The First Bunny Space
Our first bunny hutch was built in 2009, I think it was, and we didn't take a lot of pictures of it. Had we known it was just the first of many, we would possibly have taken more pictures, but at the time we just needed somewhere to put the two new English angora bunnies. Well, it wasn't much and I suppose the best thing about the first bunny space we had here at Hillside Farm is that it was temporary. Had we been more organized, we would have prepared their space before getting the bunnies, but sometimes things happen out of order. Since we needed a bunny space pretty quickly, it was assembled out of whatever was at hand. The house we were living at when we started with bunnies was pretty rural and remote so blithely going off to the hardware store didn't happen very much.
We started with a big wire rack for the floor of the hutch. That pretty much determined the size of the hutch as well. It was nice and wide, somewhere close to four feet, but it was pretty narrow since it was somewhere under two feet deep. It was probably around 42" x 18" which worked barely for two bunnies. Fortunately, bunnies are adaptable and even more fortunately, it was temporary.
The foundation was stacked concrete blocks. Then the big rack was added for the floor and some sides were made of wood. This was placed up against the concrete block wall of the bath house thinking it would save using something for the back wall. The top was an old window which let in some light as well as a bit of board to cover the area the window didn't. The hutch doors were made of some old oven racks.
It worked okay for a temporary rabbit hutch although there were some drawbacks. The wires on the rack we used for the floor should have been closer together. It was okay for adult rabbits, but it wasn't good for baby rabbits. It was too wide that newborn babies were able to fall through it, so we lost the first litter. Part of that was we were not expecting a litter at all since the buck was supposed to have been too young, although had we been more experienced bunny people, we would have known how to tell. Another drawback was that when we moved the hutch away from the wall, the wall was a mess.
The Remembrance of the First Bunny Space, aka 'Ooops!'
Our first bunny space wasn't exactly an unqualified success but the bunnies survived it and we learned a lot from it. The bunnies were moved out of this first hutch as soon as the new second attempt at a proper bunny hutch in the back yard was ready. The second hutch was also made of whatever materials we had on hand, but it was built bigger and much more baby bunny friendly. The link for the next hutch is:The First 'New and Improved' Bunny Hutches
