In 2014, I got my first rabbit. As a 15 year old, I did as much research as I could before bringing my rabbit home, but I still managed to do everything wrong (and by everything, I mean almost everything). I went through several cage setups with my rabbits.
The first was an NIC grid cage. It was a good size, but I had several major flaws in Willie's habitat:
corner "small animal" litter box which was way too small.
I made him a home-made hay rack out of a paper towel roll, which was ALSO way too small and couldn't hold nearly enough hay.
I was also feeding him a poor quality pellet and didn't do enough research about the contents.
As you can see, he also used hay balls, but these are more for enrichment than actual hay distribution. They simply just don't hold enough hay to be useful in any way. They're also so small that your rabbit will have a hard time getting the hay out.
This led me to the conclusion of a few things. First, the pet industry is not made for rabbits. Very few things marketed "for rabbits" are actually for rabbits. I mean, do you see that litter box?!
It's definitely hard to find accurate information about rabbit care unless you're specifically looking for it. If you walk into a pet store wanting to buy a rabbit with no prior knowledge, chances are you're not going to get information that's actually helpful. There are so many dangerous misconceptions out there about rabbit care.
When I got Willie at age 15, I thought I did my research. And I really did try. I wanted to give him the best life I possibly could. I got some things right, but not everything. For example, there was a little confusion about his diet, and I definitely wasn't providing him with enough hay at first. The good thing is that I learned as I went, and I continue
d to improve with each cage setup.
My first setup's top floor wasn't horrible. We used plywood for the frame and sticky laminate tiles to waterproof. That was all good and dandy (aside from the hay ball and crappy little litter box). But the bottom floor became a huge problem.
The base of the main floor was made of a foam board with sticky laminate on top. In theory, it sounds kind of smart. In execution, not so much. The lesson? Malleable base = bad. AKA, Willie could chew on it. And he did. Not only was this unfortunate for the floor underneath (which eventually got damaged from pee) it was also bad for Willie because he was actually ingesting it. No bueno.
As you can see in the picture below, on my next cage update, I made an even worse mistake. I thought the rabbits were interested in chewing the foam, so I removed it and got a regular linoleum sheet. Judging by the bite marks, it was not the foam that they were after.
I also was still not providing nearly enough hay in the litter box. (There was a basket of hay outside the litter box that you can't see in this photo, but still).
Things improved a lot on my final cage update. My dad built this custom cage for me out of untreated pine wood. The cage wasn't as big as I would've liked, but it had everything they needed. We were able to make them an awesome (BIG) hay box above the litter box, a hidey house, and they had plenty of rugs for traction. They spent 4+ hours outside the cage per day, so they were really doing great in this setup!
I'm really excited to plan my setup for my next rabbit! I live in an apartment right now, so part of the design process will be figuring out where I have the most available space (or making space).
In the meantime, I will be posting videos weekly, so please stay tuned on my YouTube chennel!
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