How do I cool down the rabbit room?

[NZminilops]

The room the bunnies is in is getting really hot lately :grumpy:. It's summer here, and that side of the house gets the full force of the afternoon and evening sun. 70% of the room is full of my brothers junk from when he lived here, he started taking some of it out last night (finally, after months and months! ) and when it's all gone I want to do a room switch-a-roo.

Right now, the master bedroom is our gym/spare room, we are in the smallest but coolest room of the house, and the rabbit and junk room is the second largest. When Chris has moved all his stuff out, I want to stick the exercise equipment in there and move us back into the biggest room, and put the buns in the small cool little room.

Until then, does anyone have any ideas what I can do to help keep their room cool? It's a bit of a delima with the cat in a way, as if I leave the windows open and the door open to the bun room (cools it down the most), she jumps out the window. She's not allowed outside unsupervised so I then end up shutting her away and she screams and yowls for hours, driving us nuts, or I shut the door to the bunny room and it gets even hotter in there...not good :?. We are renting the place so can't install any cooling systems nor aford to.

Any ideas welcome! Right now I end up taking the buns out of there and putting them outside in hutches under the trees, but I prefer not to leave them outside alone.

Michelle

 

[BlueGiants]

Do you have curtains or shades to keep the sun out? (Sorry, grasping at straws here...) Can you leave the door between the room andthe house open with a fan on the floor? It's always cooler on the floor, so try to keep the air moving? You can't have a draft on the buns, but sometimes if you point it straight up, it'll keep the air moving. You can put a big bowl of icecubes and cold water behind the fan to make the air cooler. (We used to call them swamp coolers... use evaporation to cool the air and use a fan to move it around.)

You canmist their ears with a spray bottle. I freeze 12" x 12" ceramic tiles (from a discount store) for them to lay on. (Also do the frozen bottle thing...).

 

[NZminilops]

Yep we have curtains, I do shut them and it helps a little. The air flow thing is a good idea, we have two fans in the house, I didn't even think to use one, sheesh.

Also the misting the ears idea, that's awesome too, and I hadn't thought of that.

You were a great help, thank you!

 

[PepnFluff]

If you need more cheap fans i know our warehouse has some lil standing ones for 7.99 usually 10.99 there sales are nation wide usually. And the two doller shop the blue one they usually have mini hand held battery powered ones for....$2!!!! you could like tape them to the outside of their cages or something.

 

[NZminilops]

Cool! The warehouse is great for cheap stuff, so I'll go take a look tomorrow. Thanks PepnFluff :biggrin2:.

 

[PepnFluff]

No problamo question- do we have himalayans here?

 

[amundb]

You can try a window fan to help cool the room. It fits on the window sill, and you bring the window back down on it to hold it in place. It woul serve the purpose of being able to keep the cat inside as well.

Here's a picture of one we have...I'm sure you can find one around you somewhere.

 

[Maureen Las]

I don't have any more suggestions as the the ones offered are very good, fans with iced water and frozen bottles.

I understand this problem as I originally set up an insulated back porch for my rabbits because it had so many windows and was so bright.

We insulated and fixed it in the fall and it was wonderful in the fall and winter...but once it hit June 1st the place turned into a living hell. ..even with curtains.

It faced the south and the ac from the rest of the house just didn't affect that room.

Eventually I moved them to a room on the North side of the house and they are fine but get no sun (they don't care)
I would try to change rooms as soon as you can as this kind of heat is really stressful on them.

 

[tundrakatiebean]

could you maybe make some sort of barrier for when the window was open? like some NIC grids stuck in there to keep the cat from jumping out?

 

[JimD]

Here's the library link for Cooling a Rabbit

I use fans to circulate the air, but make sure they are not blowing directly on the buns.

I keep several ceramic floor tiles in the fridge and put them in with the buns if they start to get warm.

I also switched out the standard lightbulbsfor flouresant ones that generate a lot less heat. It's amazing how much heat a few 100 watt bulbs can give off.

 

[NZminilops]

Thanks once again for more helpfull suggestions. I'm actually thinking just to move stuff today, can't wait forever for my brother to get his act together. The gym stuff we don't use except for the weight bench and the elliptical thingy anyway, the weights and rabbits will fit easily together in the smaller room and I'll keep the elliptical in the big room with our bed etc. It's how I used to have it when BunBun was a single indoor rabbit anyway, so don't see why I can't try it again.

Now, off to try and shift the 54kg TV from the bedroom :shock:. I know I'm going to get a huge telling off from my partner when he comes home, but he can just deal with it, I don't want overheated buns.