[Testing of various drinking troughs in consideration of the physiological drinking behavior of rabbits]

To investigate the drinking behaviour of rabbits as well as to prove the suitability of different drinker systems under animal suitable conditions all in all 32 rabbits aged four to eight weeks have been held to test in free choice four drinker types usually applied in practice. The rabbits could choose between swimmer-, low pressure-bowl-, nipple- and automatic minidrinkers. In two passages four animals in each of the four boxes have been held for four weeks and watched by video once a week during 24 hours to register the frequency of the animals' drinking at the four alternative drinkers. The choice experiments show that the low pressure bowl-drinker has been preferred in frequency, followed by the nipple drinker. The swimmer-bowl-drinker was less frequented, the automatic minidrinker was avoided in tendency. All in all we see, that by offering bowl- and/or nipple-drinkers we present a natural adequate drinking to the rabbits. Both drinker-systems can be assessed as those with respect to animals' behaviour.