Baby bunny

[Angelique Cadogan]

Hi everyone, new to this forum. We bought a female rabbit and she ended up having babies a week later. It was a surprise to us and we were not ready. We did our best to accommodate her and the new babies, she had 3 and only one survived, he lived to be 4 weeks and yesterday we found him dead in the cage. Their cage is big and clean , no predator can get to them at all, nothing out of the norm, I had held him a couple hours prior for a few seconds all looked good, put fresh hay fresh water a piece of apple . We are absolutely dumbfounded to find him dead, he was, so we thought very healthy, looked to be of a nice weight. Anyone know what could have possibly killed this baby??
I didn't see any blood of any kind , no trauma, and a bit of mucus on his hinny, he did have stool however. We are at a loss, and it's heart breaking. Your opinion would be appreciated! Thank you.

 

[Preitler]

If you bought your doe quite young most likely a brother of your doe sired that litter, so problems due to inbreeding can't be ruled out, or things like semilethal genes (although I never had any problem with charlies (=double "broken colour sheme" gene)) Rabbits hide problems real well, so it's quite common that they drop dead without significant signs that there's something amiss, you wouldn't notice things like heart or lung defects.

There are things like weaning enteritis too, well, things like that just happen.

 

[majorv]

The mucous is an indication of enteritis. Giving a 4 week old kit some apple may not have been a good idea. Kits at this age have an immature digestive system and so you have to be careful what to give them, at least until they’re older.

 

[Angelique Cadogan]

Thank you so much for all the advices, we saw a video where a rabbit breeder was giving her baby rabbits fruits, so we assumed it was safe. We weren't prepared at the time and did our best, we are definitely learning more and more every day . We love our bunnies and want them to live a good life so doing the right thing is definitely a priority!