Making Rabbit Cages

 I've been contemplating getting rabbits for a long time.  When I got Joel Salatin's new book, Polyface Designs, I saw that many of the structures in it were super-sized and not really feasible for me.  The Millenium Feathernet on the cover is designed for 1,000 laying hens--that's only 100 times larger than my flock.  My birds probably wouldn't enjoy the space, and it's for summer only, in any case.  The plans for the archetype broiler tractor are also in the book; that might be worth considering at some point (probably downsized).

In the rabbit section, however, there was something I realized was doable.  It's called the Racken, for rabbit/chicken.  It's designed to be used in a quonset hut or greenhouse setting, with chickens on the floor to scratch through the rabbit manure and mix it in with the mulch.  With a roof it could go outside.  It is scalable--this video shows two cages side-by-side on some frames, and three on bigger platforms--but the twofer would be fine.  Four cages (two on each side), actually eight, because each larger cage unit has two smaller 30" x 30" compartments, one one base.

This could also be scaled to different-sized cages, perhaps even ones that commercially-available.  I looked online and figured I'd save about $200 by building my own.  So that is what I have set out to do.

The first step is to cut the wire to length and straighten it. 

 

It isn't as hard to straighten as might be expected, though it does get harder toward the center of the roll.  I just laid it curve pointing down on the grass, then sculpted the corners where needed to get it more or less straight.  Shown is one of the cage bottom panels, and it only took about two or three minutes to fix.  For the side panels, it's hard to get them completely straight, but relatively easy to get them 80% of the way there.

Next up, once all of the pieces are cut, is to join them together with J-clips.

 This is also fairly quick and easy, with one big caveat.  the two panels being joined do have to fit closely together, or the clip will end up getting wrapped around just one of them.  Then it's a pain to pry off and start over.

With the top portion mostly assembled, it looks like this:

As you can see, it's not completely straight, and the center divider sticks up a fraction because it's resting on the bottom (which is actually the top; it is flipped upside down in the picture).  I haven't figured out a workaround for this yet.  But it seems to work out okay, nonetheless. A little bit of slop in the fitting seems to be okay.

Next up: the structure itself.