Our meat rabbits live in colonies. This is a bit controversial in the meat rabbit community, as the general consensus (and the advice given in most of the books I’ve read on the topic) is that cages are the safest, cleanest, and most responsible environment in which to raise rabbits. For that reason, we started with cages. But we hated that of all the animals we raised for meat, our rabbits had the lowest quality of life – so we experimented with switching to a colony a couple of years ago, and we’ve never looked back.

The Advantages

For the Rabbits

The difference between a rabbit in an individual cage and a rabbit in a colony is night and day. Rabbits in cages tend to be pretty boring, and you can imagine why. They sit in the corner, generally avoid you, and that’s about it. If you’re lucky, you might occasionally catch a rabbit grooming itself. Many rabbits do just fine on wire, but some develop sores on their feet. In a typical cage, there’s nowhere to nestle in, and no variances in environment to explore. Even when they have a lot of space by cage standards, it’s a matter of a few square feet – not really much room to get hopping.

When we moved our rabbits to a colony, we realized that they loved running and playing (though, initially, what you’ll see is chasing and fighting as they establish a pecking order). We also realized that they grunt to each other and participate in communal grooming. While many people believe that bucks will eat kits, ours groom them and seem to enjoy their antics. A vibrant and caring family unit emerged where previously we had a bunch of isolated and dreary individual rabbits. They’re still not super affectionate with us, but they’ll hop up out of curiosity whenever we’re around.

For Us

First and perhaps foremost, the rabbits became a joy to watch. They’re so plainly happy, it’s hard not to become absorbed in their interactions and behavior when we do chores. Instead of being grimly satisfied that what we were doing was merely better than factory raised meat chickens, we’re fulfilled by the knowledge that our rabbits have good lives. That’s huge for us.

Additionally, it is so much faster and easier to feed and water a colony than it is to do the same for rabbits in individual cages, especially in the winter when water tends to freeze. While it’s very important to trim the nails of rabbits that live in cages, it’s rare to need to do any trimming for rabbits in a colony.

We have not experienced any of the illness or risk that so many books warn about in dire terms. If anything, we’ve had fewer kits die when they’re accidentally dragged out of the nest, and our rabbits seem more healthy and lively than ever.

The Logistics

So, what does a rabbit colony look like? There are a lot of designs, but the basic idea is that the rabbits live together, usually on the ground. Some people have had success with colonies in bigger cages because they like the convenience of cleaning by periodically emptying a bin under the cage. The details vary, and I highly recommend that you join the Rabbits in Colonies Facebook group to get a great deal of exposure to a wide variety of setups, as well as discussion of their advantages and drawbacks.

For now, though, I’ll go into a bit of detail about our setup. Keep in mind that what I’m describing below is something that’s worked for us, but that we’re planning to change in the coming year.

Our Breeding Colony

4 does and a buck live in an old 8’ x 8’ x 2’ chicken tractor. That’s more crowded than is generally recommended, but our rabbits seem happy and aren’t aggressive toward each other. This was intended to be a stop-gap solution, but it’s lasted a while and has worked pretty well. This just further demonstrates, to me, how basic a colony can be.

The design of the chicken tractor has some drawbacks for this application:

• Being only 2’ tall with a ~2’ deep door, it is miserable to do anything inside the tractor beyond that space, whether that’s catching rabbits, cleaning, or making repairs.
• It’s a portable design, but for an active breeding colony, moving is disruptive and time-consuming.

Nests

We use Rubbermaid totes (we buy ours for about $5 at the grocery store) with holes cut out of them, something heavy and flat in the bottom (like pavers), and straw bedding for nest boxes.

This has been a vast improvement over traditional nesting boxes in cages. In cages, if kits got dragged onto the wire, they’d lose body temperature quickly, and it was a struggle to breathe life back into them when we did catch the issue in time. In the colony, it’s much less of a problem in general – kits tend to stay put in the nests better, and when they do end up on the floor of the colony, they’re generally still warm enough that I can just put them back in the nest with their littermates, and they do fine.

We used wire under the tractor to keep the rabbits (particularly nesting does) from digging, and eventually they found a gap that we didn’t patch up quickly enough. It’s hard to judge how big the tunnel system is under the tractor, but we’ve let them raise many litters under there, and we’ve always been amazed and surprised by kits who emerge, healthy and curious, a few weeks later.

This isn’t really our preferred method – I prefer the control and visibility of kits where I can see them – but the rabbits seem to love it. We plan to strike a compromise in our next colony by partially burying the same type of tote, lid-up so we can pull it off to look in, and putting a wide tube down to the below-ground opening, so the kits will continue to just roll back toward the nest on the occasions when they get pulled out.

Grow-Outs

Depending on volume, we either let grow-outs come to age in the main colony (pretty rare, since we usually have a few litters at a time) or wean them to a 4’ x 8’ x 3’ (a word to the wise: this is too tall to comfortably climb in and out of – I think 2.5 feet is about right) portable tractor, depending on space constraints – sometimes we’ll use one of our other portable structures instead or in addition. As long as they have shelter, food, water, and space, they seem content.

We haven’t found that they have any real tendency to dig by the time they reach 10-16 weeks, when we typically slaughter. That said, I specifically designed this tractor so that a plastic lattice panel could easily be placed under it, and moved as needed. This is much easier than trying to lay out wire for a portable setup.

Both

Feeding & Watering

We free-feed pellets out of a chicken feeder and in the summer, we use a chicken waterer. On cold days in the winter, we either keep a rubber bowl that we refill with fresh water a couple of times a day, or use a heated bowl and top it off from time to time.

We generally just toss hay on the ground, but we’re planning to incorporate a hay rack into future designs.

In the case of both food and water, colonies really cut down on the time and effort compared to caring for an equal number of rabbits in individual cages.

Looking Ahead

Our plan in 2017 is to establish a couple breeding colonies that are designed to be stationary long-term, so have room to walk in and move around upright. The nests will be underground, and we’ll put more structures in place for the rabbits to hop around on, making use of some of that vertical space. It’ll also be a heck of a lot easier to maintain. We’ll share more details and examples as we plan and build these colonies.

We’ll continue to use portable tractors for grow-outs, and at this point the only real adaptation we’re planning to make is to build future tractors at 2.5’ instead of 3’ high.