How We Keep Our Rabbits Cool in the Summer

We often are asked how rabbits do in South Dakota winters, but it’s really the summer where rabbits appreciate some extra care: they just don’t love the heat and you can tell!

Here’s what we do to keep our meat rabbits comfortable when the forecast calls for days of 100+ temps:

Shade

Providing rabbits with shade is key – think of what they would do to stay cool in the wild! They also need to stay dry, so a good setup will accomplish both.

Water

We make sure our rabbits have plenty of water and check it midday. If you normally just use a nipple waterer, we recommend giving them an extra bowl of water or use one of the “bunny wells” that we sell here at Harvey’s. (Makes it super simple to refill waterers from outside the cage!) They just seem to drink more when they have an open source for water versus just a nipple waterer.

They will also drink more when the water is not hot, so even if they don’t need additional water in the heat of the day, we usually dump it out and give them fresh, cool water. (Remember that the water sitting in a hose is probably hot for a minute, so we let that run out before refilling waterers.)

Airflow

Particularly if your rabbits are in any sort of enclosure or shed, but even if their cages are outside, you want to make sure they have good airflow. Ours are outside in elevated cages so on a normal day there’s plenty of air movement, but when it’s super hot we’ll put a box fan at the end of the row of cages.

Ice

And finally, when it’s really hot for days on end, we’ve frozen water in milk jugs and then put them in the cages where they can rest against them, and they seem to like that. We don’t do the ice jugs regularly, but only when the temps are 100+ for days in a row.

Making Meat Rabbits Great Again

We have a meat rabbit setup in our store to show you how we do it at home. These rabbits don’t know how good they have it in our climate-controlled store!

Here at Harvey’s we want to make meat rabbits great again: they are an excellent protein source and are easy to breed and raise. We have everything from rabbit feed to cages to waterers and even breeding stock available here at our store in Hot Springs, South Dakota. We’d love to have you come in and chat meat rabbits with us!

We also do free demonstrations on basic rabbit raising and also rabbit butchering – check our events page for upcoming events on this and many other topics.