Heat wave woes

[Morphie]

So in MA where i live, we've been under heat advisory for the past several days. It has finally let up and we're doing ok (or at least better than before). I have a rather substantial breeder colony, and I recently learned the hard way about keeping the rat room cool enough for them to deal, and about their extra water demands during such weather.

I started with six breeder-sized males. After this heat wave, i'm down to one. I have no real idea why the males were more susceptible to heat-related illness, but after noticing a trend in the first two or three cages i looked in, i knew what i was going to find in the next few.

My losses include my oldest male, a really spiffy het albino/het dumbo, and a completely black dumbo male. I also lost a nursing mother, and she died while feeding, which suffocated three pups.

I have a fan going in there and i check the water levels twice or three times a day (as compared to once or twice).

I feel so bad for the boys (and the mommy) - RIP, guys, and thanks for all of your help (and sorry for the epic fail).

[littleindiangirl]

We had a heat wave in the 90's and it was hot in our house. Both Chris and I work, but we do have a lot of fans. I have an exhaust fan in the window 24/7, and that seriously keeps it about 5 degrees cooler, then we have a fan circulating in the room passing the rats. It creates a lot of wind.

At lunch, Chris takes his sprayer and sprays down the rats. Our rats love getting sprayed with water, they thinks it's play time! They go nuts for it and come a running. We spray them down good at lunch so they can deal with the heat for a few more hours.

When I come home, if it's still really hot, I might give them another spraying, but generally it's ok by this time.

All our rats are doing good with this and really not doing much of anything during the day. You can find them all lined up right next to the fans, sleeping.

[Beardedragon]

The room that i keep the rats in have a window AC unit. It was only $100 and with GA's heat and humidity it was completely worth it. Now my rats do not have to breath in stale air and the room is nicely chilled.

[Reediculous]

Wow..........Here in Jersey i had the same problem.....My rats are kept in the shed, and the window is real old....I think it must of closed itself.....i lost 2 breeder ASF's....and one Young female rat....Its cooler today, but i have to get an ac unit in there! I'm going to put the fan in there today!

[Gloryhound]

We keep ours in the basement and it stays pretty cool down there in the summer. Before we got the central air I thought about sleeping down there a couple nights! We use a fan to circulate the air and at night while it is cooler we open a screened window and position the fan to blow out.