How To Choose A Rabbit Cage

Hi. My name's Marie, and I'm the Deputy Manager of the small animal department at Wood Green Animal Shelters. Today I'm going to show you how to choose suitable rabbit accommodation.

When you're looking into choosing accommodation for your rabbits, it's really important to make sure you can provide the biggest space as possible. Rabbits can live for ten years and they're very energetic. So it's really important you can find a really big run and a really big hutch to keep them active, happy and healthy.

It's really a good idea to make sure that you can find a hutch and a run that you can join together, or you can pop a hutch inside the run. Rabbits need to have freedom of access, and ideally, they should be 24/7. A rabbit that's confined to a hutch is really prone to health issues, such as obesity, fly strike, and arthritis, and even behavioral issues such as aggression.

As you can see from this demonstration here, we have a large ten foot run with a five foot hutch inside. The rabbits have the free choice to move between both the run and the hutch, whenever they want to. In the run, it's a really great idea if you can provide it with all sorts of enrichments, such as dig trays filled with soil or peat, hanging baskets filled with hay, and all sort of hidey holes.

And even plant pots filled with herbs, garden plants such as wild geranium, roses, and even blackberry brambles. You'll also notice in the run that we've got logs. And these can be fruit tree, willow tree; It's brilliant for their teeth, to chew on, and also just for them to jump on and hide underneath.

It's a really good idea to give your rabbits lots of hidey holes and areas where they can jump up and down, so they've got different levels, they've got different textures, and this really would mimic what they'd be doing in the wild. It's important to remember, in the wild, they would be living under the ground. They'd be going up and down hills.

They'd be chewing around log areas, and they'd be running in and out of different grass piles. So really think about this when you're setting up your accommodation, so that it really can mimic this and they can be as happy as possible. Rabbits can live up to ten years, even twelve, thirteen in some cases.

So you really want to keep it active, and keep it interesting for them. Otherwise you are going to have bored rabbits. Obviously, you want to make sure that they can choose where they can go in and out of.

Rabbits, domestic ones, are very similar to that of the wild. Their coats grow continuously and they can molt out so they're prepared for the summer but are also prepared for the winter. This way, and this means that your rabbits can stay out all year round in this hutch and run setup.

So they, as long as you put lots and lots of hay in the hutch, and amongst the little houses and boxes, they're going to have shelter. But they've got the choice to choose if they want to go in there. In many cases, rabbits love charging around in the fresh rain, and they even have a little dig around in the snow.

And in the summer time, they'll often be relaxing and hiding underneath the log piles and hay piles. So make sure you try and think about this all year round. Make it fun, make it interesting, and you know, space as possible. .