How to Keep Your Rabbits Warm in Cold Weather
Many people worry about how to keep their rabbits warm when the weather dips down in temperature. While rabbits tend to do quite well in the cold, there are some things to know about how to keep your rabbits warm in cold weather.
One thing to know about rabbits is that they tend to do much better in cold weather than they do in hot weather. However, if you are raising rabbits in a cold weather climate, make sure that you have rabbits that do best with cold weather. Most breeds will be just fine with a few simple considerations.
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When I talk about cold weather, I am coming from living in Eastern Washington where we would have a healthy amount of snow and temps down to zero in the winter. Now we are in central Wisconsin where it is actually similar to where we were in Washington. It is a bit longer of a winter with more snow. But the windchill is what makes Wisconsin so much colder, with feels like temps down to the negative 20s.
How Are You Housing Your Rabbits?
Learn how to keep your rabbits warm even if they are housed outside.
Your rabbits might be in a cage setup in a barn or in a hutch outside. Or maybe even in a colony system outside. All are ways that your rabbits will be able to handle the winter cold and you will be able to keep your rabbits warm.
At first, our rabbits were outside in hutches. When we started having litters in the winter, we moved the does inside the garage (and now our barn). The bucks were left outside in the hutches.
We have neighbors that have their rabbits outside in a colony situation. We see big bunnies sitting on top of mounds of snow as happy as can be. I will not be talking about the colony situation because I have not housed my rabbits that way. Nor have I researched it much to know what rabbits need in that situation.
In the winter rabbits can be indoors in a barn or outside in winter weather. They will adapt to where they live as long as you make sure they have what they need. You will be able to keep your rabbits warm in cold weather.
How to Keep Your Rabbits Warm in Cold Weather
#1 – Keep them Dry from Rain and Snow
If your rabbits are housed in a barn or another indoor building, this is easy. If they are outside, however, there are a few steps you might need to take with their housing. Rabbits need ample coverings on top on their shelters and even on the sides if the wind will blow in rain or snow. Make sure the angle of the roof either deters the rain and snow or that it covers enough over the sides of the hutch that the rabbits will not be rained on.
Most likely if you are housing your rabbits outside, they are in hutches. The hutches should have three sides that are solid so rabbits are protected from the weather the best.
If your rabbits are outside in cages, you will need to take some extra steps to ensure they are protected from the weather. Using tarps or some other type of weather proof material, you will need to cover the sides of the cages to protect from the rain and snow. Rabbits are cold hardy, but letting the snow drift in on them or the rain blow in the sides of the cage is not good for your rabbits. This is especially important if your area tends to have a lot of wind.
#2 – Rabbits Need to have a Place to Escape the Wind
If your rabbits are living outside, it is very important that their hutch gives them a place to escape not only the rain and snow, but also the wind. As said above, they need two to three sides of their hutch closed in as solid surfaces. I like to have it be three sides.
Rabbits should not be left out to have to deal with the constant wind blowing on them. This will not keep your rabbits warm and they will not do well.
They need a space to get out of the wind. So either a hutch that has three enclosed sides or a tarp to close the sides in from the wind. Our hutches have three enclosed sides along with a section of the front closed in. That way the rabbits are able to sit along the one side to get away from the wind. This is a part of the hutch that also had a partial solid floor so the air will not come in from the bottom either.
Some hutches have a little box area that is even more closed in. Your rabbits can retreat to that closed in box area for extra protection. All sides and the bottom are closed up for the most protection from weather. This is absolutely necessary if you are going to have does with litters outside in very cold weather.
Tiffany at Teal Stone Homestead as great plans for her grow-out hutch. The plans fit what rabbits need to stay warm in cold weather when housed outside. Hope over here to see them.
You can see below what my husband first built when we brought rabbits home in February. We loved the design of this hutch also, but had to leave it behind when we moved out of state.
#4 – Give More Food than Usual
Rabbits will need to eat more in the winter as they are burning more calories to keep warm. The colder it gets, the more calories a rabbit will need to keep warm. All rabbits will need to eat two to three times more feed in the cold weather. Make sure that they have access to more pellets than normal. To keep your rabbits warm and healthy, they must have more calories when the temperatures drop.
I know many people measure out the amount of pellets they give to their rabbits every day. They do this to make sure that their rabbits are not eating too much and become overweight. I have not had the issue with my rabbits becoming overweight. So I do not measure their food, but fill up their feeders with more than they eat in a day. I do this year round so that they eat what they need no matter how cold it gets.
#3 – Give your Rabbits Extra Hay
I want to make sure that my rabbits have extra hay to eat when the weather drops in temperature. This will help them keep warmer just as the extra pellets will. They will eat more hay in winter than when it is warmer, so make sure they are getting an adequate amount daily.
Rabbits also like to burrow down in hay or straw. So in addition to giving them extra hay to eat, I will give even more than they need to eat so they have enough to burrow down in. I do not do this every day, but when the temps are at their lowest or a storm is coming in.
Giving extra hay is especially important for does with babies. If you have a litter in a nesting box, you will want to make sure that there is enough hay and replace when it is getting low or soiled.
#5 – Make sure that their Water Doesn’t Freeze
Making sure your rabbit water does not freeze when the temperatures drop can be the biggest challenge when trying to keep your rabbits warm and healthy in cold weather.
We tend to have many months of below freezing temperatures and need to be very careful during that time. It is very important that our rabbits have access to water at all times.
We typically use regular water bottles for our rabbits. Yet, in the winter we change out the water bottles for crocks or bowls. The regular water bottles will freeze in cold temperatures and not work. It will also ruin them for the warm weather because the freezing temps will make them leak later on when not freezing. You do not want to leave regular water bottles out when the temperature drops.
So we use the crocks or metal bowls. This means that I also must use hot water that I bring out in old milk jugs. You will need to pop out the solid ice you encounter in the bowl. I do do this by pouring the hot water over the bowl and refilling. Or you will need to have enough bowls to switch out two times a day.
I did this for two winters. I had to go out to the rabbits two to three times a day to make sure they had enough water that had not frozen. This is the hardest part of making sure our rabbits stay warm in cold weather. It can make it hard if we want to leave the house for even a half day.
Invest in Heated Water Bottles
Thankfully this year we decided to invest in heated waterers. They have been a lifesaver! We even left on vacation in December and did not feel too guilty having neighbors take care of the rabbits. It is so much easier to take care of them with the water not being such a big issue in cold weather.
You will need to have an electricity source for the water bottles. But in our experience, we do not even need to fill them daily. They usually last a few days unless we have a litter in with a mom. Then we have to carefully watch and sometimes fill a couple times a day. But not because they are frozen. It is because they are going through a lot of water as the doe is nursing and the babies are growing and now drinking water also.
#6 – Make sure the Rabbis have Enough Light
The first year that we moved to Wisconsin, we did not realize that we had electricity in any of the barns. So we moved the rabbits into a barn that did not have any lights at all. The barn door opened and I thought it would bring enough light in for them, but it did not.
Rabbits do not need the light to keep warm in cold weather. But if you are hoping to breed through the colder and darker days of winter, than your rabbits are going to need some light.
Rabbits do not want to be left in the dark. I never read this in a book, but as I talked to other rabbit breeders, I found that this was my issue I had with breeding the first winter we were here. At first I thought it was just that it was so cold, but more likely, it was the lack of light my rabbits had.
Now they are in the old dairy barn with access to light all the time. I have not had any issues with breeding since the temperatures have dropped this year with the addition of lights.
#7 – Plan Breedings and Kidding Carefully
Once I figured out my light situation with breeding in the late fall and winter months, the breeding situation was easier. Yet, I knew that for a doe having a litter in the coldest of weather, there was much more risk. If your rabbits are going to be in extreme cold, you might want to plan breeding around that.
I choose to not breed my rabbits past the fall so that they will not be having litters in our coldest months. There is nothing that says you need to do this also, but for us, it makes sense. We still have litters in late fall and early spring while it is still cold, but not when the wind chill is in the negative 20s and 30s here. You might not experience those temps where you live and so this is not much of an issue.
For litters that are born in cold weather, you will want to make sure you take precautions. First, have your nesting box full of wood shavings and straw/hay and ready to go about three days before your doe is due to have her babies. This is normal, but be even more careful in extreme weather.
Next, make sure that the doe’s cage is fully protected from the cold weather and wind. Do not leave her out in a hutch without a fully enclosed section.
If she is outside and not in a hutch, think about bringing her inside a barn or garage until the kits are a few weeks old. This would be a temporary situation and one you would need to remedy if you plan to have more litters in the cold months.
You Can Keep Your Rabbits Warm in Cold Weather
If you want to make sure to keep your rabbits warm and healthy in the bitter cold weather, follow the steps above. It is worth it to plan out the safety of your rabbits when living in cold climates.
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