Rabbit Hutch

This page talks about our rabbit hutch and how it failed. We ended up building a new one. Larger and improved. Less smell. Easier to clean.

Our Old Rabbit Hutch

This is a photo of our first rabbit hutch. The bunnies keep doing their business onto the floor through the cage. It is a very messy thing to clean up every day.

Well this has been one of those projects that looked good on paper. But there ended up being several problems. The first one is the rabbits would not cooperate and urinate in the tray. Despite putting up pee guards, they still managed to pee on the wall and floor, which made a nasty mess and it smelled bad.

The poop did not roll down the drain like I thought it would. It would get jammed up so it had to be washed down the pipes each morning. This added to the mess, was time consuming and made the poop break down because of the water in it. There was no way to sell it as fertilizer. But we will use it in our garden.

Even when we changed to two inch piping, there were still problems. I gave the rabbits some hay, rabbit treats, some chew sticks and these kept clogging up the drains.

This is a closeup of the new bunnies in their cages with trays to catch the number two.

In the picture above are the cages we got with drain pans. We put our newly weaned rabbits in here. It was a pain to keep the drain pans cleaned. And smelled bad. This was not a good idea either. Maybe if you had nothing to do all day, these would be good for using. But we have too much to do to be cleaning these everyday.

Also we had an air conditioner running all day, every day. This was a bit costly.

The rabbit waste would go down a pipe from the cages into the yellow buckets that were set up outside.

The idea was to let the poop and pee drain into buckets outside. Then we would pour this onto a cleaning screen. The buckets caught the poop. Despite putting holes in the bottom, the water did not drain fast enough and the poop starting decomposing in the buckets. Another mess and another bad smell. Time we did not have to process.

Our New Rabbit Hutch

Our new rabbit hutch is on the ground and the floor is dirt so nothing to sweep and mop every day. Just change out the hay once a week.

In the picture above is our new rabbit hutch. More room and better smell. The hay and the poop mix together. We will be able to clean this up much easier than the old system.  We also set the cages away from the wall so the rabbits cannot pee on it. There is no smell and the rabbits seem to be happier. Especially the one to the right. She does not seem to be as tense as she was.

For more on our rabbits, visit this page at Mrs. David's Garden Seeds.