Plans for a Rabbit Cage: Three Cut Lists and What Building Really Costs

Building rabbit cages beats buying them from about ten cages upwards, and loses below that. The reason is not the price of wire: it comes in rolls of about 30 m (100 ft), so a four-cage build pays for ten cages' worth of side wire and thirty of floor wire.

The Mississippi State Extension two-cage unit draws 5.79 m from a 76 cm wide roll of 25 × 51 mm wire and 1.98 m from a 91 cm floor roll — 2.90 m and 0.99 m per cage. One 30 m roll therefore gives ten doe cages of side wire, or thirty doe-cage floors.

Cage counts follow does, not rabbits: Penn State puts one buck to ten does and Mississippi State budgets seven grow-out cages per ten does, making a thirty-cage rabbitry about sixteen does. The grow-out bank is set by litters on the ground in your busiest week — RabbitBreeder's calendar shows that peak before you cut wire.

• 4 cages (2 does, 1 buck, 1 grow-out): 2 rolls bought, 41% and 15% of them used — 0.50 rolls per cage.
• 12 cages (6 does, 1 buck, 5 grow-out): 3 rolls bought, 69% and 50% used — 0.25 rolls per cage.
• 30 cages (16 does, 2 bucks, 12 grow-out): 6 rolls bought, 86% and 62% used — 0.20 rolls per cage.
• Doe cages only: 4 need 2 rolls, 12 need 3, 30 need 4 — the cleanest closure, at 0.13 rolls per cage.
• Wire consumed per cage barely moves with scale — about 3.9 roll-metres for a doe cage. Only the cash outlay does.
• Build in pairs sharing a partition, as the plan does: that saves 5% of the side wire and 8% of the floor.

FAO's housing chapter is unambiguous: to avoid injuring the rabbits' feet, the wire should be welded and then galvanised. That puts zinc over the weld nodes. Galvanising before welding burns the coating off at every node, leaving bare steel where the mesh is thinnest in section.

The honest comparison is cost per cage per year, not price per roll. Zinc is consumed at a rate set by the atmosphere: under ISO 9223 from 0.1 µm a year at very low corrosivity to 4.2–8.4 µm at very high. Service life is coating thickness divided by that rate.

A rabbitry sits at the harsher end for two documented reasons: FAO caps ammonia in the air rabbits breathe at 5 ppm, and the floor is repeatedly wetted with urine. So the decision is arithmetic: if mesh galvanised after welding costs k times more and lasts n times longer, it wins when n exceeds k.

• ISO 9223 zinc loss: 0.1 µm/yr very low, 0.7–2.1 medium, 4.2–8.4 very high. Life is coating thickness divided by this.
• Galvanised after welding: zinc over the weld nodes, no bare steel — the construction FAO specifies for rabbit floors.
• Galvanised before welding: coating burned off at every node, so rust starts at the joints, not on the wire.
• Mississippi State names the same weak point: singeing hair off cages with a torch damages the weld and causes rust.
• The floor is 25% of the roll-metres and 30% of the wire area of a doe cage — and the only part standing in urine.

Three independent sources converge on the same cage and differ on details. Mississippi State specifies 14-gauge wire with 25 × 25 or 25 × 51 mm openings for tops, sides and ends, and 16-gauge with 13 × 13 or 13 × 25 mm openings for floors. Penn State gives the same meshes without gauges; MSD asks 12-gauge minimum, 16-gauge underfoot.

FAO is the outlier and the most useful, because it is written in millimetres: floor wire of 2.4 mm diameter, 2 mm minimum, and European meshes of 25 × 13, 76 × 13 and 19 × 19 mm. US 16-gauge is roughly 1.6 mm, below that minimum — a contradiction only until you count wire per square metre.

Worked out from the mesh dimensions these sources give, a 13 × 25 mm floor in 1.6 mm wire puts about 19% of the area under the rabbit as steel; FAO's 19 × 19 mm in 2.4 mm gives 25%, as does 13 × 13 mm in 1.6 mm. Thinner wire is fine when openings are smaller: more strands share the load.

• 13 × 13 mm (½ × ½ in) in 1.6 mm wire — 25% steel. Kindest to feet, slowest to pass droppings.
• 13 × 25 mm (½ × 1 in) in 1.6 mm wire — 19% steel. The extension default and best all-round balance.
• 19 × 19 mm in 2.4 mm wire — 25% steel. FAO's European floor mesh: heavier wire, larger openings, same support.
• 25 × 25 mm (1 × 1 in) in 2.0 mm wire — 16% steel. Fine for sides and tops, marginal underfoot.
• 25 × 51 mm (1 × 2 in) in 2.0 mm wire — 12% steel, opening wide enough for a kit's leg. Never on a floor.
• Fit a 25 × 36 cm plastic footrest in every breeding cage: across 664 farms, sore hocks in does ran 4.9% with one, 13.7% without.

This is the Mississippi State Extension plan unchanged: a unit of two cages, each 76 × 91 cm and 46 cm high, holding a medium doe with a litter or five to seven fryers. Everything except the floor is 14-gauge.

Lay the floor out first. Remove a 76 × 76 mm square from each corner, bend a 76 mm lip up all round and clip the corners closed — that lip is what stops kits going over the edge. Hog-ring an 8 mm steel rod along the front and rear edges so the floor cannot sag.

Then set both end panels and the partition upright, clip them to the floor, and bring the front and back panels onto the lip, leaving the door areas unfastened. Cut each opening 51 mm smaller than its door both ways, file every protruding wire, and edge the openings with No. 9 wire.

• Floor: 1 pc 91 × 198 cm (36 × 78 in), 13 × 25 mm 16-gauge, 76 × 76 mm cut from each corner.
• Top: 1 pc 76 × 183 cm (30 × 72 in), 25 × 51 mm 14-gauge.
• Front and back: 2 pc 38 × 183 cm (15 × 72 in), 14-gauge.
• Ends: 2 pc 38 × 76 cm (15 × 30 in), 14-gauge.
• Partition: 1 pc 46 × 76 cm (18 × 30 in), 14-gauge.
• Doors: 2 pc 41 × 46 cm (16 × 18 in), 14-gauge; openings 36 × 41 cm (14 × 16 in).
• Fasteners: 100 small J-clips, 25 large, 30 hog rings, 61 cm No. 9 wire, 2 latches.
• Stiffeners: 2 pc 183 cm (72 in) of 8 mm steel rod under the front and rear floor edges.

A 61 × 61 cm floor is 0.37 m² (4 ft²), exactly ARBA's minimum for a rabbit of 4.0–5.4 kg such as a New Zealand buck. That is a legal floor, not a generous one: Penn State recommends 76 × 76 × 51 cm for breeding stock.

This list is not from a published plan. It applies the Mississippi State method — 76 mm floor lip, 38 cm side panels, door 51 mm larger than its opening — to a 61 × 61 × 46 cm box. Every piece nests in a 76 cm roll.

One buck serves about ten does, so this is the cage you build fewest of and inspect most. A buck occupies the same cage continuously for years — exactly the exposure pattern that produces sore hocks — so fit the footrest here first.

• Floor: 1 pc 76 × 76 cm (30 × 30 in), 13 × 25 mm 16-gauge, 76 × 76 mm cut from each corner.
• Top: 1 pc 61 × 61 cm (24 × 24 in), 25 × 51 mm 14-gauge.
• Sides and ends: 4 pc 38 × 61 cm (15 × 24 in), 14-gauge.
• Door: 1 pc 36 × 41 cm (14 × 16 in), 14-gauge; opening 30 × 36 cm (12 × 14 in).
• Fasteners: about 40 small J-clips, 8 large, 12 hog rings, 1 latch, 2 pc 61 cm rod.
• Wire drawn: 2.24 m of 76 cm side roll and 0.76 m of floor roll — 13 buck cages per 30 m side roll.

Mississippi State puts seven to eight fryers to 1.8 kg (4 lb) in a 76 × 91 cm cage. A 76 × 152 cm cage is 1.67 times that floor, so twelve to thirteen at the same density — but floor area rarely binds here. Heat does, and in a hot week you will want fewer.

The list again applies the Mississippi State method to a longer box. Use two doors: a 152 cm cage you can reach into from only one end is one you will quietly stop catching rabbits out of.

Grow-out is where the herd model bites. Seven grow-out cages per ten does is the extension rule at 76 × 91 cm; at 76 × 152 cm you need about four. Tracking weaning dates against cage occupancy — which RabbitBreeder derives from your kindling records — stops you finding the shortfall on a kindling day.

• Floor: 1 pc 91 × 168 cm (36 × 66 in), 13 × 25 mm 16-gauge, 76 × 76 mm cut from each corner.
• Top: 1 pc 76 × 152 cm (30 × 60 in), 25 × 51 mm 14-gauge.
• Front and back: 2 pc 38 × 152 cm (15 × 60 in), 14-gauge.
• Ends: 2 pc 38 × 76 cm (15 × 30 in), 14-gauge.
• Doors: 2 pc 36 × 51 cm (14 × 20 in), 14-gauge; openings 30 × 46 cm (12 × 18 in).
• Wire drawn: 4.32 m of 76 cm side roll and 1.68 m of floor roll — 6 grow-out cages per 30 m side roll.

Clip spacing is the only assembly number the published plan states: 127 mm (5 in) along a seam. Two tools matter, a J-clip plier and good wire cutters.

The commercial baby-saver panel is a strip of fine mesh in the bottom 100 mm of the side walls. The extension plan gets the same result more cheaply: bend the floor up 76 mm all round and clip the corners, explicitly to stop young rabbits falling out.

Doors are where home-built cages fail on safety rather than cost. File every protruding wire before a rabbit goes in — the plan lists filing as a step, not an afterthought. A latch a doe cannot open needs two motions, not spring tension alone.

• J-clips at 127 mm (5 in) centres on every seam, closer at the floor-lip corners.
• Door opening = door size minus 51 mm (2 in), both directions.
• Edge every door opening with No. 9 galvanised wire and large clips.
• File all protruding wires — the published plan calls this out explicitly.
• Floor lip: 76 mm (3 in) bent up on all four sides, corners clipped closed, to keep kits in.
• Hang each two-cage unit on six strands of No. 12 galvanised wire.

The published guidance on wood is blunt: rabbits gnaw it, it absorbs urine, and it makes sanitation harder, so limit it to the framework. Avoid treated timber within reach. FAO puts the life of a wooden cage at no more than two years, against 15–30 for concrete.

That is the argument for all-wire in one line: wood is not cheaper, it is a shorter replacement cycle. The same logic applies inside the cage — Mississippi State says not to lay boards on a wire floor, and ARBA treats a resting board as a measure for animals already prone to sore hocks.

Plan on the floor going first. Write the build date on each cage and keep it with its occupancy history: when a sore-hock or mortality cluster tracks a batch of cages rather than a bloodline, that is the wire telling you it is finished.

• Wood: framework and roof only, never in contact — it absorbs urine and cannot be disinfected.
• No treated timber within reach of a rabbit.
• No loose boards on a wire floor; use a purpose-made footrest.
• FAO service life: wooden cages 2 years at most, concrete 15–30. All-wire sits between; its floor is the consumable.
• Date-stamp each cage at build, so failures trace to a batch of wire, not a bloodline.