Our Rabbit Tractors

So as some of you may or may not know.  My goal at FogCity Rabbitry is to raise rabbits on pasture.  I want to grow my own certified organic crops and let the rabbits eat the forage and feel them pellets that I mill myself.  We started out making the first tractor out of angle iron which proved to be way to heavy for us to move.

 The problem with these was that while they were sturdy and would prevent predators from getting into them, we could not move them ourselves. 


In fact we needed a fork lift to even get it from the storage shed to the field.  Furthermore, when we did get it into the field we could not move it from one pasture to the other because it would not slide.


So we are just going to use this one for temporary housing when we need it

 We did like the overall size thought so we modeled Rabbit Tractor 2.0 after this one one but we made it out of PVC.  We ordered all the materials online because it was much cheaper.

Once we got the rabbits in the tractor we watched them for a week to see if we needed to make any changes to the pen.  Some were able to get out so we made some changes.  As you can see from the picture, the wire comes in on the sides of the cage about 6 inches.  On the second version we had it come in a full foot so that the rabbits could not dig out. 

The second version of the tractors looked like this.

 These pens were the same size, 15'x6'x3'  Each rabbit has its own individual pen which is 3'x2'  Each pen has a feeder as well as a water nozzle which is hooked up to a five gallon bucket.  We do not have water access yet out by the pens so we could not use the pressure nozzles.  These are the spring loaded ones.  We have to fill up the water about once a day, and will probably move up to a 50 gallon container or the pressurized system soon.  The dog hangs out around the pens, he wants in as well, but he also helps keep away other animals like coons and coyote that might want in as well.

 

The tops of the pens are covered
in breathable black fabric that
provide shade but also let airflow in.

This is my first attempt at an HTML post, so I will get better as time goes on.  So I hope this gives you a basic idea of what our tractors look like.  If you have questions feel free to ask.  My next post will be about our pellet mill and how we make our own pellets.