# Advice on baby bunnies..please help!



## morag (Sep 14, 2008)

Hi. After living with her toyboy friend for a whole year, my lady rabbit (who is at least 6 & likely 7 years old - we adopted her in April 2003 & she was estimated at 18 months old then) shocked us all by giving birth to two kits almost five weeks ago. I immediately separated mum & babies from dad, and they all thrived in their own nest box & run. Mum seemed to take to the whole thing very well.
Then I was shocked again to find two live and one dead kits three days ago. Obviously she had been impregnated again in the few hours before I discovered the first litter. The dead kit had crawled from the house in their run overnight & seemed to have just died of chill. I moved mum, older kits & 2 surviving babies indoors into a smaller home to keep them safe & warm. I just can't tell whether mum is feeding them properly this time - I know they only feed once or twice a day & don't sit with them, but with the first kits I often caught her feeding them in the first couple of weeks. This time, despite my attempts to block the entrance to the nest box a little to put them off, the older kits keep going in there & seem oblivious to their siblings, trampling on them. I haven't seen mum going in there to feed them, and sadly this morning I found one kit dead in the nest.
I have tried putting the surviving kit under mum. It seems fairly lively & squeaks when disturbed, and I know its very hard to successfully hand rear baby rabbits so I tried leaving it to nature. However, with no sign of maternal interest still, this evening I bought kitten milk & tried feeding the kit with a tiny syringe (being careful not to flood the lungs etc). It was hard to tell but it did seem to suckle some. It keeps getting cold so I'm putting a heat pad in the nest box several times a day.
Can anyone advise? - I've read up on the unsuitability of anything other than mum's milk & Ph problems etc, but I couldn't just let it die. I considered removing the older kits so mum can have peace & focus on the baby, but they are too young. What should I do for the best? Leave it to nature & hope mum is looking after it, or try & handfeed? I've been in touch with the local rabbit rescue but they have no suitable foster mums right now.


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## Guest (Sep 16, 2008)

Firstly, the 5 week old kits should be separated from Mum NOW. They will be fine without living with Mum but the remaining baby wont obviously (you can still let Mum and babies have playtime together inside the house, but you'll have to watch to make sure they don't start fighting. Also what sex are the 5 week olds? You need to sex them asap and from about 8 weeks keep them separated if they are opposite sexes. Growing up we had so many brother sister matings occur before we could even tell what sex they were!!). At the moment I imagine the older babies are keeping Mum busy, disrupting her and making her feel uncomfortable.
Try leaving the baby with mum without the other 2 around and see if Mum will take an interest again. I would say it's probably quite unlikely she will though now you have fed it yourself.

Just keep a close eye and do your best.


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## morag (Sep 14, 2008)

Hi. Many thanks for taking the time to post. Sadly, the remaining kit died overnight. I believe if they don't suckle for the first 48 hours, it's very hard for them to survive. It was just very hard to tell if mum was caring for them, but I think at her age it was too much for her to have two litters so quickly when she's never had babies before. It was hard to know what to do because there's a lot of conflicting advice - a lot of very expereinced people said no way should the kits be separated from mum at 5 weeks because it can cause health problems with digestion etc later, others say different. Sad that they didn't survive, but at least the two older kits will have a nice life with us. I'm getting them sexed at 8 weeks as it can be hard to tell for sure before then, separating sexes from then on and then neutering any males. 
Many thanks again for your trouble
Morag


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2008)

So sorry to hear about the baby  At 5 weeks baby bunnies are eating by themselves and are usually pretty well equipped to look after themselves with the love and care of a human. Many are sold to pet shops at that age and they cope just fine. It wouldn't have been ideal to separate them, not in any way shape or form, however they would fare far better without their mum than the baby would have done with the older babies in there. It's all about the lesser of 2 evils in situations like that.
(I've been through similar things with mine over the years)

Sorry again about the baby


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