DianeS
Ridin' The Range
I posted a while ago about bringing my Angora rabbits with me when I moved from Colorado to Oregon - and I'm happy to report they made it just fine!
We carried the rabbits in the car that was being pulled behind the moving truck.
I covered the car seats up with plastic tarps so I wouldn't worry about water or waste getting on the upholstery. The car windows were left down all the time, for air flow. (Another reason for the plastic - can't always stop in time to roll up windows when you hit a rainstorm.)
Animals that were hutched together were moved together in the same pet carrier. I had looked at official rabbit carry-cages, but was only able to find ones with metal dividers, which I decided could get too hot in the sun. The plastic pet carriers worked perfectly - plastic stayed cool, and the solid tops provided shade, while the slits and doors gave enough openings for the air to stay fresh.
They traveled with bottles of frozen water in the carriers (2-liters and 20-ozs), so they could lean against them to cool off. In the trunk of the car we had a cooler with more bottles so we could change them out as they melted.One smart-aleck rabbit figured out how to bite through the plastic of the smaller bottles - but she must have drunk the contents because the water sure didn't get on anything! (But be prepared for that possibility if you do a similar thing with the bottles.)
Even during a long (2-hour) stop to fix a blown-out tire, they didnt' get overheated. Thankfully we were traveling in the West, not in the areas where you're having 100+ degree temps. The mid-70s we drove through were just fine.
It was always interesting when we stopped for the night, to find somewhere that not only had a large enough parking lot for the moving van, but had it in a position where the rabbits would not attract attention to themselves, and would be in the shade in the mornings before we started off again. But with persistence we were able to find that.
So we're off to the hardware store to get the piping to use to build their permanent hutch arrangement. It feels good to be in Oregon at last! I'm glad I kept this litter of rabbits instead of selling them and starting over. Everything worked out just fine for them. Thanks to everyone who offered helpful suggestions on how to pull this off!
We carried the rabbits in the car that was being pulled behind the moving truck.
I covered the car seats up with plastic tarps so I wouldn't worry about water or waste getting on the upholstery. The car windows were left down all the time, for air flow. (Another reason for the plastic - can't always stop in time to roll up windows when you hit a rainstorm.)
Animals that were hutched together were moved together in the same pet carrier. I had looked at official rabbit carry-cages, but was only able to find ones with metal dividers, which I decided could get too hot in the sun. The plastic pet carriers worked perfectly - plastic stayed cool, and the solid tops provided shade, while the slits and doors gave enough openings for the air to stay fresh.
They traveled with bottles of frozen water in the carriers (2-liters and 20-ozs), so they could lean against them to cool off. In the trunk of the car we had a cooler with more bottles so we could change them out as they melted.One smart-aleck rabbit figured out how to bite through the plastic of the smaller bottles - but she must have drunk the contents because the water sure didn't get on anything! (But be prepared for that possibility if you do a similar thing with the bottles.)
Even during a long (2-hour) stop to fix a blown-out tire, they didnt' get overheated. Thankfully we were traveling in the West, not in the areas where you're having 100+ degree temps. The mid-70s we drove through were just fine.
It was always interesting when we stopped for the night, to find somewhere that not only had a large enough parking lot for the moving van, but had it in a position where the rabbits would not attract attention to themselves, and would be in the shade in the mornings before we started off again. But with persistence we were able to find that.
So we're off to the hardware store to get the piping to use to build their permanent hutch arrangement. It feels good to be in Oregon at last! I'm glad I kept this litter of rabbits instead of selling them and starting over. Everything worked out just fine for them. Thanks to everyone who offered helpful suggestions on how to pull this off!
