| Hi Mike. You have obviously given your coop design lots of thought instead of rushing in blindly, but seeing as I am a bit further down the path for chickens and rabbits, I will make a few suggestions. 1. Four to five hens do not need 96 square feet of house room. I suggest you consider dividing the house into two areas of 12' x 6'. You could easily keep up to ten or twelve hens in that space (4 to 5 sq. ft each), especially if you are not keeping a rooster. 2. It sounds to me as though you need more room for your rabbits. The recommended size for a cage is about 8 sq. ft.-- either 36 x 30 inches or 24 x 48 inches. Make sure you can easily reach all the way to the back of the cage. If you cages are raised, drop down fronts provide easy access. When your does have their litters you will quickly see why the cages need to be big. A buck can get along with a slightly smaller cage, but he needs room to exercise and room to "entertain the ladies" when you bring the does to him for servicing. In Zone 8, an open sided rabbitry is a good idea, but you might want to enclose it with either lattice panels or hardware cloth. And while we are on the subject of wire, chicken wire is NOT adequate protection for either rabbits or chickens. A raccoon will tear his way right through it and so will a big dog. Half inch hardware cloth or even chain-link gives better protection. 3. If you are building your own rabbit cages, be sure to use very strong welded wire for the floors -- the kind with 1 inch x 1/2 inch mesh. Otherwise the wire will sag and your bunnies will get sore feet and hocks. 4. Why not make your "people door" entering through the rabbit side? Bunnies in cages can't escape and you will not need the separate storage area/entrance room. Feed for both can be kept in the rabbitry. 5. Give some thought to how you will deal with the rabbit manure. Bins of sawdust below the cages help a lot and you can just cover the mess with fresh sawdust until it is time to clean out. Make it easy to clean out - fresh bunny manure is heavy. (Incidentally, I have found that most of the bunnies will adapt well to a "litter box" - a dollar-store rectangular dishpan one-third full of sawdust or wood shavings. In my summer rabbitry, I let the droppings fall to the ground, but as the cages are in the porch for the winter, the boxes help a lot.) 6. You will not need a heat lamp for your chickens in Zone 8. Both rabbits and chickens will be fine as long as their house is not drafty. May have more ideas later on, but this is what comes immediately to mind, based on my own experiences. Hope some if it is helpful to you. | 
