Expectant Mum & Daughter living together, will they be ok?

[frenchy]

Hi all,

I have a french lop doe who is still living with a doe from her last litter(her daughter), they get on so well together it was a shame to seperate them and as I was running the daughter on thought it would be nice for them to stay together.

Anyway the mum is now mated up again, what I want to know is if it would be ok to keep mum & daughter together?

Would mum turn on daughter to protect her new offspring, or be ok with her daughter being around?

Any advice is much appreciated, I would like to keep mum & daughter together but if this is going to cause problems then I would rather seperate them.

Thanks in advance,

Kelly :~www.yorkshirelops.co.uk

 

[fld20]

It's really not a good idea to have them together when the litters born the young doe may eat or injure the babies or the mom may decided to eat the new litter her self to protect them from the other doe.

Fallon

 

[polly]

I have heard of being able to keep them together but it is very very unusual!!. Personally I wouldn't take the risk and would seperate them, there would be nothing worse if they ended up injuring the babies or each other or both. If in doubt better safe than sorry

 

[Pipp]

My former 'roommate'/livingroom couch crasher George had a fuzzy lop that gave birth to her second litter while living with the daughter from the first. She was very young when she had the first litter and I don't think she liked being a mom all that much, although she took okay care of them. But when the second litter came along she pretty much fed them butotherwise left them to their 'aunt' to deal with. It was the aunt (a very gentle little rabbit) that groomed them, slept with them and protected them. Fuzzy hung out on the shelf as far away as possible.

I don't recall if the first daughter was in the kennel when the second litter was born, orif not, when she went back in with her. I'll have to ask George.

sas :bunnydance:

 

[TinysMom]

I have a doe, Matilda, who was really close friends with another doe. Matilda is known for being an excellent mama. The two gals were so close that when I separated them they both got agitated...

....so I let the doe live with Matilda (who is as gentle as can be) and sure enough - she gave birth in the back of the cage (she refused the nestbox) and what was funny was that Matilda did more mothering than the doe did.

The babies were very small when they were born and the doe was not a great mother (had Matilda been their mom - they would've been fed and fed and fed some more - she once kept 24 babies alive for 3 days while I waited for more moms to give birth and get their milk in...it was when I had feed issues and had a lot of stillborns).

Anyway...I say this to say that although the babies died after 3 or 4 days....the two does coexisted with them fine. Matilda's cage was frequenlty open and the doe would take off to play and leave Matilda with the babies. Oh..and Matilda rarely left the cage...she stayed by the nest a lot.

I also had a friend who had a mother/daughter situation kind of like yours and the daughter successfully raised a litter with her mom sharing the huge cage.

I guess what I'm trying to say is - it can happen and the does get along - but it doesn't happen often so it is hard to really recommend it.

I hope I've helped.

 

[Jenson]

I have also had a doe live with her daughter while pregnant and strangely she also helped raise the kits, she was even more protective of them than the mama was. It was an accident and I didn't even know she was pregnant (happened while I was away and left my rabbits in the care of my mother and sister!) and had I known I would have seperated them, but seeing how they worked together as a team and how much less stress there was on the mama I'm glad it turned out that way and I would consider allowing two bonded does to live together throughout a litter in future. However, I would be extremely careful and you would need to know your doe well enough to feel safe to allow them to stay together. If they don't seem too upset being apart then I would seperate just to be on the safe side, if you feel that it would benefit them to stay together then you will have to monitor them very carefully to make sure the kits are safe.

 

[frenchy]

Thanks everyone for the advise.

I think just to play it safe I will seperate the 2 of them, I would dread for anything to happen to either of them or the babies, so I think this will be the safest option.

Given that they are already bonded what are the chances of me letting them live together again after the babies have left mum?

Thanks, Kelly.