Caring for our Rabbits on the Homestead....
I talked about our rabbits and our rabbit pens in my last article and now I would like to talk about how we care for our rabbits or really how we keep them alive in the hot summers in FL.
As you can see in the picture above we have a fan that we run a mister from the water hose in the hotter months. This really helps along with the shade from a large tree above. You can also see pine needles on the top of the tin. I actually put those there because we run sprinklers on top of the cages also. The pine needles soak up and hold the water dropping the temp under the tin roofs up to 10 degrees. When all else fails we break out the frozen water bottles and add in the cages for them to lay next to. This helps them regulate their temp. Usually this is only done when they are really fanning their ears and panting from being hot. This is how we have managed to breed rabbits year round even when the real feel temps are pushing 115 degrees.
In the winter we will wrap the cages with 6 mil black plastic to block the wind chill and also if it is really cold we will give them warm water bottles on their cages for them to drink.
How do you keep your rabbits cool in the summer months and warm in the winters?
Great tips @liberyworms!! I may use some of your ideas to keep my bantam chickens warmer during the winter and cooler in the hottest days! Thank you!! :-)
Upvoted and resteemed!
Your very welcome. Anything with a tin roof the sprinklers work great. I know old school farmers would run them on the tops of the barns to create a kind of swamp cooler effect and even business here in the summer with tin roofs do this to save on utility cost of cooling.
Our summers aren't as hot as Florida so just giving them shade and plenty of water is usually fine. I have used frozen bottles a few times on really hot days.
Our hutches have removable wooden walls that I put up in winter to block the wind. The rabbit tractors have a section that is covered. This protects them from wind and rain during winter and gives some shade in the summer.
Sounds very nice not having so hot of summers. We usually only wrap ours at night when wind chill gets down in the teens and pin it up during the day.