A Better Way to Raise Rabbits

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Rabbits have always been a welcome part of our homestead. Cottontails are economical to raise, provide us with a steady supply of meat for the table and manure for the garden (my strawberries were always puny until I began to bury rabbit pellets between the plants) . . . plus come in handy as bartering material.

We are, in short, mighty fond of our bunnies but I do hate to clean row after row of small cages, and place feed and water in dozens of individual pens. And I certainly don't like to see my animals shivering in their cages on a cold winter's day. (Here in Nebraska, we get a lot of wind during the winter, which makes it even harder to keep our rabbits cozy on a minus-15° day.)

Several years ago—after losing a number of litters to the cold—I said to myself, "There's got to be a better way to care for rabbits!" And I was right: There is a better way. All it involves is taking the bunnies out of their cages and moving them indoors . . . into a rabbit house.

Our rabbit house consists of an 8' X 20' outbuilding with a southeastern exposure and storm windows along the east- and south-facing walls. (The building's favorable exposure—and its storm windows—made it a lot less difficult to keep warm than it could've been.) To convert the structure into a dormitory for our rabbits, we spread six inches of coarse gravel over the dirt floor . . then covered the ground completely with sheets of recycled corrugated tin, leaving about 1/4" of space around the edges of each 3' X 6' sheet for good drainage. (We anchored these sheets to the ground with large spikes.) After this, we covered the whole floor with twelve inches of straw.

Next, I gathered together all the orange crates, ammunition boxes, and other wooden containers I could find, boarded the boxes up (leaving just enough of an entry space to accommodate one doe), and arranged them along two of the building's walls. Over these nest boxes I scattered a couple feet of prairie hay and straw . . . then left a large mound of the material in the center of the room. Finally, I put down one long trough for water and another for feed . . . and the rabbit house was complete.

Now it was time to move the bunnies into their new home. Frankly, I was a little apprehensive: I worried that my two registered bucks (a New Zealand and a California Giant) might fight and injure one another, or that the does themselves would start quarreling. Also, the nights were already getting pretty cold (it was late fall) and I didn't know if the rabbits could take both the low temperatures and the change of homes.