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Breeding rabbits requires patience and knowledge of their physiology. Without this, it will not be possible to achieve results. In winter, rabbits feel better in a heated room specially designated for them, which is called a rabbitry. For home breeding, a small frame-type barn is suitable.
What should be rabbitry
In order for rabbits to feel normal, not get sick, grow well and multiply quickly, they need to create a certain atmosphere. They are demanding on the conditions of detention, under poor conditions they often get sick. To prevent this from happening, they need the following conditions:
- The optimum temperature is 14-16°C. The temperature in the rabbitry is determined in a place remote from heaters, walls, windows and doors. Both overheating and hypothermia have a negative effect. When the temperature drops, more feed is required, which is disadvantageous. But a smooth rise or fall in temperature is not as detrimental as sudden changes. From all this it follows that it is necessary to build an insulated rabbitry, with the possibility of heating and air conditioning. The most justified are rabbitries built using frame technology, with mineral wool insulation (thickness is calculated depending on the region). No less attention should be paid to the insulation of the floor and ceiling. Roofing material can be without insulation, it must provide protection from moisture. In this case, it is necessary to take care of the insulation of the ceiling. The cheapest way is to pour a layer of expanded clay on the ceiling, apply a layer of clay mixed with straw on top, and then you can even throw on dried leaves on the dried clay – for additional thermal insulation.
For normal health requires certain conditions - Rabbits are demanding on air humidity – it is necessary to maintain 60-75%.
- Drafts have a negative effect on the health of rabbits. This is another argument in favor of frame buildings – with proper construction, there should be no drafts. However, the rabbitry must be ventilated because they need fresh air, and the gases that are released from the urine and feces of rabbits must also be removed. But the speed of air movement should not be more than 0,3 m / s. Usually they make an inlet, taken with a movable grate at floor level in one corner of the rabbitry and an exhaust pipe under the ceiling in the other. A damper can be placed in the exhaust pipe. With the help of a movable grate and gate, you can adjust the speed of air movement in the rabbitry depending on weather conditions. If natural ventilation is not enough, fans are placed in the exhaust or supply pipe with the ability to control the speed of rotation of the blades (there must be several modes).
- The second factor that affects the state of the atmosphere in the rabbitry is the regularity of harvesting and the design of the cages. About cells – a little lower, and here – about cleaning. It should be regular – at least 2-3 times a week. The main indicator is the presence or absence of a strong odor.
- In order to release less ammonia, it is necessary to organize the collection of feces so that the urine is separated from the feces. If the collection goes to the trays under the cages, a slope and a chute are made in them, along which the urine is drained into a separate container. If waste is collected through gutters into a pit (with large numbers of rabbits), ditches should be made so that urine seeps into a lower, meshed gutter. This is a rather difficult task, since one part is separated from the other with a mesh, and it often clogs. To keep everything in working condition, you have to clean it often.
Building a rabbitry is a serious scale
The rate of weight gain and the density of the fur are also affected by the illumination of the rabbitry and the duration of daylight hours. Rabbits are most active at dusk and at night. Bright lighting is undesirable for them. A sufficient level of illumination is 50-70 lux for adults, 25-30 lux for fattening young animals. At the same time, the duration of daylight hours is 16-18 hours, so in winter the backlight is obligatory, but dim. To make it more comfortable when servicing the rabbitry, install several additional bulbs above the cages, but turn them on to the second switch (or to the second key). Another option is to install a brightness control (dimmer). It is installed instead of a conventional switch, allows you to change the illumination by turning the control knob.
Rabbit cages
The easiest way to keep rabbits is in cages under a canopy in the open air. But this option is available in regions with more or less mild winters. Often this type of content is practiced at the beginning of the “career” of the rabbit breeder, but gradually they come to the conclusion that the rabbitry is necessary. It’s just that during the winter the livestock often decreases greatly, the feed consumption increases much, and the weight gain is very small. It turns out that it is more profitable to build a rabbitry and heat it.
On the other hand, in the summer, in the open air, rabbits feel better, grow faster, while the problem of air quality is solved in the “automatic mode”. The length of the day in the summer is close to optimal in most areas, so it is often necessary to build both a rabbit shed and an enclosed rabbitry. Cells at the same time try to make light weight, portable. With the onset of heat, they are taken out into the street, in the fall, before a cold snap, they are brought into the rabbitry. Summer time is used for repair and disinfection of the premises. It is best to whitewash the walls with lime mixed with a chlorine solution. This is done at the beginning of summer. Chlorine quickly disappears, but does its job – kills fungi and parasites.
Dimensions and design of rabbit cages
The size of the cages for rabbits depends on the breed. The larger the rabbits, the more space they need. On average, the height of the cage is 500-700 mm, the roof can be sloping back, then the height at the back is 50-100 mm less. The depth of the cage is 50-70 cm. It is more difficult with the width – cages of different sizes are made for males and females. In cages for rabbits, it is desirable to fence off the mother liquor – a closed, small-sized volume in which the rabbit will make a nest. Without taking into account the queen cell, the length of the cage for males and females is the same – 500-800 cm.
There are several options for the device of the mother liquor:
- In spacious cells, a cube of boards of a suitable size is placed, in which a hole is made for passage.
- Immediately, during construction, a part of the cell for the mother liquor is fenced off.
- Wide removable doors are made on the sides of the cage. Before the rabbit should have offspring, the doors are removed, the queen cell is hung up (reliable fastening is necessary).
The optimal size of the mother liquor: depth 80 cm, width 60 cm, height 40 cm (or as it turns out according to the dimensions of your cage). It is desirable to make a shelf inside the cage or above the mother liquor. On it, the rabbit will hide from the annoying baby. In this case, she will not accidentally trample them, as happens if there is no shelf.
A hole is made from the queen cell into the main cell. It should not start at the level with the floor, there should be a threshold of at least 5 cm. In the early days, it will keep the babies inside the mother liquor.
How to make a floor
Regardless of the type of keeping of rabbits, the cage must be dry. Therefore, a solid floor is made very rarely, it is better – slotted, with large gaps or from a metal mesh with a small cell. If the floor is made solid (from a piece of moisture-resistant plywood or OSB), then it is made inclined towards the back wall (you can also towards the front, but this is less convenient). A grate or net is nailed to the back of the floor, through which urine is poured out, excrement falls out.
It is much better to make a double floor – the first is slatted, the second is solid. For a slatted floor, wooden planks 20-25 mm wide are taken, stuffed with a gap of 15 mm. All wastes, both liquid and solid, normally fall through such gaps. Instead of planks, you can use a rigid mesh with thick wire and small cells.
The lower level of the floor – the pallet – is often made of galvanized iron, preferably from a single piece. At the same time, a slope is formed (usually in the center of the cell or between two neighboring ones), and in the center – a gutter. The height of the pallet part is 25-35 mm. Less is inconvenient, more is not necessary.
To make the metal last longer, it can be treated with drying oil. If it is necessary to splice pieces, make the connection so that everything drains, and it is advisable to coat it with bituminous mastic so that sewage does not flow onto the floor of the rabbitry.
At the same time, the lower tier of the floor must be movable – so that it can be pulled out and washed / cleaned. For this, corners are stuffed, on which a sheet of metal rides, like on a sled.
It is not necessary to make the lower tier of the floor for each cell. It can be common to two or three located nearby. If these are cages for rabbits, you usually get a common tray for two cages – on the sides of the queen cells. If cells of young animals for fattening or males are located in a row, three cells can be combined.
Still sometimes flat slate is used as the lower floor. But in this case, you can organize a drain only back or forward and only into the gutter that runs along the cage – the sheet cannot be bent in any way.
Doors
Doors are made mainly with mesh. A frame is knocked down from the bar, on which the mesh is pulled. Twist nails or self-tapping screws so that their tips do not stick out inside the cage. It is better to stuff the mesh so that it is “flush” from the side of the cage. So there is less chance that rabbits will gnaw through the door. Those who are more friendly with welding weld the frame from a small corner, pull the eraser onto a steel wire 3-4 mm in diameter, and this wire is welded to the door.
The size of the door is more convenient than a large one – it will be more convenient for you to serve the cage. Constipation – ordinary hooks or latches, they also make a piece of bar in the old fashioned way, which spins on a nail nailed into its middle. But this kind of constipation is very unreliable.
If carpentry is not your forte, to make the door stiffer, you can stuff a bar obliquely. He will not let the door warp (as in the photo above). Please note that the bar is stuffed on the outside – so the rabbits cannot gnaw it.
Roof
You can cover rabbit cages with any inexpensive material. But at the same time, we must remember that overheating and hypothermia are fatal for rabbits. Therefore, simply throwing a piece of metal or any material based on it will not work. It is better to use a material with low thermal conductivity. For example, you can stuff plywood (moisture resistant, building), OSB and any other similar material.
If the cells will stand on the street, without a canopy, something needs to be laid on the sheet material to protect them from precipitation. In more northern areas, or when installing the cage in the shade, roofing felt or more modern waterproofing material can be laid. It can not be welded, but glued to bituminous mastic.
Another option is to lay slate, better – wave. Moreover, it is better to raise it above the cage by 15-25 cm. This will create an air gap, it will not be hot in the cage. And the resulting gap can be used for drying / drying grass. Dried in the shade, it retains more nutrients.
Sennik, drinkers, feeders
For rabbits, not so much equipment is needed – hay, feeders for bulk small feed, drinkers. The design of the drinkers should be such that it can be easily removed – they must be washed, the water changed. For these purposes, some kind of trays are usually adapted, under which they make a “seat” from a strip of metal, fixed on the door (the most convenient option) or on the wall, close to the door.
There is one very good version of a drinker from the category of “cheap and cheerful”. A piece of sewer pipe with a diameter of 100 mm is used as a “cup holder”. Cutting height – 80-100 mm. A cut-off 2-liter plastic bottle is inserted inside this ring. The bottle is cut flush with the “glass holder”, only a strip 2-3 cm wide and 5-7 cm long remains so that the glass can be easily pulled out.
Senniki are made either between two cages, by beveling adjacent walls in the shape of the letter V. This method is more convenient when building cages for rabbits (there are several photos above). The second option for the cages of males and young animals – one of the walls (or part of the wall) is made lattice, a piece of plywood, OSB, a shield knocked down from planks, etc. are attached to it on hinges. Fix it in the desired position with a hook, rope, wire.
In principle, if there is not enough space on the side, such a sennik can also be made in front, on the door. It’s just that on the door, in addition to the drinking bowl, they often nail / make another feeder.
Feeding troughs are made from what they can. Someone has plastic or metal trays attached, someone knocks them out of wood, they even try to make them out of drywall. The option seemed interesting – an attached piece of a profile for drywall of a large section (pictured below).
You can make a tree feeder, but the edges must be beaten with tin.
If you have some tin work skills, you can make a feeder from galvanized sheet.
To get rid of the dusty part of the feed, several small holes are made in the bottom of the feeder.
What materials to make the frame and walls
The frame for the cages in the rabbitry is made from a wooden beam or from a supporting (wall) galvanized profile for drywall; welded frames from a metal pipe are quite rare. They are the most reliable, but also the heaviest. More suitable for permanent installation in a rabbitry.
The lightest cells are obtained from the profile, but the choice of materials is very limited – heavy ones cannot be used. When using a beam, there are no questions about the weight of the material, but there is a problem – rabbits gnaw on wood. Therefore, they try to make cells so that there are fewer protruding corners – they cannot gnaw on even surfaces.
As you saw in the photo, the walls of rabbit cages are made from different materials – plywood, OSB, wooden boards and planks. Often used by anyone who has. The most problematic places are upholstered with tin or a mesh is pulled on top – this also does not make it possible to gnaw on wood. There are cells that are almost entirely made of mesh. In them, young animals for fattening feel good.
Photo report on the manufacture of a cage in a rabbitry from a galvanized profile
This option is suitable for those regions where wood is expensive or for those who have a lot of remnants of the profile after construction / repair. In the manufacture of cages from the dimensions, they are adjusted to the existing molding – small deviations in one direction or another are permissible, but the rabbits should be spacious in the cage.
This cage was built for a female with rabbits up to 20 days old. It consists of two departments. The main part is 55 * 75 * 55 cm, the mother liquor is 35 * 55 * 30 cm. A reinforced profile goes to the racks, the usual work on the crossbars – as usual with drywall – pieces are fixed with self-tapping screws with a screw (fleas).
The floor in the main part is made of a bar 2 cm thick, 5 cm wide. The planks are attached to the profile with self-tapping screws. It is necessary to screw in the screws so that they are easy to unscrew – if (or rather, when) the bar is gnawed, it will be easy to replace it with a new one.
In the mother liquor, the floor is solid, without cracks. If in winter you are not sure that it will be warm enough in your rabbitry, it is better to make a double floor in this part, and lay the gap with insulation – at least expanded clay. In this case, even with a sharp cold snap, the kids will not freeze – their mother usually warms them from above. If it is warm from below, they will not get sick.
The height of the mother liquor is 20 cm below the main cell. From the inside, in a cage, it turns out a shelf on which the rabbit will escape from the annoying baby.
So that the outer joints of plywood do not gnaw, we close them with perforated metal corners. You just need to look for those that are thicker. We cut the edges of the corners at 45 ° so that they do not bulge or stick out.