Down the Rabbit Hole — a guest column by one of our customers, sharing what they've learned keeping rabbits on the North Shore. The opinions, experiences, and occasional disasters are their own.

Last winter I spent twenty minutes reading a UK rabbit forum about how to keep outdoor rabbits warm below minus ten. The advice was detailed, earnest, and completely irrelevant to my life. Auckland doesn't get minus ten. On the Shore we rarely drop below about five, and even that feels dramatic. I closed the tab feeling vaguely smug about our mild winters, then went outside to check on Monty and Pip and found the inside of their sleeping box damp to the touch, their bedding flat and wet, and Pip sitting in the corner looking personally offended by the state of things.

The temperature that morning was about eleven degrees. Fine for a healthy rabbit. The problem wasn't cold.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand that winter up here is not really a temperature problem. It's a damp problem. The hutch gets damp. The bedding gets damp. The sleeping box, the run, the rabbit. A rabbit with dry shelter and decent bedding will handle eleven degrees without much fuss. A rabbit sitting in a wet hutch at the same temperature is miserable and more prone to respiratory problems, because damp fur loses its insulating ability the same way a wet sleeping bag stops keeping you warm.

My vet at Pet Drs told me the comfortable range for rabbits is roughly ten to twenty-one degrees, and that they can handle lower if they've acclimatised gradually and have somewhere dry to retreat to. If you're further south or inland, where it actually freezes, the cold itself becomes a bigger concern. But on the Shore the thermometer is rarely the danger. The damp is.

My sleeping box looked fine from the outside. Solid marine ply, raised off the ground, roof overhanging the edges. But northwesterlies were pushing rain underneath the roof join and water was wicking along the base. I only found it because I stuck my hand in and felt the bedding. If you haven't done that during a wet week, go check yours. You might be surprised.

The bedding was the first thing I changed. I'd been putting hay in the sleeping box because hay is what you give rabbits, and I hadn't thought about the distinction. Hay is fine to eat but it compresses flat and holds moisture. Straw has hollow stems that trap air and actually insulate. My vet was mildly amused that I'd been using hay for everything. I switched to barley straw, packed thick, and now I check it daily and swap it out whenever it feels damp or compressed. After heavy rain that can mean changing it twice in a day.

Ventilation was the less obvious fix. When the rabbits were cold I wanted to block every gap and tarp the whole run. The problem is that a sealed hutch traps ammonia from urine, and rabbits breathing damp, ammonia-laden air are more susceptible to respiratory infections. Block the wind and rain on the exposed sides, absolutely. But leave the sheltered side open enough for air to circulate.

The best purchase I've made for winter is a SnuggleSafe heat pad from One Stop Bunny Shop. It's a hard plastic disc you microwave (follow the instructions for your wattage, they're specific about it), and it holds warmth for hours. No cords, no electricity running to the hutch, nothing for a rabbit to chew through. I tuck it under the straw on cold nights and Monty parks himself on top of it like he's found a heated bathroom floor. Pip sits nearby with the air of someone tolerating a mild improvement in service. Mine cost about thirty-five dollars and has lasted three winters.

One thing from the SPCA NZ winter care advice worth repeating: if you use a heat pad, the rabbit must be able to move away from it. Don't put a pad in a sleeping space so small that the rabbit has no option but to sit on it.

When storms come through properly I bring the rabbits inside. A dog crate or exercise pen in a spare room works for a night or two, as long as it's away from chemicals, paint, anything they'd chew, and definitely not in a garage where you park a car. Ours spent a fortnight in the spare room last July during a stretch of truly miserable weather, and they repaid us by chewing the skirting board behind the door. I consider this an acceptable exchange for healthy rabbits.

Bonded pairs have an advantage in cold weather that single rabbits don't: they huddle. Monty and Pip sleep pressed into a tight ball through winter and the body heat in that sleeping box is noticeably warmer than the air outside it. It's not the only thing that matters (shelter, bedding, and acclimatisation all matter more), but a single rabbit doesn't have that extra warmth at three in the morning when the temperature drops and the rain picks up.

I still press my hand into the bedding every few days through winter. Three seconds of touching the straw tells me whether things are dry or whether the rain has found another way in. It will find another way in. Rain on the North Shore is creative, patient, and has apparently been holding a grudge against my plywood since 2022.

The author is a North Shore rabbit owner with two house rabbits (Monty and Pip), several years of hard-won experience, and a vet who no longer looks surprised when they ring. They are a regular One Stop Bunny Shop customer and occasional visitor to the Browns Bay store, where the staff have talked them out of at least three bad decisions. This is a guest post — for shop updates, product info, and our own advice, check our other blog posts.