My babies are already 6 weeks old!!!

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sha10ly88

sha10ly88

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My babies are all 6 weeks old tomorrow. I just want to know of any weird behaviours this babies might give me or mommy. Would mommy know that shes suppose to wean them? Also ... how much shoudl i feed them? hahathe question sounds weird. Can the babies feed on fresh veggies?

What about Mommy? I think mommy is a little fat. Mommy is about 10 to 11 mths old. And I think she weighs about 1kg. Is that heavy?
 
Well I don't know what you should do sorry :( Oh actually POST MORE PICS :whistling
 
Mum will be heavier than normal because she will be very large with milk. 1kg is not very heavy though, even for a full sized nursing netherland dwarf, one of the smallest breeds.

What have you been feeding the babies on currently? Are they eating pellets and such? And hay?
 
Just don't feed the babies any greens until they are 4 months old. The babies shouldn't need to eat much. A full grown Dwarf only needs about 4 ounces...Momma bunny won't just wean them on her own really. The bucks need to be seperated from her and the sisters at about 4 months.
 
I do not give baby bunnies veggies until six months of age. At that age they're digestive systems are strong enough to handle it. Six months might be later than what some others do, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Up until that time I give them pellets and hay...as much as they want. I also give them a few Cheerios, but that is my own particular treat that my buns love.

I wean at 6 weeks. I generally will remove all the buns except the smallest. I leave the smallest with the mom for about a week or less. This gives the mom one bunny that will continue to nurse so that she doesn't go "cold turkey" on nursing (which can cause some discomfort with milk buildup). The fact that there's only one bunny nursing will slow milk production. It also gives the littlest one a chance to catch up to the others a bit. I then will remove that one and put it with the rest of the litter.

I do not separate bucks from does until they are around 3 months as they are not yet sexually mature. I wouldn't want to wait until four months as some bucks start to get territorial around that time as they are beginning to mature sexually. Keep in mind, some will mature a bit faster than others. Heck, I know of a girl whose buck was "mis-sexed" and who impregnated her doe at four months of age, so that one definitely matured enough by four months to be sexually active.
 
I have had good luck with feeding babies what ever mom is eating.

I have fostered several litters from about 1 week old to 4-5 months old.

I kept the babies and mom all together until about 3 months, then all the boys got neutered and mom got spayed. Around 5 months, the little girls got spayed.

Some mom's would wean the babies on their own, other mom's would let them nurse even when they where as big as her. You can monitor their feeding, and decide to remove them if mom is not weaning them herself.

You should notice that when the babies approach mom and try to feed, she will flatten her tummy to the ground so the babies can't get to her teats or she will jump up and run away.

As for feeding veggies, I feed one veggie at a time, starting with small amounts. Then monitor for about 48 hours before introducing another one. None of my foster litters had bad reactions. All of my babies where eating greens by the time they where eating solids.

It seems that while they are still nursing, the anti-bodies help the babies to digest the greens.

However, if you want to play it safe, then keep the babies on pellets and hay until they are older (5-6 months).

--Dawn
 
I wean the same way as Murph72.Seperate all but the smallest baby from the doe. Leave the rest oflitter together for two weeks. (Add the smallest one after a week.) You can send them to new homes at 8 weeks. They are usually strong enough at that point to survive.

I also do not feed greens or fruits until 6 months. If the litter is together, I free feed them until they are seperated. They really should be seperated at 3 months of age.

The mother sounds pretty small to me... Give her time to "dry up" her milk and see if she carries her weight better. Tough work raising a litter!
 
So ... basically, mom knows when she should wean them but I still have to monitor her.

Wow .. it is tough to take care of them but at the same time ... its fun. Honestly, I am enjoying it. It seemed that all my little bunnies doesnt like to eat hay as they eat pellets each time. They are starting to ignore hays. Now ... even mommy doesnt like hays too. I dont really know what cause them to hate it. Maybe becos pellets taste nicer huh. Is there a diet that I can give them to replace the hays?


 
I'm not sure I'd agree with the statement that mom knows when to wean them. In all of my does, I'm not sure there are more than one or two that might actually wean the litter on their own. My one mini lop would nurse them for an eternity if I let her. In fact, even when I let her with the smallest, she still tries to break into the pen that I have her babies in (she's free to roam in a building as she's litter trained and spoiled).

Do you have another pen that you could use for the rest of the babies? Nursing all those babies is hard on mom. She's done it for six weeks now. If you want her to get back to her usual weight, I'd really recommend removing the majority of the babies.

Not all buns like hay. I have one that thinks it's to lay on rather than to eat. I'm not too concerned about him though as his weight is where I want it to be. As long as he's eating and he looks good, I let him eat what he wants (I'm not sure I could do otherwise even if I try). :)
 
At 6 weeks, I start to wean my babies, taking them one by one, day by day (So mama bunny has time to dry up comfortably)and puting them all in a growing cage until they are about 3 months old, at which time you should separate does and bucks. Does, I've found, as long as they are from the same litter, should be fine together unless you breed one of them. Each buck should get his own hutch.

Good luck! :biggrin2:
 
I never feed young rabbits veggies. I keep them strictly on timothy hay and pellets, especially after weaning, lots of timothy hay and NO alfalfa.
I also dont agree that lettling the mother weans is the best. At about 6-7 weeks most babies are healthy enough to be weaned. I place them in a seperate cage, however i love that idea of leaving one in there with mom to prevent her from drying out cold turckey. At about weaning if they are healthy I pet out those that I am not keeping back and cage the ones that I am together until they get to about 3 mnths.
 
All the young rabbits are feeding on pallets already. But they never seem to like hays. As for mommy, she is still nursing the two little rabbits. Tomorrow, I am going to seperate one from her.

How can I know if mommy is not drying out?
 
Why wouldn't you feed alfalfa? I understand that it gives them more protein and helps them develop better. I had one allergic to it but he was a bit older
 
Initially I used to however I was gettingout breaks ofEnteritis every other litter. I tried different kinds of alfalfa and alfalfa mixes however in the end a breeder told me that the kits get enough protien from mothers milk and after that pellets. Now I only feed grass hay there is probably a bit of alfalfa in it but hardly any. I havent lost a kit to enteritis and GI stasis since. Ive heard of vets suggesting the use of alfalfa in younger rabbits but personally I stay far away from it and my rabbitry has been in great health ever since.
 
I use shur gain pellets its a canadian brand. They already have 16% protien in them, now think about feeding more very high protien hay to your kits its bound to cause trouble. Mine would usually die between 4-6 weeks. Would bloat up not eat not crap and die.
 
That is REALLY interesting because I don't know what they had Bo on when I got him ... they just gave me a bag to send home. I got some Oxbow Alfalfa pellets for him after that I think he had a mild bought of enteritis (he was about 12 weeks old).

He also startedsneezing from the alfalfa hay (we didn'tknow that's what it was) then and I switched him to timothy..... took away a lot of his pellets for awhile and then slowly added some to allow him free choice eventually.

That makes me thinkit was the pellets and hay.


 
How many rabbits were in the litter?

I personally only leave mom with one because that one has mom and the others have each other. Baby bunnies get separation anxiety if they are all alone by themselves too quickly. They can get depressed and stop eating. I'm always sure that my babies have a good two weeks with each other and are eight weeks old before going off to new homes.

On the subject of alfalfa: I never feed it. I also think it's hard on their systems. Wheras the timothy keeps them regular, I found that the alfalfa does the opposite. I think it's too sweet of a hay for them. It might be OK as a treat, but not as a regular part of their diet, IMO.
 
Well ... It seemed that my kits are fine being seperated. As I am living in an apartment, I don't have much room to expand the rabbits space. As soon as my kits know how to climb out of the shoe box, I had already put them in a bigger and higher box which was a 30x20 cm rectangular basket of about 20cm of height. And all the 4 kits inside seperated from mommy. That time I couldnt find a smaller one that can fit into mommy's cage. So mommy's cage was next to kits basket. So when its time to milk, mommy will hop out of her cage n into the basket. Of course there was one measure that I really took was to put the same hay that were in the shoe box into the basket so that my kits still feel that they are in the same place. It did not occur to me that the baby could get stress out and die being seperated.

Thank god! My kits are all fine till today althought they are seperated from mommy before they were suppose to. As for mommy, she has been doing great. When its time to feed the kits, she just hop in and hop out.

Now that its already 6 weeks and 4 days old, mommy is only feeding on just Buffy (which is the unfortunate paralysed bunny). By the way, I can see that Buffy is recovering.

I didn't feed my kits alfafa. In fact, how does alfafa looks like? I am not sure if I can find alfafa in Singapore?

From all the post that I have read above, I understand that kits are not suppose to consume too much protein. Did I understand it rite? Rite now ... my kits are feeding on the same pellets as mommy's.
 
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