The Heat, with breeds

[rabbitlady4433]

I know that some breeds tolerate the heat better than others. I recently have two different litters going that are of different breeds, the kits are about 3 weeks old now. And it's hot! Today we soared into the hundreds. Luckily we live close so I can come home and change ice bottles and tiles and spray ears and all that. Though, I have learned my lesson and will not be breeding so close to june anymore I did notice that my rex's are handling the heat so much better that my NZW's. Drastically different. The NZ's are not tolerating the heat very well at all and I've been force to bring the kids inside (not to my husbands liking) on several occasions and actually had to revive two of them yesterday, not pretty. But the rex kids are all okay and thank god I haven't had to bring them in. Has anyone ever noticed this as well?

 

[terri9630]

My NZW's haven't been having much trouble with our 100+ temps. We have misters up but they won't work well if you live in a humid area. We did loose one of our best 4-H does a few weeks ago but it was 115 outside and she knocked her water bottle off the cage. I built an auto water system to keep that from happening again.

 

[rabbitlady4433]

The NZ doe I have doe quite well in the heat, it's just the kits that are having the problem. They're four weeks now and if the weather gets in the upper 90's (though the index has been in the 100's) they are not coping well. Yesterday it was really nice in the morning and around 3 it became really hot again, by the time I got home from work they were both wet around the mouth and front feet, panting like crazy and the tips of their ears were bent over. While the rex kits were fine.

They all get frozen tiles and bottles so I'm not sure what's different other than genetics. lol

 

[terri9630]

How's the air flow around that cage compared to the other one? On my rabbit run one side gets a breeze around the side of the garage and the otherside doesn't so I had to put a fan out to help the rabbits on that end. Maybe they are wet because mommas licking them trying to cool them off?

 

[rabbitlady4433]

Both litter are in a 3 hole hutch with open ends and fronts, right next to each other. There is a huge fan at the end to keep things going, its brutal here right now, real hot, real humid, and no breeze. We've been in a heat advisory for a week and just heard it's suppose to last 2 more weeks! ugg Kansas weather is brutal sometimes!

 

[M.R. Lops]

I use to keep all of my buns inside until the beginning of June when I built a bunny barn for them. I moved them outside when it was really hot out (bad day of my choosing) and i had a litter of Hollands that were only a couple weeks old. It got into the 100's in there in the day and the fans didn't help much. One baby had a heat stroke, resulting in a head tilt. We later insulated the barn and I now have a window air conditioner in there. My Holland Lop buck is outside in a hutch and does fine though, even in this crazy Missouri weather. Oh, by the way the baby that had the heat stroke that ended up with a head tilt was later sold and the new family emailed me back after a couple days and said that she read online that rubbing their neck is suppose to help, so she did that, and in 2 days it went away. So, he's all better now. But, I learned from that mistake and now I make sure it stays really cool in the bunny barn, except the air conditioner likes to turn off randomly in the day, and then I have to restart the outlet outside and turn it back on every few hours.

 

[rabbitlady4433]

I wish I had a barn, lol. Right now i live in town and the shed is my husbands only domain lol, so I'm not going to take that space too. They all live in hutches outside in the coolest part of our yard and hidden from passer byes. Yesterday the thermometer read 104, ouch.

 

[M.R. Lops]

I wish I had a barn, lol. Right now i live in town and the shed is my husbands only domain lol, so I'm not going to take that space too. They all live in hutches outside in the coolest part of our yard and hidden from passer byes. Yesterday the thermometer read 104, ouch.

Well, you could hardly call my bunny barn a barn. Its more like a shed. My uncle and I built it, its only 8 x 12. It has 2 windows, a tin roof (which makes the rain sound really loud during thunderstorms, its annoying), and we recently insulated it to try to make it cooler. The buns also have one of those window air conditioners in there, which works pretty good. I always try to keep it below 85 in there. Sometimes they get spoiled, one day it ended up getting to 79 in there, which was cooler than it was inside our house, lol.