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by Anthony Purpura

For the longest time, I was toiling with the idea of getting rabbits for my homestead.  As we all know they grow fast, the feed to finished meat ratio is the best of almost any animal, they don’t require a lot of space and they are easy to raise and you can do it almost anywhere.

So what was stopping me from starting the adventure?  Well, like you guys and gals I didn’t have a lot of money for the initial equipment.  Like everyone else on this site, we try to provide for our families with high-quality food for as little money as possible.  BUT unlike some of our urban counterparts, we don’t have a problem with raising our own meat and processing it for food.

So one day I finally decided to get off my butt and start making my cages so I can raise rabbits. Below is the finished product. (Fig 1)

After a lot of research on how to raise rabbits, house them and then ultimately breed them I determined what type of cages would fit my needs.  I decided this was going to be a two-part adventure for me. The first part was seeing if I could actually make my own commercial type cages a lot cheaper than store bought cages, and secondly, could I raise the rabbits and ultimately breed them successfully in the cages I made.

My plan was to make the cages 24” deep by, 24” tall by 36” across the front. I wanted to make three cages initially because according to my research once the baby rabbits (kits) get bigger the mom needs her own room. Plus it will be easier to wean the Kits off of mom if they were in different cages.

So I went to several stores to get my supplies, I purchased the wire 48” x 50’ (1”x 2” holes), hog rings 3/8” (1/2lb), hog ring pliers and hardware cloth (1/2” x 1/2”) to make my cages.  Man was I excited, I was finally doing it, I was going to make cages and raise rabbits.

I quickly learned I should have planned a little better.  The wire I bought was “ON SALE” and it turned out to be not such a great deal after all. They had wire that was 24” x 50’ for a couple bucks more, but NO I decided to get the 48” wire that was on sale and save $10.  I was figuring I would cut the wire in half to the size I needed, after all, how hard can it possibly be to cut that thin wire?

Well, cutting the wire was easy enough.  The problem was I had to cut each and every little square across the wire.  I figured I must have cut about 500 squares throughout the project.

After all that cutting of the wire my right hand was like the incredible Hulks hand. I wanted to go around shaking peoples hand just because.

The Cages

The original plan was to make the cages 24” x 24” x 36”.  After flattening my wire I quickly realized my cage was going to be a little smaller than I had planned.  My 48” wire cannot be directly cut in half to make two 24” sides and cut half of a square.

So they ended up being about 23” instead.  My 36” measurement fell in the middle of a square as well and ended up being 35”.  The 1” difference did not affect the overall construction all that much.

It did make the corners not exactly perfect, or as perfect as I would have liked them to be. I used some scrap pieces to make a straw feeder holder on the side.  I originally used the hog rings with just the crimping tool I purchased to crimp them together.

I did not like that they did not hold very tight.  I had to go back and really crimp them down with a pair of needle nose pliers.  I found out that if you crimped them down tight the cage had a more rigid feel to it and in my opinion, it made for a much stronger cage.

A funny side story to show how strong the cages are. My neighbor’s pony escaped in the middle of the night and it decided to come by and visit my rabbits.  In the morning I noticed hoof prints on the ground and all the rabbit food was empty from the feeders and one cage was on the ground.

That cage was pretty banged up.  I simply took the rabbit out, got a big rubber hammer and banged it back into shape.  Not perfect but not bad for a rabbit cage.  Other than the rabbit not wanting to watch Mr. Ed with me no harm was done and the cages stood up to the vicious pony attack.

The Door

OK now, this is where you really need to pay attention.  I was totally bliss to the actual size of the nest box and got into a jam.  The door opening is 1” smaller than the size of the nest box.  I was able to use another cage with a bigger opening but if you are going to use a nest box make sure you measure it prior to cutting the door and actually building the door.

I wanted to use the leftover pieces from the original 36” cut that’s why I didn’t really measure the nest boxes.  I simply said I have a piece this big and therefore this will be my door.  Also, notice how I left the cut sides longer. That way I was able to bend the wire back on to itself to make a hinge for the door.

The Base

My last step was to make the base, I decided to use wood because I had a lot of it left over from some pallets that I broke up several months ago.  I used six 2×4 for the legs and two long 1×4 for the rails and center supports.

I bought some oops paint at Home Depot for $5 and wow it almost looked like a pro built it. I came up with the measurements by lining up the finished cages and measuring them and adding a couple of inches in the event I made a mistake somewhere.

Conclusion

Can you make rabbit cages for a low or near nothing cost?  Well, YES.  But I will say they are not even close to commercial grade. The cages I made are strong durable, wash easily and I have used them every day since I built them.  But they do need a support underneath which adds to the cost. (I was not able to buy commercial grade materials locally.

Buying them online would have been too expensive once shipping was added). The three cages I built ended up costing me about $65. That included the crimping tool and all the materials.  The cages cost about $21 each to make. A huge savings compared to commercially purchased cages that run around $80 each.

Can you make commercial grade rabbit cages cheaper than you can buy them?  No, or at least I couldn’t. By the time I bought the commercial grade materials and equipment to cut it and put it together the cost would have been $15-$20 more per cage then I can buy it locally.

The company’s buy the materials in such bulk that we as consumers cannot compete. Commercial cages are very strong because they are made using thicker gauge materials, they will hang easily with the rabbits in them and not fall apart or need any extra support. But you do pay for that.

Should you at least try to make your own cages?  Absolutely YES.  If/when TSHTF there will not be any companies to buy cages from.  You either make them or you go without.  I chose to try and see if I could make them now while I still have the option of buying them locally if I couldn’t make them.

Kind of practicing what I preach to my friends, learn something now while we have the time so we don’t starve later trying to figure it out.

The best place to buy cages? For me, I looked in Craig’s List and found a guy that was getting out of the rabbit business and sold me two commercial cages for $30 each. The guy was nice and he included two nest boxes and two feeder trays already clipped to the cages.

I looked up the cages online and new they cost $80 each shipped, nest boxes $15 each, feeder trays $15 each, total per cage new $110.  So basically I got $220 worth of equipment for $60.  Which ironically ended up costing me about the same as the three I built at home.

Before I leave I will say one thing, OUCH, my hands still hurt from all that cutting to make my three cages.

I hope this article gives you a little guidance and insight if you are thinking of getting some rabbits and building your own cages.

By Juleigh Howard-Hobson

Mirrored flush-mounted bathroom medicine cabinets are easily one of the most non-upcycled objects out there. They are short and shallow. They don’t stand by themselves. And, frankly, they aren’t very nice to look at once they are out of their recessed wall enclosure.

But, the thing is, just about every house has one…sometimes two or more. You can pick them up for a song at garage sales, rebuilding centers or CraigsList. Sometimes they are free at all these places because very few people actually want old medicine cabinets. New ones are cheap. Also, old ones are frequently….um….not as fastidiously clean as one would prefer.

All to the good, my friends.

You see, old medicine cabinets may seem useless if you look at them as cabinets, but if you look at them as hinged lid boxes….well….the possibilities to use them for are vastly improved.

One of the things they are great for, once you see them as a box, is as a seed starter box.

First, you must take all the shelves out. If you are lucky, they are clear glass shelves that you can tape together to make a nice glass sheet out of. Most medicine cabinets seem to have these sorts of shelves. If yours doesn’t, don’t despair,  use a piece of window glass or clear plastic or even cling wrap instead of the taped glass sheet.  Put the glass away for now.

Second, you have to rehang the door of the cabinet. The mirror needs to face into the opening. I’ll get to why this is so later in this article.  Pull the pins out of the hinge, separate the two pieces.

Take the mirror out of its housing, then mount a door hinge to the mirror housing, put the mirror back in, and mount the other side of the door hinge to the metal frame of the cabinet.

It doesn’t have to shut like a lid or a door, it just has to move back and forth.

Third, take the wood and cut the middle out of it. Basically, you are making a frame. Now, tape or glue the glass(or plastic)  to this.

Line the interior of the cabinet with the aluminum foil. Top with the glass/wood frame.

Now, angle the mirrored door above the open part of the cabinet so that the most light possible enters the box. This is how the box will get warm enough to germinate seeds.

You can move this anywhere you want, because it is light and portable, making it a very handy sun catcher.

Put starter pots of seeds in it, water them. Set the glass frame in place. Then angle the mirror to catch the most light and there you have it. A seed starter you can use in any climate. We just used ours to germinate kale and cabbage seeds in early November.

An added bonus to this is that you can also use it to cook some foods. It’s a little small to be a powerful solar oven, and it is much slower, but it got a lentil dish cooked in time for dinner when we tried it out. (We used a sweet and sour lentil recipe adapted from Jay Solomon’s Lean Bean Cookbook)

Supply list:

• 1 Medicine cabinet
• 2 Old hinges (old door hinges work well)
• As many screws as needed for the hinges
• 1 Piece of wood the same size as the cabinet
• Packing tape (or a piece of glass/clear plastic smaller than the piece of wood above, or cling wrap)
• Aluminum foil
• Saw, hammer, screwdriver etc
• Seeds, seed starter pots, water
• Sunlight

by Jane W

My interest in chickens began at age three when my grandmother would allow me to gather eggs from the nests in the chicken house at their farm. I learned from her to be observant and gentle with animals. When my own child reached that age, I wanted to share some of that magic with him and began considering raising chickens.

As an avid reader of Mother Earth News, Organic Gardening magazine and other Rodale Press publications (click here to see a full listing of Rodale Press books at Amazon.com), I felt I had enough information to begin.

I knew I had to protect the chickens from the weather and predators so I purchased a large roll of one inch chicken wire and 1 X 4 X 8 boards to fence a small area outside an old building that had previously been used as a chicken house on our “postage stamp sized” farm in the mountains of Virginia.

When the outdoor ” cage” (it was covered with wire also, so hawks could not fly in and so the chickens could not fly out) was finished, I built nest boxes out of scrap 2 X 4s and plywood and filled them with hay, and built a small ramp for the chickens to use to enter and exit the building through a 8 X 8 inch hole in the outside wall.

A heat lamp was hung from the existing light socket, automatic feeder (this automatic feeder at Amazon.com is awesome), and waterer, and the four chickens I purchased from the local flea market were added. I realized after a few days that chickens do not pick a nest as their own and use that one for themselves. They pick a “community” nest or two.

It is not necessary to have a nest for each chicken which can save a lot of work and money if you have a large flock of chickens. It pays to spend some time in the chicken house in the mornings when the hens are laying to see how many nests are being used at the same time. Some chickens will wait their turn for a chosen nest if it is busy instead of using another nest.

I would wear a mask ( you can get seriously sick from breathing dust from chicken droppings) and gently rake and sweep up the hay, shavings and droppings on the floor (this was composted along with the horse and cow manure from the barn and later used on the garden as “organic fertilizer”) , wash out and refill the waterer and feeder and observe the chickens.

I got the hens used to me reaching under them to gather the eggs and I never got seriously pecked. Some would gently peck at my hand but I never got injured. One hen would even hop on my lap to be petted if I squatted down.

The chickens settled in pretty well. However, I soon realized, all I needed to know about them wasn’t in the neat little articles I read in magazines. A few days after settling the chickens into their home, my son left the gate open to the fenced outside area and the chickens all got out. The herding dog we had, thought it was great fun to chase them and the chickens ended up in a tree.

Who knew chickens could fly! I put the dog in the house and used a broom to encourage the chickens to come down out of the tree and back in their yard. This took at least an hour and I began to realize “chicken training” and “dog training” were both in order.

On another day later that week, the dog was taken in the chicken yard on a leash and properly introduced to the chickens and not allowed to chase them or be aggressive toward them. Over the next week, they became used to each other and the “chasing game” never happened again. My neighbors, all over 80 years of age, had first-hand experience with chickens and suggested clipping the wing feathers on only one wing of the hens.

This created an imbalance so the chickens could not fly easily. The chickens could still run and escape any threat when outside their area, but not get 12 feet up in a tree. To do this you hold the chickens upside down by their feet. They essentially “go to sleep” and are easy to handle this way.

If you run after a chicken, it will outrun you and unless you have a net (which I did have later to catch the roosters). The easiest time to catch them is when they are on a nest after laying. Just slide your hand under them and grab both feet at the same time, They will flap their wings and try to get away, but holding them by the feet with their heads hanging down will stop this readily and you are ready to work on a calm chicken.

It is best to have a helper to do this. One person holds the chicken and the other cuts the feathers. Take one wing, spread it out and using scissors, carefully cut the feathers a few inches from the wing itself. Chickens do get mites and this is a good time to dust them with organic insecticide to prevent them. This process has to be repeated every few months, as the feathers do grow back.

I also began scattering feed in the chicken yard while clucking and calling to the chickens instead of just using the auto feeder and waterer. This both encouraged the chickens to scratch and eat natural feed, such as bugs and worms and weeds, but to also eat small grains of sand and dirt which they need to process their food.

Chickens that are only feed chicken feed have to be provided something like oyster shell which not only helps with their digestion but also provides calcium which helps them form hard egg shells. Chickens that naturally forage for food, better meet their nutritional needs without supplements. Being able to call the chickens to me instead of having to chase and herd the chickens back into the chicken yard saves a lot of time and work.

Eventually, at the urging and help of my neighbors, I was able to allow the chickens to free range in the garden and barnyard during the day and call and gently herd them into the chicken yard before dusk… chickens really do go to bed just as the sun is setting and it is best to get them into their area before then.

They will roost (sleep) wherever, but once they are allowed to sleep outside of their nesting area, they will lay eggs elsewhere also.

Finding an egg in the barn in the haystack, possibly weeks after it was laid, is not a good thing. I was careful to not let the chickens out until all eggs were laid for that day, so early afternoon until about an hour before dusk was long enough. Also, eggs need to be gathered each day and not left in the nests for long periods of time as some chickens will peck at the eggs and once a chicken cracks and eats some of it, it is almost impossible to stop this.

Many animals will eat eggs and eggs can draw animals such as fox, raccoon, snakes, opossum, and hawks to your area and potentially put your flock at risk. Chickens in the garden need to be supervised to be sure they are not eating the vegetables and fruits themselves.

I was usually hoeing weeds, loosening and bringing fresh soil up around plants, or picking vegetables while the chickens were enjoying their time in the garden. If I saw a chicken eating something it shouldn’t I would simply correct that behavior and encourage the chicken to move away from that area.

I found the chickens would follow me and “work” where I was working. If I was in the barn cleaning out a stall, the chickens were there, because I was uncovering bugs and worms for them!

I had read that modern chickens did not have a nesting instinct anymore because they had been caged and not allow to raise chicks for generations. By this I mean, they did not lay a number of eggs and sit on them and keep them warm until they hatched into chicks. Grandma called this “being broody”. I did not have a rooster, so the eggs my hens were laying were not fertilized.

I could not add to my flock by this method, so I decided to buy an incubator with an automatic egg turner and buy fertilized eggs from the flea market to incubate. This was a fun experience and was not too labor intensive. If I had not had the automatic egg turner I would have had to manually turn the eggs once or twice a day which was more time consuming than anything.

Keeping the temperature and moisture levels correct was relatively easy; waiting for the 20 some days till the eggs started hatching was the hard part! Once the chicks starting hatching young and old would spend hours watching and listening to a chick peep while still in the eggs and peck a hole in the eggs shell large enough to get out. It was tempting to try and help a chick get out of the shell, but it is better to leave it up to nature in this case.

Don’t expect all of the eggs to successfully hatch. That is not natures way, hard as it is to see an animal perish before it actually lives. Once the viable chicks have hatched, keeping them fed and watered in a cardboard box with a heat lamp (or old fashioned light bulb that gives off heat) until they started sprouting their big chick feathers.

At this time they could be put in a small bottomless cage on the ground during the day for several hours at a time. They need to be back in the box and under the heat at night even in summer.. Some people advocate clipping the beak of young chicks so they will not peck and injure each other. This can be done with fingernail clippers but I never had to do it to my chicks.

I think overcrowding and not handling the chicks could possibly be contributing factors. I handled all the chick by picking them up and cupping them in my hands and never had any aggressive chicks to deal with.

One thing I did not know is that day-old chicks get very tired very easy and will fall asleep and spread out like they are dead. I had a couple fall asleep with their head in the water tray and felt like I saved a few from drowning by picking them up out of the water. They do stop this after a couple of days after hatching, but it pays to keep a close eye on them or remove the water when you cannot watch them the first couple of days after hatching.

The box itself should be large enough so the heat lamp or light you have over the cardboard box will not heat the entire box. The chicks will move toward and away from the heat as they need it so be aware of whether or not your chicks are getting too hot or cold.

Once the chicks are losing their “baby feathers” and growing their larger feathers I introduce them to the other chickens by putting them in a wire box in the chicken yard. Chickens have a pecking order and you don’t want to risk a small chick being injured by a big chicken by just turning them loose to defend themselves.

After a few days of their being in the chicken yard for a few hours protected by their wire box, I release them in the chicken yard with the other chickens. By this time they have long legs and heads nearly as large as adult chickens. I have never had a problem with a chick being caught and injured by a larger chicken.

I did find that after a year of being “free range” chickens that natural instinct kicked in with one of my hens. She was sitting on about four eggs one morning and was a little more bothered than usual when I went to get the eggs.

I had kept one rooster from the chicks I had hatched and wondered if he was doing his job. He was certainly a good alarm clock, crowing and flapping his wings while on the highest spot he could find in the chicken yard every morning. I left those eggs for the “broody” hen and she successfully hatched 8 chicks. I was very happy to see that natural instinct would take over if given the chance.

I failed to mention the wonderful eggs we got from our chickens. I learned to make many things I would not have learned to make without them. Everything from mayonnaise to angel food cake to quiche became things enjoyed by my family as well as by the helpful neighbors. I was able to barter eggs for butter with one neighbor that had a milk cow.

I no longer have the chickens, that farm or the neighbors but still, have the incubator. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about chickens and maybe someday soon I will start another flock. In the meanwhile, I hope my experiences will be helpful to any of you with chickens or thinking about getting started with chickens.