hello all together, today i present a new video of our rabbit hutch. as you see in the background we made some significant changes to our open-air enclosure. let's have a look at them. the open-air enclosure is now large enough to allow an adult to stand upright and we installed a roof. the construction is based on soul spike post supports and timber post that we have assembled to a simple frame work.
on two sides the enclosure is made of aviary mesh the backplane is made of groove beaded boards. this time i spend a real door with handle and a sashlock. the roof is made of cheap polycarbonate sheets. during rain, our old open-air enclosure turned into a swamp of mud and rabbit feces. thanks to the roof, everything is dry and clean now.
today i wear a beanie and a scarf because it is very, very cold. we have -3â°c and that means nothing good for the drinking water. the drinking water freezes in winter. coldness does not harm the animals the rabbits go outside even at minus temperatures. but water supply becomes a problem then, because we have to give them liquid water several times a day. the tap come very handy in summer.
during winter we have to shut it off and carry water with a watering can. this winter should become exceptionally cold and we experiment with a small heating. the infrared heater is used in a terrarium or in pig farming. with 50w it much too weak to keep the water above 0â°c, and it needs of course a wall plug.
our superduper hutch is equipped with electricity. and that's why we can in dark winter times feed the animals during evening. i spend electric light to the open-air enclosure. the cable is mounted on the ceiling to protect it from the rodents teeth. i forgot that one. well, we had some problems with our old hutch. and one of the biggest problems
were, that we did not plate the floor with concrete. we always thought it would be great fun for the animals to dig holes in the ground. and it was. but one needs to know that, if a german giant starts digging, he easily throws half a cubic meter soil into the garden but that's not the only problem. we really had the phenomenon that wild rabbits dug into the enclosure. and that becomes unpleasant very quickly.
we had only ladies in our hutch wich were then expecting babies. the complete floor is made of conrete slabs. this assures no one dugs in and no one out. we littered down sand that can be easily cleaned with a sieve shovel. we feed the rabbits with apples, carrots,
and concentrate. and sometimes a little greens. and sometimes there is a tasty glove to nibble. the new enclosure has become larger it has enough space for the animals and the feed barrel. that is hay. and the rabbits eat it.
sorry, here you have. the hutch we built has proven itself. it is a converted garden shed from the hardware store. very stable, very functional and the materials we used proved to be right. the floors are made of mdf to keep the boards from soaking with urine, welling and rotting, we sealed them with
liquid plastic. rabbits are rodents and they gnaw everything they find in their surroundings. no matter how many branches we give them, the hutch becomes lesser every year. we installed a ventilation grid in one outer wall. that becomes handy in summer times. during winter we close it with a board. the bitumen felt that came with the shed
turned out to be entirely feckless. it became leaky after a very short time. it was not welded, only laid one above the other and stapled. we put somethin better on the roof. these...bitumen...sinus...boards, i don't know the name for that material. it's cheap a litle more sophisticated to process. to cut the boards we
needed an angle grinder. thats a mess. but it is very stable, robust, and lovely leakproof. the name for these things is bitumen roofing sheets. they are assemled to the roof with special nails that have a plastic head. underneath the roof is space for a hay or straw bale. these are ever harder to get since modern farmers press almost only large bales.
and these are not only large, but that heavy that they can not be moved without machines. that is ingeborg. that is hermine that is pã¼nktchen and than we have a few others out there. seven rabbits live in our hutch. three german giants, one widder one lionhead and two rexes.
many things happend in the rabbit hutch and the animals make more work than expected. and now my fingers are frozen and i have to go.