little sunlight during the winter, so every bit counts). I did have the cages covered on top, with a piece of plywood or sometimes just feed bags, since rabbits need some light but don't need or do well with direct sun; shade is better, especially in the summer. I don't think you're going to have a problem with winter temperatures where you are - our rabbits live through long stretches of zero-or-below weather with no difficulties - but heat is more likely to be a problem. It's always nice to have some trees around the shed, especially if you live in a place that gets very warm in the summer, as that can be very helpful in keeping things cool.

I don't especially like the look of the shed pictured in your post for two main reasons, plus a third because of where I live that may or may not be applicable to you...

First, black will get awfully hot, and there doesn't look like there's any way to get any cross-ventilation. Maybe a white canvas with opening windows would be better. It does look roomy with a high tunnel effect, but I'd still want more ventilation.

Second, I would expect that the canvas (or whatever the material covering is) will quickly stink to high heavens, a well as looking pretty nasty, when it gets soaked with rabbit urine. Many rabbits have a habit of peeing out the sides/backs/even fronts of their cages, and you can basically assume that everything within about a foot of the cage is eventually going to get soaked or at least sprayed unless your cages are made of solid wood, which I would not recommend. And unless you use cages with trays (some people like them, but cleaning trays is right up there with pulling teeth for me) or shovel very frequently, you'll probably end up with waste accumulating along the bottom edges of the fabric walls, too.

Finally, I haven't found that most of those car ports will hold up to much wind, and where we live, the winds can really howl at certain times of the year. Maybe that's not an issue for you, but again, it's something to think about.

I'd also suggest not planning to move your rabbits seasonally if you can avoid it - find a place they can live and set it up and let them be. In general, rabbits don't like change; even healthy, robust rabbits can succumb to stress-related illnesses, sometimes associated with things like a big move. It's not that they are like delicate flowers, exactly, but keeping stresses to a minimum will keep your rabbits the healthiest and producing the best.

Ferrettz said:

I'm looking to actually get started on raising and breeding meat rabbits, and I'd like some suggestions for sheds that'd be easy to ventilate and insulate and preferably wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. I'd also like an opinion on collapsible sheds like the one below. What do y'all think? I think they'd work alright for the summertime but during the winter I'm not sure because I live in a part of Tennessee that gets a bit of snow. (But I could theoretically move the rabbits inside? We have a garage.)

Anyway, let me know y'alls suggestions and ideas! Thank you so much <3

View attachment 43643

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I figure I'll weigh in on this discussion. I also wanted a better solution for my rabbits but didn't want to break the bank to do it. I know this is probably confusing but I hope the pictures will explain better. This is working out for me so well, I wanted to share it.

We bought a 10'X20' Quictent greenhouse kit from Amazon. These are not the strongest structures so we knew we would have to do some major remediation. We set the greenhouse frame on landscape timbers. Drilled holes in the timbers and then put bent rebar through the holes into the ground. Then we screwed the base of the greenhouse frame into the landscape timbers and also added a few more braces to the frame using EMT pipe. We put a double-layer of bulk sunscreen fabric all around the bottom section of the greenhouse. It's strong, doesn't let in much wind but does keep humidity from building up. We then stretched the greenhouse cover over the frame and secured it to the horizontal of the frame that the top of the screen cloth was secured to. The screen cloth was stretched to the bottom of the frame and secured with 1x2s. Over the top we secured a garden type shade cloth that protects the top of the greenhouse, keeps it from vibrating in the wind and adds shade in the summer. You can't even intentionally shake the structure it is so solid now. It's been through a year of high winds, torrential rain and the occasional branch falling on it and it's not showing any signs of deterioration.

Then we added 6 chickens so we built a 16X20 run on the front of the greenhouse. We used left over pickets from when we built our privacy fence but pallets could be used also. The fence is built with 4X4s as uprights. We ran 3/4" EMT across the tops of the 4x4s and draped the whole thing with bird netting.

The chickens have their nest boxes, food, water and roost inside the greenhouse. I have 5 breeder cages on one side and one 48" growout cage on the other and there is room for more.

The significant difference for me when I added chickens is that this operation now just runs itself. No more shoveling poop and absolutely no odor at all - really - none. I keep deep shavings in the greenhouse and add a little fresh occasionally. The chickens love to dig thru the shavings looking for bugs and worms so they just turn the rabbit poo and pee into compost. I added the chickens about five months ago and have not shoveled it out and don't think I will until Spring when I'll want to use the compost. All I do on a daily basis is top up the feed, check water and collect eggs.

my first six years my rabbits lived in those kind of shelters. They worked great.

What I learned. (SW Ontario directly in the snowbelt)

- Snow load can be a problem but a straight rake wrapped in a towel and pushed up from the inside helps the snow slide off wonderfully.
- Ventilation is VERY important. Make sure you don't strap everything down too tight and that you leave the ends open whenever possible. Take BOTH ends off in the summer heat to allow for airflow.
- Each tarp lasted for about three years. Though honestly... it's been a few years now and I'm still using the tarp ends from the last shelter I had.

Once the tarp part dies you can build a more solid structure by giving it a solid roof (we used plywood with lattic sides), the metal will last a long time. Those metal poles are still in use in my current rabbitry.

We have 4 of those carport tents (ours are from Harbor Freight). One was fully enclosed like you showed, the other 3 are just the top covered with open sides (I think HF markets them as "car canopy" vs "carport" which is the fully enclosed one). The carport only lasted a year before the UV damaged the cover enough that one good monsoon haboob shredded it. The canopies are in use over the chicken coop/run, over my goats, and over my meat chickens & the rabbit grow-out cage during the months when I can actually keep the grow-outs outdoors.

We anchor the legs of the temporary structures with ground anchors (we've used both of these https://a.co/d/hMnLG9T and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQ247LGR?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title) and I also attached them to the wood fence between us and the neighbor with these - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbil...Fence-Post-Adapter-Bracket-328594EB/312373221. They've taken thunderstorms with gusts of 60mph wthout blowing away. I do reinforce all the connections with these - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CX8NSH47/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The second oldest canopy is still up but it has some holes in the tarp at the top and I don't imagine it'll last past this winter (which will be a 6mo lifespan for this one, but our neighbor's tree did fall on it in the same haboob that shredded the carport). The other two have only been up for a couple of months so they're in great shape but I don't imagine they'll last too long. Keep in mind that I'm in central Arizona though and our temp for 113 days in a row this year was over 100 degrees and the UV Index a lot of the time is as high as it goes. So we get pretty extreme UV damage on all surfaces and you'll likely get more life out of any tarp item in TN than we do here.

Not that I'm trying to plug Harbor Freight but I'll mention that they put the carports and car canopies on sale pretty regularly and they offer replacement plans. We got the enclosed carport for $179 at a parking lot sale 1.5 years ago and the canopies for $99 over the last year. The replacement plans are $39 for 1 year or $59 for 2 years. ANY damage for ANY reason (even "your own stupidity") within the plan time and you can get a replacement. We've gotten replacements for the two damaged ones already, well worth the cost of the replacement plan. Some stores require you to bring in the whole thing for replacement, some only want the damaged part. So I called around to find out which stores locally only want parts and the closest one to us said they only wanted the ripped tarp back.

I like that for 2 reasons: disassembling and taking the whole thing in would have been a pain, but also, there are TONS of video tutorials online for how to turn those into a much more solid structure, mostly using PBR roof panels to create a solid roof/walls. And I have the "bones" from the first carport so I can do that at my leisure. It's not necessarily the cheapest option, but it's cheaper than buying a read-made shed, and for someone like me who doesn't have mad construction skillz, having the frame already made is super handy. So with some reinforcement I think it would work great. You can use clear panels on some sections to let light in, you can add windows for ventilation, all kinds of things.

All of these suggestions are good. The main problem I have seen with these is people not getting them secured well. The covers will not last if they aren't really tight. It seems the wind vibrating the covers against the poles will rip holes in them quickly.

Skai said:

All of these suggestions are good. The main problem I have seen with these is people not getting them secured well. The covers will not last if they aren't really tight. It seems the wind vibrating the covers against the poles will rip holes in them quickly.

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And often even if they are tight they still rip. There are tarp reinforcement/repair tapes available and putting some of that on the sections of tarp that rub on the poles is probably a decent hedge against early ripping, but we haven't tried it so that's a guess on my part.

Phrick said:

And often even if they are tight they still rip. There are tarp reinforcement/repair tapes available and putting some of that on the sections of tarp that rub on the poles is probably a decent hedge against early ripping, but we haven't tried it so that's a guess on my part.

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I put the black rubbery tubing for insulating water pipes around all of the poles. It's between the poles and the cover. It not only eliminated the rubbing problem but also snugged the cover a little which worked to tighten it up a bit more. I think the way we've done this, the only way it's going to rip is from deterioration. It is plastic so it doesn't last forever but it's been up for a year now and not showing any aging.
I used to live in Mesa so I know what you're talking about with lifespan of anything you put outside.

Skai said:

I put the black rubbery tubing for insulating water pipes around all of the poles. It's between the poles and the cover. It not only eliminated the rubbing problem but also snugged the cover a little which worked to tighten it up a bit more. I think the way we've done this, the only way it's going to rip is from deterioration. It is plastic so it doesn't last forever but it's been up for a year now and not showing any aging.
I used to live in Mesa so I know what you're talking about with lifespan of anything you put outside.

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Oh that’s a fantastic idea! I don’t think it would have ever occurred to me. Thanks for sharing it, maybe my next carport will last longer that way

Skai said:

All of these suggestions are good. The main problem I have seen with these is people not getting them secured well. The covers will not last if they aren't really tight. It seems the wind vibrating the covers against the poles will rip holes in them quickly.

Click to expand...

Phrick said:

And often even if they are tight they still rip. There are tarp reinforcement/repair tapes available and putting some of that on the sections of tarp that rub on the poles is probably a decent hedge against early ripping, but we haven't tried it so that's a guess on my part.

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Yes, that's what we've found here. I have my dream barn for my rabbits now, but we take the heavy-duty plastic off our greenhouse each fall so we we don't have to keep buying more every year or two (plus it's easier to just take it off and on than it is to try to repair the plastic).

It's basically a hoop structure made out of cattle panels bent over a wood knee-wall, similar to the carports pictured above, but a lot cheaper to build up here, anyway. The wooden end caps provide good wind resistance as well as a solid structure for a door and an opening window. We scrounged a few of the materials for it, but it only ended up costing about $200 (a comparable greenhouse here will usually run $2k and up), but the building materials are quite a bit cheaper in the Lower 48. And, my husband is a genius, so there's that.

Anyway, here is the basic build before it was finished:

and here it is finished and in the process of being cleared out for the winter (but still not painted...):


Even with the wire structure and the wooden supports on the ends, the combination of the wind and the UV (not much in winter but nearly 24hr/day in summer) is just too much for the covering material. We've talked about using Tyvek, which would still let in a little light but is much sturdier and will last a lot longer (I know some houses covered in Tyvek that are still waiting for the siding several years later!). Tyvek also gets softer and less noisy is it ages. The noise doesn't matter for plants - as far as I know! - but flapping plastic can be stressful for rabbits. However Tyvek and Tyvek tape is quite expensive, so so far we haven't done that experiment.

The greenhouse did actually house some growouts for a month or so before harvest, but I wouldn't want to overwinter rabbits in it!

Oops, somehow double-posted...

Alaska Satin said:

Yes, that's what we've found here. I have my dream barn for my rabbits now, but we take the heavy-duty plastic off our greenhouse each fall so we we don't have to keep buying more every year or two (plus it's easier to just take it off and on than it is to try to repair the plastic).

It's basically a hoop structure made out of cattle panels bent over a wood knee-wall, similar to the carports pictured above, but a lot cheaper to build up here, anyway. The wooden end caps provide good wind resistance as well as a solid structure for a door and an opening window. We scrounged a few of the materials for it, but it only ended up costing about $200 (a comparable greenhouse here will usually run $2k and up), but the building materials are quite a bit cheaper in the Lower 48. And, my husband is a genius, so there's that.

Anyway, here is the basic build before it was finished:
View attachment 43678
and here it is finished, and in the process of being cleared out for the winter (but still not painted...):
View attachment 43694 View attachment 43695 View attachment 43696

Even with the wire structure and the wooden supports on the ends, the combination of the wind and the UV (not much in winter but nearly 24hr/day in summer) is just too much for the covering material. We've talked about using Tyvek, which would still let in a little light but is much sturdier and will last a lot longer (I know some houses covered in Tyvek that are still waiting for the siding several years later!). Tyvek also gets softer and less noisy is it ages. The noise doesn't matter for plants - as far as I know! - but flapping plastic can be stressful for rabbits. However Tyvek and Tyvek tape is quite expensive, so so far we haven't done that experiment.

The greenhouse did actually house some growouts for a month or so before harvest, but I wouldn't want to overwinter rabbits in it!

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Love the hobbit window!