Rabbit Cages

Rabbits are a great form of livestock for the suburban "farmer."  They don't make any noise, so the neighbors won't complain, they take up very little space, and are easy to breed.  Rabbits are considered companion animals, so you can have them anywhere you can have a dog.  This same thing goes for goats in most areas too, but goats need more land, are louder, and smelly.  If your neighbors don't mind, having a goat is great for milk and meat, but in most cases this is not reality.

Believe it or not, one rabbit produces more meat in one year than any other meat animal available.  One ten pound doe can produce 320+ pounds of meat annually.  That's an average of more than 6 pounds a week!  Keeping two does and one buck around can produce way more than one family can eat, so there is leftover to sell as meat or as pets!  Another money making prospect is tanning the hides and making crafts or garments from them or even just selling the hide by itself.  Find out more than you ever wanted to know about rabbit meat (including how healthy it is) by clicking here.

So here are the new rabbit cages I bought off Craigslist for $40.  As seen in the picture, the one against the house has a hutch high up accessible by a ladder.  This will be the bucks cage so the babies, aka "kits," won't fall out of the hutch.  The one to the left has the hutch on the floor and has storage space for food on top of the hutch.  These are just a temporary solution for right now.  Wood cages aren't ideal for rabbits as they will chew on the wood.  I will be building simple wire cages for the rabbits and laying hens will be going in these.  The wire cages I will be building are similar to the ones seen in this video.

After I get a privacy fence, I will be moving the chickens out of these cages into a free range type cage with no floor and very portable, most likely with wheels on one end.  It will be similar to this:

This will allow me to move the chickens around the yard to fertilize certain portions of the garden.  This most likely will not be able to happen in my type of neighborhood until my privacy fence is built.  When I move the chickens out of them, the cages I have right now will be going on Craigslist for $40!

For more information about raising rabbits, I recommend this book.