Got my cages and rack built !

[OneAcreFarm]

I wanted to keep it confined to one rack unit and keep the smallest footprint possible. I live in the city and have a small yard and limited space. I can move it down off the deck and onto the lawn(but i'd rather keep them closer to the house).

Drumma, just a thought...since I found this out recently myself putting in a new cage system....if you are keeping them on the deck and doing slant boards, what it is actually COLLECTING the urine/manure? Surely you don't want it all just running down onto the deck? We ended up using plastic gutters, attached to the front just below the edge of the slant boards, set on a horizontal slant with a bucket underneath. The only issue I see with your setup is that the 5" space for the slant boards will make it hard to get the poop to actually drop into the gutter. The angle will make it overshoot the edge. We had to raise the back edge of our slant boards to a more acute angle to get it to consistently drop into the gutter. Just a thought...

 

[drumma]

Shannon - Yeah I definitely don't want a poopy deck. I plan on doing some sort of a gutter system. I haven't quite worked out how yet. It had never occured to me to have them slant towards the front. You're a genius That would allow me to push the rack right up against the railing and provide much easier access for cleaning the gutters. I'm pretty much following the design I saw at http://www.downtherabbithole.ca/images/rabbitry/completeb.jpg. I can change the angle of the slope from back to front fairly easily.

I just picked up the Coroplast tonight... 75$ later eeek. I got 3-4x8 sheets. So I'll cut each one down for each level and have some left over to cover the sides to reduce over spray. I'm sure this will take some experimenting to get it all the way I like.

Thanks for the ideas and keep em coming.

PS. My initial thought for temporary weather proofing for the summer is to basically wrap a a tarp around the back and sides. And then cover the top with one as well. I will eventually get a plywood roof put on with an overhang on all sides. I like to leave the front open so I can see them from the house and to get fresh air and so heat won't be an issue. I'll have to see which way the wind blows when it rains to see how wet they'll get and if I'll have to come up with a better solution.

 

[OneAcreFarm]

Shannon - Yeah I definitely don't want a poopy deck. I plan on doing some sort of a gutter system. I haven't quite worked out how yet. It had never occured to me to have them slant towards the front. You're a genius That would allow me to push the rack right up against the railing and provide much easier access for cleaning the gutters. I'm pretty much following the design I saw at http://www.downtherabbithole.ca/images/rabbitry/completeb.jpg. I can change the angle of the slope from back to front fairly easily.

Well, I have a small space too, and behind would not work for me, so I put them in front. It seems to be working well. The urine all runs right down to the gutter and then into the bucket. The poops have to be pushed along the gutter into the bucket, but that is better than sweeping them up off the floor. I am going to raise the back end of the slant board a bit and some of the poops are overshooting the gutter. Otherwise, it is working well.

 

[drumma]

Alright, got the poop chutes and gutters installed.

I ended up buying 3 4x8 sheets of coroplast and it turned out that I had enough left over after cutting the slant boards that I was able to fashion some gutters out of it.

Here's the updated pics.

Front view with the watering system semi-installed. I still need to secure the tubes somehow. I was using twist ties but I want something a little more secure but easily removeable.


Back view. I ended up having to slant it back instead of towards the front otherwise I wouldn't be able to slide the cages out the front. If I did it again I wouldn't put 3 cages on one rack. It just makes everything too cramped. But I think this will work fine.


Another shot of the home made coroplast gutter. They are angled so everything should run to one side and fall in the bucket below. I think it might need some fine tuning once I see it in action. The top gutter is different than the bottom two. I made the bottom ones a little taller in the back to prevent overshooting.




Thanks for all the great ideas and posting your setups. It helped a lot with the design of mine.

 

[OneAcreFarm]

Looks great, but I think you will run into the same problem as us. The urine will do fine, but some of the poops are gonna overshoot your gutters. Since you cannot raise the angle of your slant boards, you will need to somehow raise the outside edge of your gutters. JMO.

 

[drumma]

Yeah, the top one might but the bottom ones should be fine. I made them a little higher in the back. Once I actually get the rabbits I'm sure I'll have to tweak it.