Critter Hay Bin by mtnkyle

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

We recently set up a wooden hutch for our two rabbits and were looking for a hay bin to keep things a little tidier. Unfortunately all the hay bins we found in our local pet store were quite small and wouldn't fit a day's helping for our two critters. What's more, one of our rabbits has a flat, wide face; the other rabbit has quite a narrow face and a habit of being far too curious for her own good. She has gotten herself stuck in things before and I wasn't about to take the risk with a store bought bin that was just the perfect size for her to lodge her head in. So instead I designed this bin with inserts that can slide along the frame, allowing them to arrange the front of the bin as they see fit. This also helps them get at the hay stuck near the top of the rack.
Print one of each piece except the bars (Bar) and the bin inserts (Bin Ins), which you'll need three of. You can print more or less of the bin inserts but I found 2-3 seems to work well. The bars and the corresponding holes in the bin inserts will likely need to be sanded well to slide freely as they are a tight fit. Once assembled, we screwed it into the hutch. In the future I plan to add an adapter to allow it to be fixed to a wire cage. This will likely be accompanied by shorter bars as I doubt this would fit nicely in a lot of standard cages.
*Before putting this design in proximity with any of your pets make sure they aren't the plastic eating types. It is very rare for our rabbits to chew on plastics as they much prefer the supply of wood they have lying around, but I can't guarantee the same for your pets.
Let me know what you think, or if you design (or just want) any nifty modifications to make this work better.