Babies! help!

I have three rabbits, 2 does and 1 buck. They are housed together, so I was expecting babies. However, I must have not been properly checking for pregnancy because I have just discovered 5 kits. I'm pretty sure I know which doe they belong to, but I'm afraid I'm not right. How can I be positive about which doe the litter belongs to? The one I have separated with them doesn't seem interested.

Hmm... that's a tough one, as the real mom wouldn't seem interested in them any more than the unrelated doe seeing as rabbits ignore their nest/kits outside of the 1-2 times a day that they nurse them for about 5 minutes. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sign you could look for (by inspecting the does' genital areas and/or nipples) to indicate who recently gave birth or is feeding kits, but I don't breed rabbits so I really can't tell you what the sign(s) might be.

It's generally a bad idea to keep two does together when one is raising a litter, but in your situation, it may be the only option for now. I suppose you could also try keeping both does away from the nest box for now and then, later this evening (since does typically nurse their young in the late evening or early morning), holding each doe in turn while you let the kits attempt to nurse from them to see which one is actually producing milk.

As a note, it's not a good idea to house intact rabbits that are sexually mature together (regardless of their gender) under any circumstances as they can get into vicious or even deadly fights. For breeding purposes, a doe should be brought to the buck's cage to mate (which should be supervised the entire time) and then returned to her own cage once mating is complete or she has refused the buck. Intact does shouldn't be kept together even when they don't have kits purely because of the potential for hormone-induced fights. No matter how well they "seem" to get along, hormones can make them irrational at any moment.

Rabbits do not spend time with their young. They feed them once or twice a day for a few minutes and that's it so watching the rabbits will not tell you which one is the mother unless you sit there for 24hrs. You can check for milk and protruding nipples. The mother pulls fur from her belly and the kits suck the nipples so they are more obvious than a rabbit who hasn't had and fed a litter. 12-24hrs from when she last fed them she will also have a lumpy feeling belly from the milk building up.

You need to separate the buck. He will probably have already bred back the doe. They can get pregnant immediately and go in to a strong heat right after having kits. Breeding constantly will both produce excessive kits you can't find homes for and stress the doe.

Are the kits on a solid floored cage indoors? Otherwise they need to go in to a nest box.

Unless you are experienced with breeding rabbits, have a huge pen for them, and have rabbits with the right personalities you should have one cage for each rabbit.
They should not be left together. A doe gets very hormonal at various times while going through pregnancy and caring for kits. They can suddenly turn on each other.

akane said:

You need to separate the buck. He will probably have already bred back the doe. They can get pregnant immediately and go in to a strong heat right after having kits. Breeding constantly will both produce excessive kits you can't find homes for and stress the doe.

Click to expand...

^ Somehow, I forgot to mention that part. Yes, the female is particularly fertile and receptive for up to 72h after kindling ><

Thank you so much! I did figure out which is the mother and she is with her babies, and the remaining doe has been separated from the buck, as well as mom and kits. Now I'm seeing conflicting views on whether or not to check them daily. Some people say no while others say yes. The kits all seem healthy and normal. They are all the same size moving around, which I've been told by a breeder is normal.

I check my babies - like 4 times a day. One time one of my newborn kits in the nest got straw and fur (long fur because jersey wooly) wrapped around its neck and strangled- if I would have just checked the nest 1hr earlier I'm sure I could have untangled it. So now i check the babies more often to make sure they are ok- it does not hurt them to handle them and it makes them tamer when they grow up.

It is safe to handle the kits from the day they're born (though if the mother appears stressed by your presence, remove her and move her out of sight before getting into the nest box).

It's very important to check the kits every day - make sure they're all still in the next box (which you need to get if you don't already have one; if the mother kindled outside of the nest box, you need to line the bottom with hay and then carefully transfer the nest that she built and all of the kits into it), that they're all warm and alive and that they all have full, round tummies. Yes, they do all move around quite a bit - this is why a nest box is imperative. They WILL squirm out of the nest if they can and mother rabbits are incapable of moving their kits, so she can't put them back in the nest. They're unable to regulate their body temperature for the first couple weeks, so they rely on snuggling together for warmth and the fur mom puts in the nest to keep them warm.

She doesn't seem stressed when I go to check them. Just a little weary. She watches me for a minute and then just goes back to whatever she was doing. The hutches are outside and it's below 32 here. I don't know if I should bring the doe and her kits inside until they can regulate their own temperature. I've tried looking all these things up but people are so conflicting. I don't want to make a blind assumption that raising rabbits is part experience/part knowledge from others that already have experience, but that's exactly what it seems like. I think I've been pretty smart about it up until now. I did do quite a bit of research on breeding, as that was my intention, but now that I'm on my very first litter, I'm a little too excited and terrified. Do I just do what I think is right for them? I don't want to be the type of breeder/rabbit owner that doesn't care. I adore my rabbits and just want them to live happy and healthy lives.

Sorry for the ranting/tons of questions. I'm new at this and slightly overwhelmed at the moment!

Unless they're in a heated shed/garage, etc. then I would err on the side of caution and bring the nest box inside. You can bring mom in as well, but you don't necessarily have to as long as you don't have the kits inside for too long (ie make sure she's getting a chance to feed them). If you bring the doe inside, you need to keep her in as cool a room as possible - she's grown a heavy winter coat to adapt to the frigid temperatures, which makes her prone to overheating at a much lower temperature than normal (possibly as low as 70F or so). Watch her for signs that she's too warm and, if necessary, take precautions against overheating like what would be done for an outside rabbit in the summer when it's hot.

Breeders who keep their rabbits outdoors (in unheated enclosures) and live in an area that experiences an actual winter (as opposed to down here in south Texas, lol) often (though not always) prefer not to allow any litters to be born during the coldest months of the year - they plan their first litter of the year to be born in very early spring. Bringing kits in may still have to happen because of a late cold-snap, but you can avoid the fuss of having to bring them in every night for the first couple weeks .

Learning to be a breeder can be pretty overwhelming, I agree. You can theoretically learn the vast majority of the "common" stuff through research and shared info, but not easily, lol (and what you do know can definitely be hard to recall the details of when you're overwhelmed with your first teeny babies) - I've never bred rabbits, yet I know a ridiculous amount about it! Granted, I breed sugar gliders (small exotic marsupials), I studied biology extensively in school and I had too much free time on my hands when I was absorbing info over the course of months (and I'm still learning almost a year and a half later). I've also researched rabbit breeding as extensively as if I were actually planning to do it so that I could help answer urgent questions when the breeder folks weren't around, I'm always listening in on breeder chats and I tend to be an information sponge. Also, I think a lot of it depends on what type of learner you are - some people learn very well by reading/memorizing while others learn the most by actually watching and/or doing something in person.

It's obvious you care about your rabbits, since you've found your way here and are actively seeking out more information . If there's anything at all you're unsure about with your litter, feel free to keep asking us questions and we'll do our bests to come up with answers! If all else fails, though, trust your "mommy"/"daddy" instincts.

Ahh you are wonderful! Is there any way to know if they're dehydrated? They move around quite a bit unless they snuggle in together and sleep. If I handle them they wriggle around a lot. But they're sort of wrinkly, and again, I find conflicting information on that. I did move the babies and the mother inside due to the fact that ice is everywhere she seems fine with it and the room temperature is around 60 right now. I can't tell if the babies are full of milk or not because I don't think they look like they swallowed grape like I've read. Knowing that she only feeds them like twice a day makes me think maybe they haven't had a nightly feeding. As much as I've fallen in love with the babies over the past few hours (even though most of the time I've just let them be) I don't fully expect all of them to live because everything I've read says it's likely some/all will die. Obviously I'm hoping for the best. But is there any way to know if they're dehydrated/not being fed? And if they aren't being fed what do I do as far as feeding them by hand?

If they are being fed and aren't overheating due to an improperly hot environment, they should not get dehydrated. I can't say with 100% certainty that dehydration couldn't occur as the result of a medical condition despite being properly cared for by mom and breeder, though. With any animal, you can check for dehydration by doing a "tent test" (gently pulling up the skin between the shoulder blades and checking to see if it goes back to normal at an appropriate rate); however, I don't know whether or not there are any safety concerns with trying this on a newborn kit. Unless someone can chime in to say that it's definitely safe, I wouldn't do it if there's no reason to suspect dehydration.

60F is highly unlikely to cause overheating (though it's not impossible) - that's lower than most people like to keep their houses in the winter (but sounds just right for me!).

If you still don't see well-fed tummies when you're ready to go to bed, you should try to hold the doe and put the kits to her to nurse - sometimes this helps first time moms get the hang of what they're supposed to do (it may take doing this for a few feedings in a row before she starts nursing them on her own). It sounds like you have a good relationship with your rabbits - when the doe trusts you and is comfortable with you handling her, she's much more likely to let you hold kits to her to nurse.

If mom absolutely won't nurse them even with you intervening, then things get tricky. Ideally, you would use another doe who has a litter of her own that's being properly cared for as a surrogate (it's ok if her kits are as much as a couple weeks older than the rejected litter). To do this, you remove the surrogate-to-be from her cage/hutch and move her to another location, then add the rejected kits to her nest box. You'll want to keep her away for an hour or two so that the two litters of kits can wriggle around together, allowing their smells to rub off on each other so they all smell fairly similar. After that, add mom back to the cage/hutch and leave them be. Surrogacy done in this fashion has an *extremely* high success rate - the doe almost never rejects the "foreign" kits.

Unfortunately, if surrogacy is not an option then your odds of keeping the kits alive is very slim - even experts have little success hand-raising extremely young kits, as a mother rabbit's milk is exceptionally rich and virtually impossible to reasonably duplicate. Here are some sites with good information on hand-raising orphaned or rejected kits:
http://www.mybunny.org/info/newborn.htm
http://www3.telus.net/raisinghouserabbits/orphans.htm
http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/orphan.html
http://www.2ndchance.info/bunnies.htm

Even if you do manage to successfully hand-raise them, they still count as a failed attempt at parenting for mom since she didn't do it herself. Most breeders (and not just of rabbits) use a "three strikes" rule for their breeding stock - rejecting or killing the first or even second litter (or baby) is pretty common but if a doe (or parents, in some animals) fails to raise her babies successfully on her own three times in a row, she's often deemed an unfit parent and retired from breeding.

lnc1991 said:

Ahh you are wonderful! Is there any way to know if they're dehydrated? They move around quite a bit unless they snuggle in together and sleep. If I handle them they wriggle around a lot. But they're sort of wrinkly, and again, I find conflicting information on that. I did move the babies and the mother inside due to the fact that ice is everywhere she seems fine with it and the room temperature is around 60 right now. I can't tell if the babies are full of milk or not because I don't think they look like they swallowed grape like I've read. Knowing that she only feeds them like twice a day makes me think maybe they haven't had a nightly feeding. As much as I've fallen in love with the babies over the past few hours (even though most of the time I've just let them be) I don't fully expect all of them to live because everything I've read says it's likely some/all will die. Obviously I'm hoping for the best. But is there any way to know if they're dehydrated/not being fed? And if they aren't being fed what do I do as far as feeding them by hand?

Click to expand...

As long as they're being fed you don't need to worry about dehydration. Does usually will feed their kits within 24 hours after being born. They can only live for about 48 hours without being fed, so watch them close during that time to make sure she's fed them. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to successfully hand feed kits if mom won't do it.

If the kits are in a nestbox lined well with hay and covered well with mom's fur then they should do okay outside, but I know some breeders who will bring the nestbox in overnight and take it back out in the morning. Really, rabbits are typically good at raising kits without much human intervention, except maybe with first time moms.

relax and let mom do her job. As long as the kits aren't skinny and making lots of noise (so are mostly sleeping and growing) she's doing what she's supposed to.

Thank you! I lost a baby last night. It got away from the nest and when I found it I did everything I could think of to warm it up, but nothing was working. It was also the smallest of that litter and it looked like it had missed a feeding or two, so I tried giving it warm goat milk but it wasn't taking. I snuggled him up with his siblings knowing he wouldn't make it through the night, I don't know if that was a good idea or not but this morning it had wiggled it's way to a different corner. But from what I've read it's not uncommon to lose a kit. The remaining kits all are being fed. That post from the other forum helps a lot! Now I know what I'm looking for for sure.

If you go to www.arba.net you can find great information on kindling!

Just to let you know, you should separate the mother and the kits from the other rabbits as the mother could become territorial and the male can become aggressive toward the babies.

And I don't know if you already did, I just saw the thread and posted on it.