Well, first of all, I'm really unusual as a breeder - not sure if that is good or bad.
My rabbits are (gasp) - in my house and in my garage. My does, favoritebucks and weanlings are in the sunroom (a 10' X 14' room) and thedining room has 7 cages.
The majority of my bucks are in my garage. I have an ad in the paper torehome a bunch of these guys this coming weekend....when I rehome myolder rabbits they're free - BUT - I talk to the people and I haveturned down people before who wanted rabbits. It doesn't hurt me toturn someone down and I will do it even if they get mad at me. I don'tcare - I'm looking out for the best home for the rabbits.
This time will be tough though as I may try to find homes for Spidey(who used to climb up the gate to get out), Fluffy (who likes toirritate Spidey since they're cages are back to back), Q-ball (aharlequin who HAS to get petted or he pitches a fit) and Houdini - whohas to be in a top cage or he gets out. I'm already crying at thethought of letting them go.
Anyway - how do I do it? Well for one thing, I tend to keep the lighton in the sunroom at least 16 hours per day if I plan on breeding. Thesunroom has something like 14 windows on 3 sides...so it isn't likethey don't get enough light and fresh air. We open about 5 windows whenit is nice out - and the back door is open to let fresh air in. I openthe front door to to air out the house.
Summers are harder for us than winters. My husband accused me offreezing him this summer - we kept a fan in the door to the garage andcontinually blew the air conditioning in there from the house. (Nowonder I had high bills). We're talking about having Art put in airducts before next summer (he used to work with a friend who had an acbusiness). I have a thermometer in my kitchen which tells me thetemperature in there - plus the temperature in the garage (there is amonitor in there). When the temp starts hitting 85 - I start breakingout frozen bottles. You have to understand - in June and July - we canhit 113 and higher almost all month long.
Last month was tough for us though. I had several does bred and thetemps would normally be around 70.....and then it dropped to almostfreezing. Even though we closed the windows...it still got cooler inthe rabbitry than I like - at least with babies in there. The does didgood at pulling fur but we still lost kits that had been born on thewire by new mamas - that I probably could've saved if it had been ournormal temps.
Anyway, that is what I do. Some folks have barns and use misters in the summer.
Art had talked me into building a shed for the rabbits - and then ourfriends at Mossy Possum had their rabbitry burn down this week andArt's first words to me were, "you're not gonna do the shed...are you?"I said, 'Nope. We can put tools in a shed - but the rabbits will stayhere."
My goal though is to get them all moved into the garage during Jan& Feb. Right now about 1/2 of the garage is made up of boxes..
And that's probably way more than you wanted to know.
But my goal is to drop down to about 75 rabbits at most after Lionhead Nationals and keep them in the garage.
By the way, my does at least get playtime and we're trying to designthe garage so the bucks will have play areas too so they can get outsometimes. However, many of my rabbits love staying in their cage andplaying with their toys and getting pets.
Peg
gentle giants wrote:
I was wondering,Tiny's Mom-I see you are from Texas? What is the weather like there? Ido a lot of my breeding in the winter, but I have to be pretty carefulabout keeping the kits warm. How do you do it, out of curiosity?Thanks.
