This is a specific conversation about Rabbit housing — space and setup that works — ask about yours and get one honest answer for your exact situation.
inparticular.ai
Most rabbit hutches sold in pet shops are far too small — rabbits need enough room to do at least three full hops, stand fully upright on their hind legs, and have clearly separate areas for sleeping and toileting. A Vienna is a medium-sized, active breed, so getting the layout right really matters for their wellbeing. To point you in the right direction: are you housing them indoors or outdoors, how many rabbits do you have, and roughly how much floor space can you dedicate to their setup?
It's just one Vienna, indoors. She's about 3kg. I've got a corner of my living room free, maybe 2 metres by 1.5 metres to work with.
inparticular.ai
That's a solid footprint — more than enough to set up something that genuinely suits her. For a single indoor Vienna at 3kg, you want a base enclosure of at least 1.8m x 0.9m with good height (60cm minimum so she can stand fully upright), plus an attached run or free-roam time. Can I ask — are you thinking of a pen-style setup she can roam in, or a hutch-plus-run combination? And does she get supervised free roam of the room as well?
I was thinking more of a pen she can live in most of the time. She does get a couple of hours free roam each evening but I'd like her main space to be enclosed so I can manage cables and things.
inparticular.ai
A pen setup is perfect for that — much better than a hutch for an active indoor rabbit. Within your 2m x 1.5m corner you can fit a large exercise pen and zone it properly: sleeping area with a hideout or small wooden house in one corner, litter tray in another corner (rabbits naturally choose a corner for toileting, so work with that), and open floor space in the middle for movement and enrichment. Keep the hideout and litter tray as far apart as the space allows. What I'd recommend is the Midwest Homes for Pets Small Animal Exercise Pen — it's 95cm tall, which is excellent for a rabbit who stands upright, and the panels are configurable so you can shape it to your corner exactly. It's widely available on Amazon UK, well-built, and the height stops her getting any ideas about jumping out.
That sounds good. What should I put inside it — like what does she actually need in there?
inparticular.ai
Inside the pen she needs: a wooden hideout or small covered sleeping area (something like a wooden rabbit house she can get on top of as well as inside — Viennas like to perch), a large litter tray filled with paper-based litter and topped with hay (she'll eat hay while she toilets, which is completely normal and helps keep her digestive system moving), a hay rack or pile of loose hay taking up roughly a third of the space, a water bowl rather than a bottle if possible (easier to drink from), and one or two enrichment items like a willow ball or cardboard tunnel. Keep the floor covered with a mat or rug — bare flooring is bad for rabbit joints. That's genuinely everything she needs. The less cluttered the central space, the more she'll use it for movement.
Really helpful, thank you. Is the pen height fine even though she's quite active? I don't want her jumping out.
inparticular.ai
At 95cm the Midwest pen is among the tallest small-animal pens available, and it's the reason I suggested it specifically. Most domestic rabbits, including active medium breeds like the Vienna, won't clear that height — they're built for sprinting and binkying rather than jumping vertically. That said, if she surprises you in the first few days, you can clip a lightweight mesh or fabric cover across the top. For the vast majority of Viennas it won't be needed, but it's easy to add if you want extra peace of mind.
