pen setup plan

akane · Feb 13, 2012

New idea. With complications of who nests where costing litters, the kits all combining, the weanlings in with the adults so everyone has to eat the same thing... I've decided to simplify matters by not having 1 or 2 giant colonies. We will take 1 colony which is 12x12' stall and build 4, 6x6' pens with 2 does in each. Rotating the buck to each pen for a week so we will also know within a week when does are due. The other 12x12' stall will be growout after kits are weaned and marked if necessary. It also will have a small pen for a single doe and it has the cage block. We have some field fencing to use that is small enough to stop adults ( it kept rabbits out of a garden) and we can plywood or kit wire the bottom.

A t post or 2 will anchor major areas with fiberglass rods tied in to pairs for the doorways made of pvc. I'm thinking of just making a pvc rectangle with 1 corner being a 3 way instead of a 90 degree bend so it slides down over the fiberglass rods to spin around them and then closes on the tpost. I could not find a way to build pens without having to go through another pen to get there but if the doors work properly that shouldn't be much of an inconvenience.

I made a picture, ignore everything not lining up, I failed 7th grade art

Honneppoi's pen is about 3x4' and the cage block is about 8' with one cage stack 48" and one cage stack 42" long using the gap in the middle for water bottles. That allows everything heated to be plugged in and in summer I can split the cages for smaller breeds and double my cage numbers. Like right now I have one tiny netherland buck in a 48x30" cage and he looks a bit lost. Mostly he sits in his hay. That cage could be split for potential keepers to grow out and he probably wouldn't notice.

What's left is to decide pairs. I think I may try to put Honneppoi with one of the young does I'm keeping to pair up and then put Aoki who is extremely aggressive about her nest alone in the small pen. Creme doe (I really need to name the poor thing) needs a really laid back partner since she lost her litter with no fight to Aoki on one side and Miyuki on the other. Mostly Aoki. Miyuki only covers 1-2' from her nest with charges that don't usually result in anyone getting injured. Aoki had young rabbits screaming if they were within several feet of her box and I think she may have caused a death by one getting pinned behind the box and repeatedly attacked from behind with no way to escape forward.

Frosted Rabbits · Feb 13, 2012

That looks real do-able. Plenty of easy access to feed and water, plenty of room to add extra feed and water id the numbers should go up, or the prsonal interactions of the growout pen should need it..

Brody · Feb 13, 2012

love it - much like my odd basement set up (3 pens only but big squares like you have)

MaggieJ · Feb 13, 2012

It looks great! I envy you having that kind of space to work with, Akane.

The one thing I wonder about is access to the four floor pens, To feed and water or clean out the back pens, it looks to me as though you have to go through the front pens. I think this could be more awkward than is necessary. If I were organizing this space, I would prefer to have the four pens along one side and use the remaining space for the other things. I realize there are probably very good reasons why you have chosen to do it the way you have, but just thought I'd put out a possible alternative while you are still in the planning stages.

I think you will like having one doe per pen. So much easier to keep track of things.

akane · Feb 13, 2012

I addressed that a little in one of my paragraphs. With well built pvc swinging doors with latches I think access would be easy enough. The problem is pens cannot go the full 24' length due to the stalls being 12x12' so there is a divider at the line of the pens and growout area that we have to pass through. We've removed all the boards so you can walk through it but you have to step over a rim and duck a bar a little. It would be too difficult to make rabbit proof pens that run beyond 12'. Making each pen terminate at the divider opening would result in pens that are only 3' wide and I think does passing each other would be upset along with fitting everything when there are things like the 2' nest boxes and 14" hay silos. I see traffic jams, fighting, blocking each other from food... The only way to make everything open enough for 2 does without going over the divider and making major building logistics was to make squares. Also the 3x4' single pen in the growout side would have to be taken down and 2 more boards behind it removed from the divider to make the 4th doorway if there were 4 strips instead of squares.

I might do it slightly different though. There is a stall door to the aisle on the half the pens are in but it's blocked right now. It could be used to get to the bottom left pen from a different side leading to only 3 doors centered on the tpost and only 1 pen (the back corner, top right on there) not being directly accessed after entering the stall through the sliding stall door. I'd just have to get the door unblocked from the round bale of hay sitting in front of it.

With livestock and smart livestock I'm kind of used to going through door, gate, door... to get to the actual pen with animals.