And the cage building begins...

And so the first project, building cages.  Here is a picture of my first 4 rabbits after having made our first 3 cages (the does were in the new cages and the buck remained in the McKee crate until we got more wire to make more cages) and before I had the rabbit shed (they were under some shade trees at the time).  I will post more about making the cages in another post and the various additions to the cages (home-made door latches and hay feeders, etc.).  First we knew we needed 1" x 1/2" wire for the bottom of the cages and 1" x 2" wire for the sides and top of the cages.  We also needed wire cutters, which we already had at home, to cut the wire (which is probably the hardest part of all, killer on the hands).  We also needed j-clips and j-clip pliers to attach all the pieces (sides, floor and top) together.  When we bought the wire we found out we could make 3 cages out of the wire we bought, with little scrap (enough to make doors and hay feeders) but the measurements of the cages had to be 36" long, 24" wide and 17" tall.  I would have liked to make the cages taller but if I made it any taller I would only have enough wire to make 2 cages with a lot of scrap left over.  I decided on making the doors 14" wide and 10" tall and from the wire I cut out to make the door it was perfect for making a hay feeder!  I didn't take pictures as I made the cages, which I wish I had now, but I'm sure we'll be making more cages in the future and if/when we do, I will make sure to record the progress with pictures :)  So basically, after we had the pieces all cut we clipped them together with the j-clips and then after it was all assembled I cut out a space for the door.  I used that scrap for hay feeders and some other extra scrap for the doors and used j-clips to attach the doors.  Though you can attach them so they swing open to the side, or make it so it opens down - we opted for the doors to open down.  At first we just latched them with whatever we could find (clips of some sort) I finally figured out how to make a latch for the door which I will go into more detail about in a later post.  I later found a place where you could order them but it's just as easy to make them yourself.  I used j-clips to attach it to the door and messed with it for a while until it latched just the way I wanted it to.  I was also able to find the door guards online and ordered some of those so that the sharp edges where the door was cut out wouldn't cut or scrape you when you reached in the cage.  Here is a picture of one of our cages, complete with door guards, latch, metal feeder, water bottle (another thing I will get into), hay feeder and baby savers (another thing I will post about later).