Bottle vs. Bowl: Which is Better?

When it comes to watering your rabbit, there are two basic options: bowl or bottle.  Both will work, however there are some things you should consider.

First, a bowl is easily knocked over by an active rabbit (intentionally or unintentionally).  This will result in you filling up the bowl several times a day, especially if you have a rabbit that likes to play with his bowl.  If your rabbit lives inside the house, you will also need to clean all of the spilled water off the floor.

Second, no matter how clean you keep your rabbit and its cage there is always going to be hair and other dirt flying around (especially if you keep your bunny outside).  This leads to potential contamination of your rabbit’s water supply, which opens up the possibility of health issues.  A bottle provides protection to the water supply.  The volume of water that can be held in a bottle is greater than what you will be able to put in a bowl, which is good especially on hot summer days.  A typical bottle holds about 32 oz of water, where a bowl will hold about 12 oz.

Dante posing next to his water bottle.

A positive note on bowls.  Bowls aren’t all bad, especially during the winter (if your rabbit lives outside).  If you live in an area where freezing temperatures are normal, you’ll quickly find that the water will freeze quicker than you’ll be able to keep up with it.  Thawing out a water bottle can be extremely time consuming, especially if you only have one and can't alternate between two.  Thawing a bowl takes mere minutes.  Also, a bottle is more likely to break when the water freezes and expands.  When the weather gets cold, I tend to swap the bottle for the bowl, to make things easier on myself and to ensure my rabbit will have as much access to water as possible.

The cleanest and easiest way to water your rabbit is to use a water bottle.  I would recommend having two (a backup for when your primary one freezes in the middle of January).  A bowl can work, but you need to make sure you keep up with maintaining fresh water for your rabbit.

Dante’s Story

For my first blog post, I decided it would be best to give everyone a proper introduction to the man who will be helping me with this blog; my rabbit, Dante!  Dante is about six years old and I believe he is a black Havana.  The reason I am unsure about these very basic facts is because I found him scared and alone in a goat pen.

It seemed one of the first questions asked when someone wanted to get to know you during those first few days of college was, “Can you tell me something interesting about yourself?”  To most people, the fact that I showed rabbits was interesting (if not downright weird).  When I brought it up, I always got a lot of follow up questions.  My closest friends continued to ask questions after the initial “get-to-know-you” time, so I thought it would be a good idea to take them to a nearby show to let them see what it was all about.

We took off on Saturday morning, driving about 3 hours to get to the show that was being held at the county’s fairgrounds.  We walked around the rabbit show for some time and then decided to walk around the rest of the fairgrounds.  While walking through the empty goat pens, something caught my attention and I turned to find a small rabbit, shaking and covered in dry clumps of mud.  Obviously a domestic rabbit, I decided to approach him and scoop him up.  Since the show was going on in the next building over, I figured he had gotten loose from his cage.  I picked him up and went back to the show building to try to find his owner.

I told the show superintendents what had happened and they made a series of announcements that went unanswered.  Finally, the superintendent told me, “Well, I guess you have yourself a rabbit!”  I was not prepared for this, especially since I wasn’t allowed to have a rabbit in the dorms.  We drove home, acquired a cage and kept Dante a secret until Fall Break, when I was able to take him home to a hutch in my parent’s backyard.  Now, after year of dorm and apartment living, I finally have a space in a backyard to put a hutch for Dante.  After all these years, I’m excited that the rabbit I rescued will finally be coming to live with me.