Troller
Well-Known Member
Moving from an apartment to a two story ranch home soon (hopefully) and it got me thinking on how to house my two bonded Flemish. An idea was to buy an outdoor hutch and leave it on the patio with access to the kitchen so they can to go in and out as they please. Something that looks like this
I'm listing some of my concerns as well as some positives and would like some input. The house is in Long Island NY, so its not rural, just suburban, but I do hear raccoons and cats tend to roam around.
The patio deck is on the 2nd floor so I hope predators would be less likely but I'm not sure.
NY gets all four seasons, and sometimes Winter and Summer are sometimes extreme. Now I'm not so worried about them in the hutch but I would be worried about going indoors, basically from one temp to another.
Cleaning would be much easier on me with this type of set up but is it worth the risk?
The connection point would probably be a pet flap in the patio doors, will this cause heating and a/c issues costing me higher bills?
The most important, will this allow the bunnies to be happy? See right now they have a room to themselves but can only come out during the evenings into the living room (they share that room with the birds so I dont want the birds to have access all the time so it means the rabbits can't freely move about) which makes me feel that they keep to themselves because of that. Either way my new set up will allow for all day access around the house (so long as someone is at home) but I wonder if an outdoor hutch will make there separation more or less pronounced.
I'm listing some of my concerns as well as some positives and would like some input. The house is in Long Island NY, so its not rural, just suburban, but I do hear raccoons and cats tend to roam around.
The patio deck is on the 2nd floor so I hope predators would be less likely but I'm not sure.
NY gets all four seasons, and sometimes Winter and Summer are sometimes extreme. Now I'm not so worried about them in the hutch but I would be worried about going indoors, basically from one temp to another.
Cleaning would be much easier on me with this type of set up but is it worth the risk?
The connection point would probably be a pet flap in the patio doors, will this cause heating and a/c issues costing me higher bills?
The most important, will this allow the bunnies to be happy? See right now they have a room to themselves but can only come out during the evenings into the living room (they share that room with the birds so I dont want the birds to have access all the time so it means the rabbits can't freely move about) which makes me feel that they keep to themselves because of that. Either way my new set up will allow for all day access around the house (so long as someone is at home) but I wonder if an outdoor hutch will make there separation more or less pronounced.