no babies for jazz

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lemonaxis

lemonaxis

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2007
Messages
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Location
Auckland, , New Zealand
Some of you may know that my doe Jazz lost her first litter of Kits. She tried to move them and even acted aggressively. Cats were around at the time and none of us knew she was due to have babies.

After the loss, she began, I believe to grieve. She lost her appetite, hid behind the couch and sniffed arond as if looking for her nest.

She never really got the chance to properly nurse and clean her Kits as my cats had begun stalking the nest and this freaked out Jazz.

In my wisdom or huge lack of, rather!! I decided to mate Jazz with a lonely buck at the national park nearby.

She was delighted to meet him and ever since then her mood has been picking up She has a plyfriend over every other day as I take my neighbours bun to my house to socialise her as Mallow just lost her companion too.

mallow and Jazz play well.

It is really hard to tell if Jazz will have more Kits.
If she does not I will spay her.

I paired her up with a buck for a few minutes because I did not want her to grieve, wanted her to have the proper chance to be a mum and in NZ at this time, there are no issues with over population of domestic rabbits. We are eliminating wild populations with the Calcifed virus but if Jazz have Kits the national park will take them so they already have homes. We would keep one as a companion for Jazz.

Have I been selfish? Wrong?
Please let me know what I can do to make sure Jazz has the best life possible!

Thank you...


Lisa

ps she is not shwing any signs of prenancy yet (2 weeks since her date with Bunny) and she is not eating more or even gaining weight so if I have made a bad decision then just maybe there will be no kits after all)

Feeling awful....
 
I think there was a big to-do on a rabbit mailing list about grieving rabbits, but it was mainly about bonding rabbits so I don't know how much would apply... that entire ordeal became somewhat heated anyway.

I don't know if you did - but if she were mine I probably would have had her vet checked to be on the safe side, not only right after she lost the kits, but a few weeks after as well.

I'm really glad you see that her mood is improving. As for selfish, I don't know - how much of your healing with time (over the loss) do you think contributes to what you see reflecting in her attitude?


How long has it been since the last litter? (sorry, I really cant remember) Depending on how much time has gone by, her just starting to eat and being more lively could be due to yet another change in hormones due to her body adjusting - and not necessarily her mindset being altered.

 
yep, Jazz has been vet checked:)

will write more when I am in a better frame of mind as right now just feel yuck!

not very confident once more with being a bunny mum :(and well I am going to try not worry too much because Jazz just came up and gave me bunny kisses....first time she has ever done that:)

 
Looking back at when we started breeding we were so overcautious its kinda unbelievable . But all my buns are my babies first and foremost, When you arent used to it then you tend to see the worst in everything you see them do. In hindsight as long as you keep an eye on them and they are safe and secure let them get on with it. They know what they are doing.

Good luck i hope she is pregnant so she can prove to herself and you what a good mum she can be :)

Oh and its not strange for them to mourn their babies i have some that have done that.
 
Ok, I wanted aks you something. You said the national park would take them? Do they have some kind of a shelter or rescue there?

She won't likely show any signs of pregnancy like you would think of. YOu won't be able to see any difference in her waistline. She might eat a little more, but that's about it. As a prey animal, rabbits can't get fat and waddling like other animals or people do, it would make them a target for predators. So in other words, she will probably keep you guessing until the day she has kits. Or until enough time has passed that you know she couldn't be pregnant, anyway.
 
Ya know..... life isn't perfect. You do your best and hope things work out - even with your human kids. So don't stress it.

lemonaxis wrote:
yep, Jazz has been vet checked:)

will write more when I am in a better frame of mind as right now just feel yuck!

not very confident once more with being a bunny mum :(and well I am going to try not worry too much because Jazz just came up and gave me bunny kisses....first time she has ever done that:)
Click to expand...
 
I think Jazz needs a companion, and you could use one too. I'd bring the buck home (but neuter him first!) ;)

And I'd keep ALL the kits (butspay and neuter the works). Youdefinitely wouldn'tbe contributing to an over-population that way. (I'm only against breeding when there's a chance the offspring, or the offspring's offspring,will end up in shelters or pet stores).

EDIT: Just to clarify, my suggestion re: keeping all the kits relates way more to having multiple bunnies to love on than anything else, as per my reply to your 'confidence' thread. :cool:

However, given Jazz's history, you're really going to have to keep a close eye on her.She may just not be cut out to be a mom, and the next littermay not fare better than the first, and that would be doubly tragic. :(

Hope it allworks out.



sas :hug1

 
My response probably isn't going to be what you want to hear - but I ask that you hear me out - ok?

I must admit - I am a bit worried about Jazz. Let me share why.

First of all, she is a lop. From what I've read, lops and Netherland dwarfs frequently have stuck kits. I know my friend Lisa bred four holland lops for a litter last month and wound up with huge vet bills and no kits (all four does had issues).

This is NOT to say that all lops have issues -and for all I know - mini lops might have an easier time than Hollands - I just don't know.

My biggest concern though is from your description of the buck in her blog - it sounded like he was bigger than she was. This is what concerns me - I try to use smaller bucks (even if my does are larger).

Also - I have always been told that if you want more babies (to get them smaller sizes for easier delivery) the doe should be bred by the buck a couple of times at least.

My other concern was for her age - as I was thinking she was 9 months old and I wasn't sure if she should be a bit older....but I don't raise that breed of rabbits.

WITH ALL THAT SAID....let's face it - what we're hoping for is an easy pregnancy with no problems at all for her. It could very well happen that she has a litter and things go great. The odds are good that could happen!

I wish maybe you'd posted here that you were thinking about breeding her (or asked a breeder for tips) simply so we could have suggested some things.

I know I have one doe here that I bred once this week. Then she started charging the buck and she couldn't be bred again. I'm going to be a nervous wreck until her due date (first time mama) wondering if she's going to have a fetal giant (because I'm horrible at palpating). I've seen fetal giants live....our doe Popcorn was one. But it can also cause complications at birth. But I found that even though I put her back in with the buck later to breed her again she kept charging him and wouldn't let him near her....so I have to go with the risk of knowing she only got bred once.

Can you share with us the date of the breeding so we can make sure to have someone keeping an eye on the forum for around her due date? I know with the holidays coming it is easy to get caught up in parties, etc. - and I think it would be great if we could know approx. when she is due.

Please understand one thing - I know what it is like to grieve. I know what it is like to make good-intentioned decisions which I later question. I'm not saying you did wrong. I just wanted to explain where some of us might have concerns.

I'm sure she'll probably have a healthy litter with no stuck kits, etc. and she'll know what to do this time 'cause she'll have a place for her nest, etc.

Peg
 
I'm in agreement with PIPP and I completely understand what peg is saying.

I am just hopeful that Jazz does well.
 
Okay....thank you , thats all been very constructive. Thank you thank you:)

A few more facts might help me and you to help Jazz.
The Buck at the national park is an older buck, he is shaggy and very fluffy making him look huge but weight wise he would be only a little bigger than Jazz.

The date they were paired up was 2 weeks ago.

I had no wireless when I made this decision. I consulted THREE breeders and 2 vets and got a green light on all accounts. However RO would have been the best place.

I am also setting up a live feed visual in Jazz's cage so that we can simply look on my comp to see everything she is up to and may even get a chance to view the kindling. An quiet alarm will be rigged up to to go off every 20mins when she may be closer to her due date.

I may even pay for a home visit from a vet. Not sure.

In NZ where I live its not that easy to pick up another rabbit. We have one shelter an hour away and they don't always have rabbits. We have an online list of rabbits needing new homes but 9 times outta 10 they are pure breds from rabbitry's.

To find another companion for Jazz that would be suitable could take me months. Unless I went to a pet store. That I could do.

Jazz will have an ultrasound maybe, in the next few days to find out for sure what is going on...? Will check if thats a good idea.


and lastly I take full responsibility for making a completely inadequate decision and I am just grateful RO is still patient enough to give me advice.







 
I thought possibly you didn't have theoverpopulation of unwanted rabbits needing homes there.

Glad to hear he's just a big old fuzzy guy and not so much HUGE as all that.

I think things are going to be ok. I'm really hoping (I don't know what makes this come to mind either) that she has like 2 kits and you can keep them both.

I also hope she's not aggressive this time. I think if you make her someplace safe (the cats scared her and I think that's why she was being so nasty) and give her a nest box - maybe it will go better? I know momma bunnies will kill their kits to save them from being killed by a predator.

(will she be inside or what? I might have missed that part)

So, we'll see how things are going in about 2 weeks I guess!
 
If weight wise he wasn't that much bigger.....that makes me feel better - MUCH better.

Shaggyness is fine. I was afraid of bone structure being much larger..

Peg
 
I totally understand why you re-bred her, i think it was partly for you and partly for her, but i think it would be best if you keep all of the kits, so she can have lifelong company, otherwise she may grieve in a similar way for the babies she brought up and had taken away.

Can you explain better what a national park means, to us that don't live in NZ, because in the UK, a national park is just fields and fields of land, and i just picture you taking jazz, and sitting in the middle of a field waiting for a wild rabbit to sniff your sexy rabbit lol. I just wonder as you said you would give the babies to them.
 
grumpybabies wrote:
Can you explain better what a national park means, to us that don't live in NZ, because in the UK, a national park is just fields and fields of land, and i just picture you taking jazz, and sitting in the middle of a field waiting for a wild rabbit to sniff your sexy rabbit lol. I just wonder as you said you would give the babies to them.
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing! In the US a national park is usually open field or forest, and I was picturing Lemon coaxing this other bunny over to Jazz out in the middle of nowhere!

One thing we have noticed about our moms when they are pregnant is that in the last few days, we find them lying on their sides kind of stretched out a lot, especially when the weather is warmer, which I think it is now in NZ?? But if you keep her in the house, she may not be that warm. Anyway, other than that, we never can tell until the nest appears. I just encourage you to give her some safe, private space this time so she has the best chance at doing a good job.

Keep us posted!
 
LOL Omg so cute!!:D

Here a national park is as lot of open space but it is managed by a group of rangers and their primary job is to preserve wildlife like the bird population and keep away as many stoats and possums as possible. Some Parks have large fields of sheep too and these are working farms, again managed by the rangers. A few parks also keep pigs, chickens and rabbits. These are housed in large open plan cages (usually) and kept as pets to attract families etc. The rangers have a good knowledge of their pets and provide full care for them.
However I am SUPER lucky in that the National park near me lets me clean out the rabbit cage and provide fresh hay etc. Otherwise they do the rest. So Jazz met up with Bunny at this park but well it seems as if there will be no kits as Jazz weighs exactly the same, is not eating anymore and also is not in any way acting differently.

If there were going to be kits then of course I would keep them and depending on how many there were, would offer the park one or two of them, again depediing on their gender.

By the way Jazz is very well, she had a vet check up recently and palated too for signs of pregnancy.
Although she is in excellent health, apparently she could do with a few extra grams!
She is always in range of fresh food so I will put it down to the weather. Its so hot here, so she drinks alot.:)


 
Jazz is not likely to be having kits as vet gently palpated her a while ago and although nothing is certain, I am relieved if she does not because of my lack of experience and concern for Jazz.

She will be 28 days along on Monday IF she is due.
I have a nest box ready, am giving her extra food and have nesting hay lying around. My cats have a kennel outside so they are not welcome inside for a while. They need to stay away from Jazz so she is not spooked.

I have a sick baby at the moment and am only just handling that so hopefully all will be back to normal by Monday and I can look for signs of a possible litter.
 
Ok - I'll be keeping an eye on the thread just in case she does have babies.

Hope all goes well with your little one!

Peg
 
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