Buy A Rabbit And A Rabbit Hutch To Keep Your Kids Happy

Kids love pets and there’s so many pets to choose from. Big and small, feathered or furry there’s so many choices for parents of children who are clamouring for a pet. But in my view one of the best pets or children is a rabbit. Lets see why a rabbit is a great pet and how you go about housing their rabbit in a great rabbit hutch.

Rabbits make wonderful pets for kids. They are very social, fun to be with and love spending time with people. They can be house trained so you don’t need to worry about mess, and kids love a rabbit as a pet. A pet rabbit generally lives around 10 years so you need to understand that once you have a pet rabbit you will have one for quite some time.

Rabbits have a simple diet. It is perfectly fine to feed them dedicated rabbit pellets which you can buy from a pet shop, as well as complementing that feed with fresh hay and vegetables. A rabbit loves many dark green vegetables like spinach, broccoli leaves and carrots and is also very happy to eat various fruits such as apples and pears. Rabbits are simple and cheap to feed.

But before you rush out and buy a pet rabbit for the children you need to spend a little time thinking about housing their rabbit. You need to buy, or build, a cage for the rabbit, or what is technically known as a rabbit house. This is a cage which allows your rabbit to be housed in comfort whilst still being able to browse on grass outdoors if they wish, and which keeps him protected from predators.

Most rabbit hutches provide a sheltered area where the rabbit can sleep out of the weather as well as an area where you can hop around during the day to exercise and browse on grass. Good rabbit hutches can be moved around from place to place.

You need to be careful using wire on the floor of your hutch. Rabbits don’t like walking on wire and if the hutch is to be lifted off the ground, which can be useful in very cold or damp weather, the wire will need to be covered in some sort of material to protect the rabbit’s feet, for example hay.

If you’ve decided to use wire then it works well allowing the droppings to fall through the wire, making cleaning easier. But again if the hutch is off the ground use a material like slats that allow the rabbit droppings to fall through but which doesn’t hurt the rabbits feet.

If you don’t like the thought of wire on the floor of your rabbit hutch then you can use either wood or metal. Wood will soak up smell more, particularly of urine. Metal is a better material for the floor of your hutch as it’s easier to clean. However if you’re hutch is on the ground it doesn’t allow the rabbit to eat the grass.

What about the size of the cage? Suggestions I have seen is that it should be 3 or 4 times the size of the rabbit, but to me that is way too small. If you have a rabbit hutch this small you must allow your rabbit out to exercise every day.

And you need to clean the hutch and replace the hay each day, so you need a good door on it that allows this.

A rabbit is an excellent pet for kids. Do your research on rabbit breeds, and give yourself plenty of time before you buy one to sort out a solid, effective and well built rabbit hutch.

It’s not hard to build your own rabbit hutch, that’s part of the fun.

Decide On His Rabbit Hutch Before You Buy Your First Rabbit

There’s so many reasons why rabbits make a wonderful pet. You can housetrain rabbits, they don’t eat too much and they make wonderful companions for children as well as adults. Learning about keeping rabbits can be quite involved, but one of the earliest decisions you will need to make is whether you will keep your rabbits indoors or in an outdoors rabbit hutch.

It’s quite true that our little furry friends can be successfully kept indoors or outdoors. However there are different considerations for each. A rabbit is generally kept in a hutch, and can be kept in a hutch as easily outdoors as indoors.

If you’re looking to buy your first rabbit you should make some decisions about his housing before you buy anything. You should be aware for example that most rabbit hutches sold in pet shops or on the Internet are too small. He should be able to take at least 3 consecutive hops and be able to stand up in a hutch. Therefore it should be at least 6-7 feet long and 18 inches high. Many commercial hutches are way smaller than this, and it’s very sad to see rabbits cooped up in tiny cages.

If you have decided to keep your rabbit outdoors his rabbit cage must give him complete protection from creditors like dogs and foxes who are very clever and will get at your rabbit anyway they can. His hutch should have a sleeping area that is thoroughly weatherproof as well as an outdoor exercise area so he can play in the sun during the day.

And if you do have your rabbit in a small rabbit hutch now you can overcome this problem by building him a dedicated rabbit run around the hutch so you can allow them out during the day to run around in the run provided this is also protected from predators.

And if you are keeping your rabbit indoors there are some different considerations. Hopefully there will be no rabbit predators indoors so you do not need a roof on the rabbit hutch. However he will still need a private sleeping area where he can get away from prying eyes and sleep.

And you must avoid putting his rabbit hutch anywhere near a gas appliance, as these can leak toxic fumes. Also avoid putting him anywhere near glass where he would get very hot sun during the summer and where he may get cold during the winter.

Some people dedicate an entire room of the house to their furry friend. This is fine provided you do a thorough check for any hazards in the room including holes into which he can disappear.

There is no doubt that rabbits make a fine pet, but makes decisions well before you buy your rabbit, and in particular organise his housing beforehand.

Finding The Best Chicken Coop Plans

There are many offers of chicken coop plans online, but which of these will result in a good-quality working chicken house? If you are already familiar with keeping hens, are good at detailed planning, making your own blueprints from basic plans or sketches, generating a comprehensive materials list before starting to assemble your chicken coop, as well as being an experienced woodworker, then you will probably get by with any general chicken coop plans you come across.

On the other hand, you might just be wasting your time and money if you get indifferent guidance, and you could end up building a hen house that proved to be a very unhappy and unsafe environment for your poultry. Careful, accurate planning and proper blueprints are essential to making a good chicken coop.

Good planning for making a working chicken coop will include as a minimum:

• Selecting a suitable site for the chicken coop in your yard or garden

• Calculating the right size of chicken house for the number of hens

• Ensuring there is adequate ventilation and lighting in the coop

• Choosing the nesting box and feeder arrangements

• Designing adequate protection from predators

• Considering any services to the chicken coop such as electricity and water supplies

Most people will need expert advice and guidance to do this planning thoroughly, and will depend on good blueprints rather than sketchy plans and vague layout drawings to build a proper hen house. Without such blueprints there is a good chance you will not produce a satisfactory hen house, it might not be strong enough and it might give ready access for predators.

If you adopt a trial-and-error approach you will certainly cost yourself in wasted materials and effort, your enthusiasm will take plenty of knocks and – perhaps most importantly – you will not get the enjoyment and satisfaction you should be getting. In addition, unhappy or unhealthy hens are poor layers, so you will be denied those lovely free-range eggs you had so eagerly anticipated.

A full list of materials for the assembly must be prepared before starting to make the coop. This is essential, otherwise you will come up against inevitable problems during the build when you discover you have missed some bracket or fastener and your local hardware shop has already closed! Making a comprehensive materials list is quite difficult to do properly, and we really recommend that you let a chicken coop expert do it for you.

It is so easy to make mistakes without this expert input. Often these will not become apparent until you have completed the hen house, and by then it could be too late to rectify any problems. Good chicken coop plans are certainly worth the small investment, and usually these come with the step-by-step instructions provided in top-quality chicken coop planning kits. We have discovered that good blueprints and clear instructions actually save money and time in the long run.

We have located and strongly recommend a very experienced chicken expert, Mary Nelson. She can supply the best chicken coop plans, in our opinion, including the all-important step-by-step instructions, lists of materials and professional advice for you to plan and make a hen house that will be exactly the way you wanted it. She will help you avoid all those common errors made by beginners, and also show you how to make a happy, safe and healthy home for your birds.  Mary Nelson is the best source of good hen house designs for making a wonderful chicken coop.

We hope you really enjoy making your chicken coop, and wish you lots of luck!