Hello out there,
Our bunny had her first litter. She's not quite one year old. Her mate is a male 6mo. They live in separate outdoor/protected hutches. We made a conscious decision as a family to allow them to mate and were ready to prepare to add hutches and/or if the litter was very large, we knew families that would adopt 1 or more babies if needed.
The happy day came about 12 days ago and our mommy bun had 4 little plump squiggly babies. I'd read to basically leave them alone and undisturbed but keeping Mommy with plenty of water, fresh food and fresh greens. The cage is covered in nesting hair that she plucked from herself and I noticed right away the 4 are never together in a nest, but kind of scattered - 2 together, and then maybe 1 in a corner and another 1 on the upper level. They all seemed to be getting fed and were moving and were covered in bedding/never really exposed. We checked on them often but didn't move or touch them. So, we found the first dead baby 2 days ago, and were utterly heartbroken. I removed it from the cage that evening. The next day I was looking for the others but only found one baby. I didn't want to dig too deep in the nesting so I came back the next day. Same thing. I see and hear only the one baby moving. I plan to clean put the cage in full tomorrow and move Mom and baby to a quiet place while I'm cleaning - and I'm assuming I'll find the other 2 bodies. I think I should leave as much of the hair/bedding in the cage as possible? Or should it just be fresh bedding and some clean new strips of a blanket? What did we do wrong? Are the babies too fragile with warm days/chilly nights, could they have had heart attacks from dog barking, or weekly gardeners with leaf blowers, etc. Is our bun just too young to have a healthy litter? Was I supposed to move Mom and litter into a quiet dark room inside for 3-4 weeks? I feel just awful that only one baby seemed to have survived due to our own inexperience - for our little bunny mom and for my own young daughter who fell in love with the baby buns. Thanks for reading through and I welcome any advice on how we could have prevented this. Thank you!
Our bunny had her first litter. She's not quite one year old. Her mate is a male 6mo. They live in separate outdoor/protected hutches. We made a conscious decision as a family to allow them to mate and were ready to prepare to add hutches and/or if the litter was very large, we knew families that would adopt 1 or more babies if needed.
The happy day came about 12 days ago and our mommy bun had 4 little plump squiggly babies. I'd read to basically leave them alone and undisturbed but keeping Mommy with plenty of water, fresh food and fresh greens. The cage is covered in nesting hair that she plucked from herself and I noticed right away the 4 are never together in a nest, but kind of scattered - 2 together, and then maybe 1 in a corner and another 1 on the upper level. They all seemed to be getting fed and were moving and were covered in bedding/never really exposed. We checked on them often but didn't move or touch them. So, we found the first dead baby 2 days ago, and were utterly heartbroken. I removed it from the cage that evening. The next day I was looking for the others but only found one baby. I didn't want to dig too deep in the nesting so I came back the next day. Same thing. I see and hear only the one baby moving. I plan to clean put the cage in full tomorrow and move Mom and baby to a quiet place while I'm cleaning - and I'm assuming I'll find the other 2 bodies. I think I should leave as much of the hair/bedding in the cage as possible? Or should it just be fresh bedding and some clean new strips of a blanket? What did we do wrong? Are the babies too fragile with warm days/chilly nights, could they have had heart attacks from dog barking, or weekly gardeners with leaf blowers, etc. Is our bun just too young to have a healthy litter? Was I supposed to move Mom and litter into a quiet dark room inside for 3-4 weeks? I feel just awful that only one baby seemed to have survived due to our own inexperience - for our little bunny mom and for my own young daughter who fell in love with the baby buns. Thanks for reading through and I welcome any advice on how we could have prevented this. Thank you!