owlsfriend
Well-known member
I don't have a lot of room in my shed. And Hubs has nixed the idea of another shed, so I've had to get inventive on cramming cages into the shed I have...I needed three tiers of cages....(want? Need?)
I love my cage builder. He cut himself out of a couple hundred dollars that I would have spent on legs....(except that I would now spend that money on more cages) when he told me the "trade secret". Get metal fence posts with holes in them....mine are U-shaped and 7 ft. tall. The trick is to get them into the ground straight (I have no tips on how best to do this, maybe someone could give us a hint on that.)
My cages alternate 36"X24" and 30"x24" and my "trays" or tubs are all 36X24 and 6" deep....so, I put the posts perpendicular to the wall so the blade of the post would make a right angle to the wall based on the size of the tubs and cages... My walls are made of chain-link, so I put the first row of tubs on the ground and used S-hooks to hang the wire cages (without trays) above them. Then I placed empty tubs on top of the cages and hung trayless cages above those. I have put a row of cages with sliding trays on top of those for a third tier. It's no problem feeding the top tier due to height, but getting rabbits out of those cages involves a step stool.
The tubs underneath overlap....they are cement mixing tubs from Lowe's, (but beware, recent tubs sold there are smaller) and cost less than $14 each--less expensive than polymer trays and hold three times as much. I discovered that the second set of posts has a tiny bit wider gap than the others, so I pull that tub first when I'm cleaning and pull the other tubs from that opening also. And that's the last one I put back when cleaning is done. This is where it pays to put the fence posts "sideways" as it forms less of a barrier to pulling the tubs...
You get the benefit of "legs" on your cages for a fraction of the cost.
I love my cage builder. He cut himself out of a couple hundred dollars that I would have spent on legs....(except that I would now spend that money on more cages) when he told me the "trade secret". Get metal fence posts with holes in them....mine are U-shaped and 7 ft. tall. The trick is to get them into the ground straight (I have no tips on how best to do this, maybe someone could give us a hint on that.)
My cages alternate 36"X24" and 30"x24" and my "trays" or tubs are all 36X24 and 6" deep....so, I put the posts perpendicular to the wall so the blade of the post would make a right angle to the wall based on the size of the tubs and cages... My walls are made of chain-link, so I put the first row of tubs on the ground and used S-hooks to hang the wire cages (without trays) above them. Then I placed empty tubs on top of the cages and hung trayless cages above those. I have put a row of cages with sliding trays on top of those for a third tier. It's no problem feeding the top tier due to height, but getting rabbits out of those cages involves a step stool.
The tubs underneath overlap....they are cement mixing tubs from Lowe's, (but beware, recent tubs sold there are smaller) and cost less than $14 each--less expensive than polymer trays and hold three times as much. I discovered that the second set of posts has a tiny bit wider gap than the others, so I pull that tub first when I'm cleaning and pull the other tubs from that opening also. And that's the last one I put back when cleaning is done. This is where it pays to put the fence posts "sideways" as it forms less of a barrier to pulling the tubs...
You get the benefit of "legs" on your cages for a fraction of the cost.