Over the past couple days we have had some high heats sooner than expected for the area. Given that rabbits can die from heat with the temperatures as cool as 80, we were concerned. The normal method of dealing with this issue is to put frozen 2 liter bottles of water in the hutch that they use to stay cool. Unfortunately that only really works for 4 - 6 hours. Given that on Tuesdays the soonest one of us gets home is after 10 hours, that doesn't work. Yesterday we brought the rabbits inside quickly to prevent them from having health issues.
Above is Sunny and her litter in a Martin's Play Pen. We have that from having been rat rescuers for many years. We use it primarily to let our rats have out time, but in this case it was perfect for holding the smaller babies without letting them slip out from between the bars of a dog crate. Our other temporary holding cages were as you can see Below dog crates for medium to large sized dogs.
Above is Umbra in his cage. He actually perked up when we brought him down to the basement where it doesn't tend to get above 60 degrees on the hottest days. Right is Dawn and her litter. Dawn hates being moved and it was not a good time transferring her down to the basement. It was needed though and she ended up happier down there quickly due to the cooler temperature.Weight Charts
Dawn's Litter
5/03 5/04 5/05 5/06 5/06 5/07 5/08 5/09 5/10 5/11 5/12 5/13 5/14
1: 71 80 89 87 Weights 103 113 125 133 148 158 158 167
2: 67 75 80 84 At 91 110 119 116 133 144 153 158
3: 65 73 77 84 Death 91 101 110 113 123 130 129 156
4: 65 66 68 75 88 100 106 110 112 121 128 140
5: 54 56 58 62 75 100 103 102 109 110 110 132
6: 54 52 55 60 62 70 71 78 90 106 101 105
7: 52 49 50 52 46
8: 49 48 46 50 43
5/15 5/16 5/17 Prediction 5/21 5/21 5/22 5/23 5/24 5/26 5/27 5/28 5/29
1: 180 189 192 222 248 289 283 293 307 339 424 437
2: 178 182 191 221 244 270 280 288 267 338 368 407
3: 175 176 182 202 226 247 253 274 238 365 364 402
4: 163 163 170 190 221 225 250 266 235 337 362 400
5: 145 134 136 156 177 191 198 209 234 264 293 326
6: 116 124 135 150 167 183 190 207 214 263 287 312
As you can see, we missed weight check on the 25th. I woke up late due to failing to set my alarm and barely had enough time to feed the rabbits and get out to work on time. I would have been interested to see the weights on that day because it was the 26th that the babies really started actively eating solid food on their own. They have been all over the place, and food consumption in Dawn's hutch has spiked significantly. While food rates is something we want to measure in the future we don't have a solid way to do so yet. At this point I can say that Dawn's cage is fully consuming more than 1 full cup of food each day as well as 2 hand fulls of hay. You'll notice that growth rates have also spiked considerably in the babies having changed from (not calculated) around 9 grams a day max for the most part to 20+ grams a day seeming to be normal.
The weight on 5/26 for #2, #3, and #4 seem suspect to me, but I don't think I messed up weights. The numbers just seem to be out of line for the rest of the litter for that day and their overall growth trend.
Sunny's Litter
5/14 5/15 5/16 5/17 5/21 5/22 5/23 5/24 5/26 5/27 5/28 5/29
1: 65 65 71 92 134 163 164 167 188 198 208 212
2: 60 60 71 91 133 156 163 165 187 197 202 208
3: 57 58 68 89 131 155 156 164 182 196 201 208
4: 56 58 67 88 129 146 152 163 181 191 200 207
5: 55 58 62 83 125 145 151 160 179 191 197 207
6: 55 57 60 79 125 144 147 158 177 188 197 204
7: 53 56 58 78 121 139 143 158 176 183 194 199
8: 47 49 56 67 110 114 127 132 152 162 175 181
As you can see Sunny's litter continues to grow quickly and with a more consistent weight spread. I'd done calculations on this for the original post, but that vanished with the post.
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