the biggest costs/potential costs aside from unexpected/unavoidable vet bills are cage, spay/neuter, hay, litter box litter, veggies and toys.
ways to reduce these costs:
~ build a NIC/C&C style cage - they're bigger, better AND cheaper than store-bought cages!
http://www.guineapigcages.com/cubes.htm
http://breyfamily.net/bunnycage.html
best deal on grids for the cages:
http://www.sears.com/stor-floor-sta...p-00913332000P?prdNo=1&blockNo=1&blockType=G1
some (though not all) home depots have the coroplast for flooring at a very good price - ask where the plexiglass is 'cause most employees won't know what coroplast is. if you can't get a good price on coroplast and/or have some tools to work with, you can use wood for flooring.
~ get a rescue bunny - they're already spayed/neutered and are usually no more than $50-80... by comparison, I paid $30 each for my bunns from a breeder (because I couldn't find rescue rabbits in my area) and paid like $450 total for two spays.
~ buy hay from feed stores. a 6 lb bag of timothy from Petco (the biggest size, which is only available online) is $16 even AFTER a 20% discount. an 80 lb bale of some type of grass hay from a feed store is around $9-14. a bale can be stored for as much as a year as long as it's kept clean and dry. if you ask at the feed store, they'll even split the bale in half for you (making it easier to haul around and easier to split so that you can keep half at each parent's house). I got half-bale bags to keep hay in from
http://www.tackwholesale.com/bale-bags-c-11.html and had the store split it into the bags for me... I really like them, they're sturdy, easy to move around (even as a female), keep things clean, etc. if you want a cheaper alternative, you could use plastic storage bins or even break the bale down into plastic garbage bags.
~ while at the feed store, pick up a bag of wood pellets to use as litter - I paid $7 for a 40 lb bag tonight. much cheaper than any litter you can find at a pet store.
~ some veggies are cheaper than others. kale, turnip greens, collard greens and some other stuff is < $1 for a big bunch. cilantro is dirt cheap - in my area, 28c per bunch. many non-iceberg lettuces are pretty cheap too.
some of the expensive veggies (in particular, a lot of herbs like basil, mint, sage, etc.) are very easy to grow and you can buy an entire plant for the cost of one little packet of herbs - a small bunny garden is totally doable even if you have (like me) zero skill with plants. depending on how much space you have and how devoted you are to keeping up with watering and such, you could even opt for a large garden. the largest thing I've got is raddicio - it was maybe $3-4 for SIX little plants that are coming along very nicely despite occasional neglect. some people grow lettuces, kale, carrot tops, wheat grass and whatever else their bunnies like in large enough quantities that they don't have to buy veggies from the store at all. whether you grow your bunny's entire fresh diet yourself or just supplement what you buy from the store with a small garden, growing your own stuff is a good way to cut costs a bit.
you can also ask to talk to the produce manager at your local grocery store - a lot of times they have trimmings from veggies that get thrown out because they're not a part of the plant that people normally eat (carrot tops, broccoli leaves, that sort of thing) and sometimes you can arrange to get some of that stuff for little or no cost, reducing the overall cost of the fresh part of your rabbit's diet.
~ toys - they tend to prefer cheap toys over expensive ones. cardboard boxes (or even box mazes) with at least one entrance/exit hole cut in them, toilet paper/paper towel tubes stuffed with hay, brown packing paper, old phone books, slinkies, whiffle balls/cat balls, tunnels, etc. are all popular. you can get things called concrete forms to use as tunnels pretty cheaply at a hardware store and a lot of times you can find things like slinkies, balls, untreated wicker baskets/mats, etc. at dollar stores.
