On February 18, 1997, I bought my first rabbit that would soon turn into many. Her name was Rene and she was a broken opal mini rex doe. When I bought her she was supposed to be bred, but she had lost her entire litter. Not giving up, I found a buck to breed her to and soon after I had my first litter of rabbits.
For a year I kept my rabbits in the backyard, but soon that turned out to be a problem. I live in Texas, and Texas summers can get really HOT. I lost three rabbits and everytime I had a litter, it was ambushed by a pack of ants and I lost many rabbits to the jaws of the ants. Also, it just was not fun going out on rainy nights to feed.
So the rabbits were moved to my garage. It was still hot, but I had no more ant problems or rainy nights. Although new problems sprang up. The garage began to smell strongly of rabbit and my mom began to complain. When we left the garage doors open to air it out, stray cats were coming in, and even a few stray dogs 
tryed to get at my rabbits. Once, we had a 3 foot snake that my nextdoor neighboor thankfully caught before it got in. The worst part of having the rabbits in the garage was cleaning the trays. What a hassle! We had finally got a swamp cooler and that helped with the heat problem but I HATED cleaning those trays. So we began looking for a barn.
We didn't want anything too complex or too big, and it could not be a permenant structure according to city laws. Some friends introduced us to two guys who were tearing down their barn to put up a bigger barn and were trying to sell their old one. And that is how we ended up with the barn I have now. We had a bunch of friends come over and they all helped with the construction of it and we turned it into a barbeque and a rabbit club meeting.
I am happy with my barn. My cages are hung from the ceiling with wire and all the droppings go to the floor where I can rake them up. I have no problems with ants, I have a cooler, no more dogs or cats get into my barn, and I haven't seen a snake since. And I currently have 30 cages, which so far, seems to be a good number.
I have had five breeds pass through my rabbitry over the three years. I started with mini rex, and I still have them. Next came satin, which I found too big and got rid of. Then came netherland dwarfs, which I had terrible luck with. My only REW doe, that was hard to get, died of dyhdration. After that came mini satins, but since they did not pass in October of 1998, I got rid of them to make room for my expanding mini rex. For my birthday this year, I recieved a trio of polish that I seem to be doing very well with.
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