Must Haves for New Set Up... Give Me your Best Advice!

[TF3]

We are building a rabbit shed.
On a tight budget.
SO I would love to hear your best advice for convenience, cleanliness, thriftiness!

We will have Flemish Giants (I am saying two 'maternity hutches'~ large enough for mama and babies, and maybe 4 other FG size hutches), meat mutts and my daughter is deciding on a smaller pet breed.
It will be a windowed w/ door building as we live in the woods in northern Ontario, so night predators and cold weather are both issues.
We plan to pasture as much as possible (we have a fenced acre which is cleared) in safe paddocks, so I think our hutch sizes can be suitable for breed, but don't have to be palatial.

I am thinking we need:
~ventilation (windows)~ other?
~a worktable (feed can be stored under or above on shelves)
~Water source (hose) and (drain)
~electricity

For space, and because we do need to have them behind four walls, that hutches with dropping trays will best, so we can stack.
I'd like to limit shavings, so dropping trays/ boards have appeal!
Would you do modular/ moveable stacks?
A PVC or other frame?

Back to back down the center or around the walls? (wooden)
Hanging seems impractical with our Giants.

Tell me what you would do, please?
I need the hive mind to get mine going!
Many thanks!

Lori

 

[katiebear]

I have Flemish crosses, so we built hutch style cages. reinforce the flooring, or you will be redoing them. There is a lot of nice waste containment systems in the show us your set up section. I wish I had gone with the slant board leading to gutters leading to buckets - system..Mine goes directly into the dirt floor and I have to rake at least twice a week.. and the system makes berry collecting easier.... I am in the desert so no walls for me, tarps for winter, shade cloth for summer..the roof is a reperposed tin roof from a mobile home back porch...and a misting system.. Best of luck to you and :welcomewagon: Stick around there is a bunch of nice friendly and helpful people here..

 

[Dood]

My rabbit barn is brick up to 4 feet and then 1x2 welded wire that I board over in winter.

It is located in a small grove of pines so there is plenty of shade and the wind is cut down.

The roof is metal and has a 1.5 foot overhang to ensure no driving rain can get in.

I have two rows of stacked cages with the lower row about 4 inches off the concrete floor and wastes drop directly to floor and I sweep and shovel it out once or twice a week. Less in the winter as it freezes solid - unless you plan to heat the shed I'm not sure how well a gutter system will work when it is below freezing for several months. You will likely end up with pee icebergs or glaciers in their potty corner and trays frozen to the floor wire if it gets too deep and isn't chipped out of trays frequently

The standard size floor wire is 1 x 1/2 but I find the poops of my 12 pound American Chinchillas are too big to fit through and their poop corner is quickly caked with bunny berries - commonly called "poop pancakes" - and I am now breeding for smaller rabbits in the 8 pound range to eliminate this problem. I would suspect that a 15 to 20 Flemish might have even bigger turds and you may want to think about custom cages with bigger spacing in the floor wires but still sturdy enough to support the rabbits weight without sagging and possibly causing sore hocks

I just carry water out for my 12 breeders and 16+ grow outs and run a hose when I wash the floor and walls

There is electricity as the barn is heated to just above freezing in the winter to keep the water from icing over and for lighting so I can breed all year round without the does becoming less fertile with the shorter light period in the winter

 

[Marinea]

My biggest piece of advice would be to plan your space, then plan it again.
- Decide on breeds, and how many you plan to keep;
- then plan on cage sizes;
- list out what all you need to store (feed, hay, travel cages, cleaning tools, etc);
- decide if you need quarantine cages away from the others;
- draw out your space to allow for all of the above, including good space for maneuvering around cages and moving them around;
- live with it a while, and think of all the "what ifs";
- then draw it again, giving yourself maybe 25% more room.

I have refigured my rabbitry a few times in just a couple of years. Getting the layout down (I used an existing covered space) was a lot of work. It helped a lot that I was set on the number of rabbits I wanted and how I was going to breed them, as that made the cage space needed a set thing. At this point, my rabbits are all where I want them, but I need more storage space (nest boxes, travel/sales cages, hay, feed, extra crocks and feeders, cleaning tools, they all take up more space than you think).

Best of luck to you! And we would love to hear more about your ideas as you go along.

 

[TF3]

Thank you so much!
Excellent points~ yes, poop size is an issue!
And frozen pee, too! Yikes!

Marinea~ great way to start!
My husband is pretty jazzed about this, so as long as I feed him the wants and needs that the animals need, it will keep him from going too crazy with his own , um, 'innovations'.

Lori

 

[wamplercathy]

Might I ask why you chose Flemish Giants? :? I like to hear about every ones breed of choice. :reading1: I personally went with NZW does, and a NZWxCal buck. I had thought about the FG but don't have the facilities to house such a large breed.

 

[TF3]

Cathy-- I'm still not sure if I'll stay with FGs LOL
I really like my bunnies, they are very easy going and have been so easy to settle in even though both my buck and doe were never handled prior to our bringing them home (8 months and a year old).
But they are big and slow growing. We initially planned to get one for a pet, but I bought a pregnant doe