Fishtail Cottage's New Rabbit Hutch...

Its hard to believe it's already been five years since we brought home our bunny, "Bam Bam". He is a Mini Holland lop and has been such a sweet pet for our daughter.  His original cage was perfect, but after the five years it literally began to fall apart!  The roof was slowly beginning to come apart, the bottom literally was about to fall out from under him and all the chewing that went on inside that cage didn't help. 

We recently started shopping for a new cage for our Bam Bam - however, it seems any bunny hutch was ridiculously priced and very cheaply made.  So I enlisted a friend to help build us one.  Already having a rabbit hutch and being a parent to chickens as well, it is important to me to have an easy to maintain (and clean) living space for pets.  After several conversations of the 'vision' that was in my head we decided it was best to go ahead and order a kit from Wayfair.com.  The idea was close to what I wanted and seemed easy enough to customize it. Click here for the link...

Wondering ways we decided to customize this?  The bottom is meant to be open so that the bunny can have access to free roam in what I assume to be grass. However, for us that doesn't make a lot of sense because for one, we have gravel where this cage will be and also we have critters (raccoons mice and rats) that would be happy to dig underneath and access the food and perhaps hurt our rabbit.  So it was necessary to put both a solid bottom and a wire bottom - its good to have different textures for the bottom of a rabbits feet.  Also, they like to lay down and laying on wire isn't always comfortable. For easy cleaning the hutch needed to be lifted up off the ground so that I could clean easily by just hosing it out. This roof had to go - not a fan of it being so basic. And of course, because I already have a white chicken coop and picket fence in the same area that hosts the bunny cage, I wanted to also have the cage white.

It might sound silly, but it was crucial that the cage was "cute" from all angles.  Which I am so happy now that I decided that was important as I decided not to set the cage back inside the picket fence where the coop area is. 

Setting the cage on a platform of 16x16 pavers has worked out nicely (same thing I did with my chicken coop) to just hose any fallen debris right into the landscape. We also had a perfect pan that came from a storage bin that we no longer used that slides perfect underneath where the droppings can be dumped in the garden as well.

We ended up facing the hutch 'south' that way the bunny can hide in the upper portion of the cage where it is fully enclosed during the wind and rain. This area of the hutch slides out in case "Bam Bam" has an accident up there - it's easy to hose off to keep it clean. We keep cedar shaving up there for him to sleep on and stay warm.  I also will keep the food, timothy hay and the salt up there as well so it will stay dry when its windy and rainy.  We always keep two water bottles in the cage because I worry about the water running low in the summer months.

I am very pleased with how the whole 'vision' and implementation of the rabbit hutch turned out.  I think Bam Bam feels pretty special too!

Thank you for coming by to take a peek at our new bunny cage.  xoxo, tracie