How to

Building Excel Runaround Runs is really easy thanks to the ingenious ratchet clips. Once in place they help to secure your rabbits' or guinea pigs run and help keep your pets safe.

How to connect your Runaround Door

With a few basic tools you will find it easy to connect your Runaround Door to most types of housing, including mesh and wood.

A hutch is not enough

Our video is a little dated now and the children have grown up but the message has not changed since this was recorded. Thousands or rabbits still live in inadequate housing and we still need to raise awareness of their needs.

Ratchet clips

Building Excel Runaround Runs is really easy thanks to the ingenious ratchet clips. Once in place they help to secure your rabbits' or guinea pigs run and help keep your pets safe.

Is everything I need in a connection kit?

Yes - two doors which can both be closed or opened, link to or dis-engage from the pipe. Plus full Instructions. ADD a pipe sleeve for a dart hole from the fox (recommended), and pipe hoops to secure on soft ground soft ground.

Does Runaround connect to wood or brick?

Yes. All our doors can also be linked to wood. It is just the screws that lengthen for that usually. We send for approx 10mm thickness. If the wood is especially thick we make bespoke screws to fit for brick for instance. 

What is the best connection?

The deluxe connection kit. This has a mesh tunnel or two or more in the centre. The rabbits can eat grass there and then have two directions to flee to. It suits them and it is easy to move and gives you a lot of leverage for moving a run that is located at the end. 

What about digging?

Rabbits are naturally designed to dig. They don’t do it in order to escape in every case. An old rabbit of ours dug her first burrow after 7 years in order to keep cool in a very hot weather. We kept her run over this hole so she could sit down there in comfort. Another rabbit dug a reasonably long tunnel but later filled it in (after two weeks). We left it out of curiosity but kept an eye on her. 

The skirt around all Runaround is a dig deterrent from the outside. Frequently moving the run or a supply of forage (grass and herbs and hay mixed in a hay tube for example) occupies rabbits and deters digging. Covering a digging area is good - maybe a mesh tunnel on a soft border with a deep mesh floor covered in soil. Rabbits will choose the easier soil to dig in. The hay hutch can be filled with soil and the clear dig is another option. 

Why link areas?

Both rabbits and guinea pigs are tunnel living creatures who journey from chamber to chamber underground and are used to numerous exits. This is how they evade capture and as prey animals they need to escape, so like more than one exit. Being cornered or trapped can make them very afraid.

Fox Issues

The rabbit is a prey animal and needs to be able to hide. The fox will perhaps pierce the pipe if a rabbit in it is visible to him - this is where the pipe sleeve seems to work very well. Clearly there are more persistent types of fox - town ones being more desperate since the wheelie bin but the idea of allowing bunnies to hide safely and well is the best policy. Being trapped in one area suits the fox. He can terrorise a trapped bunny simply by walking around the outside of his run or hutch even if it is secure. Bunnies naturally hide in the wild so we include hiding places such as simply 2ft of buried pipe, a pipe sleeve, a hay hutch, or a top box where the elevated rabbit can settle and watch until the coast is clear. 

Often they will choose the pipe to hide in. The reason is it's dark, it goes around their bodies protectively and it is a route not a dead end.

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