The decision has been made! You are going to get rabbits. It doesn't matter whether you are getting one or two for pets for your children, a few for show purposes, some for home meat production, or hundreds for a large commercial operation, you must have housing for the animals. This generally must be built before you get them and, in many cases, before you have any experience raising rabbits. Housing may mean a cage in the garage or carport, a hutch in the back yard or a special building with cages for hundreds of animals.

If many rabbits are to be housed, the investment in the housing will probably will be large. After the housing is built, changes are expensive, so errors in design may have to be tolerated for a long time. As a result, it is much better to be sure of the design you want before construction starts. The problem is that it is difficult to decide what sort of facilities you need if you haven't had experience with rabbits.

That works in one situation may not be suitable in another area or in the hands of another manager. Each manager has to make his own decisions as to what will work for him. The need to find out what will work is the reason for one of the basic rules in rabbit production: "Don't go into the rabbit business, grow into it." Start slowly with a few animals to get your system worked out, then gradually start expanding. This is also true of your housing. If you have a design that you think will work for you, assemble a small unit to test it. If you find you need to make changes, you can then make them on the small unit that you already have and change the design in future additions.

Ventilation, sanitation, and observation are three extremely important concepts in successful rabbit management. Rabbits need good ventilation to reduce ammonia, moisture and the numbers of disease-causing microorganisms in the air of the rabbitry. The rabbitry must be kept clean to reduce disease in the stock, and the individual rabbits must be observed regularly for any abnormalities that might occur. The housing for rabbits should be constructed to promote ventilation, to provide for easy cleaning, and to allow easy, direct observation of each rabbit.

Most publications about rabbits have some information about housing but the material is often so general that it is of little practical use. That information also often omits many of the important "hows" and "whys" that are learned through experience-a difficult and expensive way to learn. This publication brings together information on rabbit housing and includes the reasons why certain designs, materials, or methods are favored by rabbit raisers. This information is especially important when the preferred method is more expensive or more difficult than an alternative method.

Working with rabbits can be a rewarding experience and one that can provide many hours of enjoyment, but the housing and facilities must be designed correctly from the start to provide facilities suitable and comfortable for the rabbits that live there and for the manager who will spend many hours working there.

This rabbit housing manual covers:

• Requirements for rabbit housing
• Types of housing
• Construction of cages and hutches
• Types of wire and building materials
• Cage types
• Building cages
• Hutches
• Rabbitry buildings
• Location
• Ventilation
• Interior design
• Cage location
• Feeders
• Watering systems
• Nestboxes
• Waste handling
• Lights
• Office area