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At home, food for rabbits is placed in bowls, jars and other similar containers. But the active animal often likes to play pranks, which is why the grain from the overturned feeder ends up on the floor and immediately wakes up through the cracks. Bunker feeders for rabbits installed in a cage help to reduce feed consumption and also simplify the feeding process.
Why is it beneficial to provide bunker feeders for rabbits?
To answer this question, place a bowl of grain and observe the habits of your long-eared pet. While the rabbit is hungry, it will calmly chew the food served to it. After satisfying its hunger, the animal walks in a cage. Naturally, the bowl with the remaining grain will be upside down. The rabbit may become angry, hit the floor with its hind legs, grab the feeder with its teeth and throw it around the cage. You can also watch how rabbits scoop out food with their front paws. And it doesn’t matter what it will be – grass or grain. In order to use food rationally, bunker feeders for rabbits are needed.
Another important point is feed contamination. Even if the rabbit has not turned the grain out of the bowl, it will definitely stain it with droppings.Over time, the food will be eaten, but the risk of the animal becoming sick increases. Bloating and indigestion are especially common. By installing a bunker feeder for rabbits in the cage, the animal will always receive clean food in a timely manner.
The bunker design of the feeder allows you to store food for several days. The owner does not have to worry if he does not arrive at the dacha on time. The animal will be full.
Self-production of galvanized bunker feeder
It should be noted right away that it is better to make rabbit feeders from metal with your own hands. A galvanized sheet 0.5 mm thick is ideal. Sometimes novice rabbit breeders practice making feeders from wood, believing that it is easier. Indeed, wood is easier to process, but rabbits love to chew on it. So galvanized sheet is the best material for a bunker feeder.
To manufacture the structure, you will need to draw up drawings. We have given an example of the circuit in the photo. All fragments are placed on a galvanized sheet, after which they are cut out with metal scissors.
It is important to provide a top cover for the feeder to prevent debris from getting into the feed. You also need to think about fastenings, because the structure will have to be fixed to the wall of the cage. The feed from the hopper will be poured into a tray that resembles a small trough. To cut it out, we suggest looking at the drawings. On the right in the photo is a pattern of a tray, and on the left is a feed limiter.
The above diagram is designed with optimal dimensions for standard cells.If you need a feeder of large dimensions, then all fragments can be proportionally increased at your discretion.
So, we have a drawing of the bunker feeder, we can start making it:
- The feeder consists of three main parts: a tray, a back wall and a front wall. The limiter is an optional fourth part, but it is also advisable to make it so that the rabbits scoop out food less. Making a tin feeder starts with a tray. To do this, a fragment cut out of galvanized steel is folded along the marked fold lines. It is important to leave a 1 cm allowance at the joints. They are needed to connect the structure.
- To reduce the number of joints, the sides and back wall are made from a single piece of galvanized steel 37 cm long. It is bent along the width, divided into three parts. The result is two side shelves 15 cm wide and a rear wall 25 cm wide.
- The front wall is also made from one piece 27 cm long. The galvanized fragment produces 3 bends in width. The dimensions of each shelf in order: 13,14 and 10 cm.
- Now all that remains is to put all the parts together. If everything fits, holes are drilled at the joints where allowances were left. The connection is made with rivets or bolts.
- To make the feeder closed, a rectangle measuring 15x25 cm is cut out of galvanized steel for the hinged lid. The workpiece is attached to the hopper with hinges.
As you can see, making a galvanized bunker feeder is not difficult. It is only important that its minimum capacity is designed for the daily feed requirement.
The video shows a metal feeder:
Making a feeder from a galvanized profile
A neat and fast bunker feeder for rabbits will be made from a profile with a cross-section of 100x40 mm. The photo shows a drawing with dimensions.All these fragments need to be transferred to the blanks.
The following photo will help you understand the order of the work, as well as correctly determine the places of the cut and bend.
Let's look at the sequence of how to make a feeder from a profile:
- After marking the profile, according to the presented diagram, cuts are made with metal scissors and excess areas are removed.
- The lower part of the workpiece, as shown in the photo, is perforated with an electric drill. There will be food available for your eared pet.
- Along the fold lines, the workpiece is given the shape of a feeder. Holes are drilled along the joints, after which they are tied with rivets. Two hooks made of galvanized pieces are attached to the back side. They are needed to hang the structure on the wall of the cage.
In the video there is a feeder made of a steel profile:
This type of bunker feeder is designed for one rabbit. In a large cage you will have to install several such structures.
Making a bunker-type feeder from other materials
So, a reliable do-it-yourself bunker feeder for rabbits is made of galvanized steel. What else can you use to make a simple structure for the first time?
Let's take two ordinary PET juice bottles with a wide neck. For their base, you need to make a frame from boards or plywood 10 cm wide. Two strips are fastened at an angle of 90Oto form the letter “G”. One of the bottles is screwed to the bottom shelf with self-tapping screws, having previously cut out its side part. The second bottle is fixed to the vertical shelf with clamps so that its neck fits into the cut window of the lower container, but does not reach 1 cm from the wall. The bottom of a vertical container is cut off over most of its circumference to form a hinged lid.
At this point, the bunker structure is ready. The plywood frame is attached to the wall of the cage, and dry food is poured into a vertical bottle. As the rabbit eats it, the grain will pour out through the neck of the hopper into a horizontally fixed bottle.
A similar structure can be made from a pipe, as shown in the photo. A piece of galvanized profile is used as a tray. For the bunker, a piece of about 50 cm of PVC sewer pipe is cut, a recess is cut from below for spilling feed, and then it is secured to the tray with self-tapping screws.
The next option is presented from a tin can. It needs to be cut in half, leaving about 5 cm of the side near the bottom. The side part cut off from the bottom is completely separated from the can. To do this, you need to make two cuts from top to bottom. The front wall of the bunker is bent from the resulting piece and secured with rivets. The result is a design as in the photo.
There are a lot of options for rabbit feeder ideas. The main thing is to carefully remove metal hangnails so that the animal does not get hurt.
