Please help im desperate

[ohsnapitscharity]

ok im not sure of yall know but my doe had 6 baby rabbits 4 days ago. 3 are doing great but he other 3 had sunken in stomachs i grabbed the mom and the three that looked bad and let them nurse. problem is im going to florida tuesday and i cant bring all 6 kits and the mom. ive been thinking about taking and feeding the three kits doing bad and before i do i would like everyones opinion on what i should do and how should i feed them (like what supplues and everything). please help me im freaking out.

 

[bunnybunbunb]

Just so you know you have a VERY slim chance of hand raising the babies without using the mom. There is no milk out there close enough to a rabbits to bring the babies up on. Getting them to such from a bottle is very slim and using a dropper has a high chance of them sucking it into their lungs.

Who is caring for the rabbits while you are gone? Why can they not get the doe and 3 babies out each day for feedings? It only takes 10-20 minutes once a day.

 

[Pipp]

I really wouldn't hand feed. I'd find somebody to take care of her where she is (by far the preferred method), or send her to somebody else's place nearby. Having the doe give extra feedings to the weak ones is their best chance.

How long are you gone for? Do you know someone who can bunnysit?


sas :expressionless:

 

[Flashy]

I too wonder who is caring for them in your abscence. Maybe educate them on how to help mum feed?

For the future, try not to have a doe have a litter so close to you going away for their sake and yours.

 

[anneq]

Charity, I'll send you my phone number so we can get in touch.
We have one car so this might be tricky.

 

[aurora369]

I also advise against hand feeding the babies. Their best chance of survival is to have mom feed them extra feedings.

If you can find someone that is willing to tend to them for about 20 minutes a day while you are gone, they should do okay.

What I do to help struggling babies is to remove the fat/healthy babies from the nest and put mom in the nest ontop of the weak babies for them to feed. Let the weak babies feed for at least 5 minutes, then let mom hop out of the box. You can distract mom with some treats or nose rubs if she gets agitated while feeding.

--Dawn

 

[jamesedwardwaller]

hartz kitten formula,premade in a can sold generally by grocery stores,ie safeway,walmart,..but you must be there to care for them if it is a priority at all,..sincerely james waller

 

[Flashy]

Kitten formula is not recommended. Randy recommends a specific puppy formula if there is no other way, but in this instance there is another way.

 

[Pipp]

james waller wrote:

hartz kitten formula,premade in a can sold generally by grocery stores,ie safeway,walmart,..but you must be there to care for them if it is a priority at all,..sincerely james waller

Ugh, sorry James, I'd NEVER use Hartz products on rabbits (or anything else for that matter), and certainly not a kitten milk formula for rabbits. I'd never hand-feed at all if there was a way to get a doe to feed them.

Kitten milk replacement formula has been suggested in books and posts in the past, but current research says it's really not the way to go at all, and from anecdotal experience on this board alone, the kits rarely survive.


sas :expressionless:

 

[ohsnapitscharity]

ok heres my plan take all the kits away from mom and just let her be with them for feedings. do you think her milk would be ok and everything? i would stimulate them to urinate and everything she would just have to feed. thats my plan IF i can take them and i think i can find a way. but if not i would still like that plan to go into effect only let anneq do it for me. i mean would that work? and by the way i had no clue i would be going to florida it was a surprise trip and i cant do anything about it. i will be gone for 6 days

 

[aurora369]

Personally, I would just leave the babies with mom.

Can you show some pictures of the babies? Show a comparison between the fat babies and the skinny ones.

Sometimes, some babies just do not thrive. Most of the time it is because they have something wrong internally.

Also, just because some babies are fatter than others, does not mean that the three smaller babies are not getting enough milk.

Are the babies still active and wiggle when you put your hand in the nest? Do the stomaches look sunken or just not fat? Sunken is bad, however if they are just not fat, they will probably be okay.

--Dawn

 

[ohsnapitscharity]

well since i let the nurse to the mom while holding her they all have round tummies. two dont seem to wiggle much but they were earger to nurse. only one tummy looked really sunken in the others were just no up to par with its siblings. im thinking about maybe making a whole new nestbox out of a cardboard box...that way its smaller and the babies dont spread out to much (i think thats what happened; they just missed a feeding). whats the opinion on that.

 

[anneq]

As long as mom doesn't trample the babies, it should be good.
I think letting the smaller ones feed before the other, fatter ones get a feeding should help.

Is this mom's first litter?

 

[ohsnapitscharity]

well she was a pet shop bunny but im pretty sure it is.

 

[OakRidgeRabbits]

Pipp wrote:

james waller wrote:

hartz kitten formula,premade in a can sold generally by grocery stores,ie safeway,walmart,..but you must be there to care for them if it is a priority at all,..sincerely james waller

Ugh, sorry James, I'd NEVER use Hartz products on rabbits (or anything else for that matter), and certainly not a kitten milk formula for rabbits. I'd never hand-feed at all if there was a way to get a doe to feed them.

Kitten milk replacement formula has been suggested in books and posts in the past, but current research says it's really not the way to go at all, and from anecdotal experience on this board alone, the kits rarely survive.

I have raised kits on Hartz KMR and definitely reccommend it more than puppy formula.However, goat's milk is best.

 

[Pipp]

I have a hate-on for Hartz! Can't believe some of the stuff they sell. Glad to hear you've had good luck with the kitten replacement formula.

It's probably like what I call the 'yogurt' syndrome -- for years vets recommended yogurt as a probiotic, then it fell out of favour in favour of pure (?) probiotics and suddenly the vets prescribing yogurt were seen as poisoning people's pet rabbits.

The pendulum is probably swinging the same way with formula. I don't know when or how we went from kitten to puppy but I'd probably want to do a content analysis of all four (rabbit, kitten, puppy and goat) before making a personal choice.

However, that said, the person I know with the most modern experience raising orphans (wild ones) is Randy on this board, and he's the puppy milk guy (although actually he advocates a special wildlife formula), for what that's worth. (ETA: Then again I think the also very experienced Pam Nock recommends KRF). :dunno

Bottom line is still to avoid hand feeding if at all possible.

(PS: That said, I still remember cringing when reading about our Bo B Bunny taking in a little cottontail and doing everything that wasn't recommended -- and little Clover is a healthy, happy three-year-old. So maybe it's just the luck of the draw, who knows!!)


sas :bunnydance:

 

[OakRidgeRabbits]

Pipp wrote:

It's probably like what I call the 'yogurt' syndrome -- for years vets recommended yogurt as a probiotic, then it fell out of favour in favour of pure (?) probiotics and suddenly the vets prescribing yogurt were seen as poisoning people's pet rabbits.

LOL! Yep! Speaking of...I don't know how you personally feel about it, but I know several people who swear by yogurt for bringing back rabbits that they honestly thought wouldn't make it. I (luckily) have not experienced more than one digestive incident in nearly 10 years. *knock on wood*However, I did syringe him yogurt as soon as he went off his feed, and the buck was perfectly fine by morning.

So it does depend. American Cottontails are a bit different than our domesticated rabbits. I don't have as much experience with them, but I have always heard, used, and suggest KMR for domestic rabbits. Only because it has worked for me more than once.You're right though, the bottom line is that if there is a choice, don't hand feed at all!

 

[OakRidgeRabbits]

Pipp wrote:

I have a hate-on for Hartz!

Oh, and just curious...what do you mean by "some of the products that they sell"? Just curious! I've never heard anything against them before.

 

[aurora369]

Yes, the babies spread all over the nest box could contribute to only some of the babies getting fed. Typically a nest has hay, straw or shavings with a nice deep hole in the middle to keep the babies collected in one spot.

You can pack in the hay fairly tight, and just make a fist sized hole in the middle.

This will make sure that when mom jumps in the nest to feed, she gets all the babies at once. Mom will stay in one spot as soon as she feels babies latch on, so if all the babies are in different places, she'll just feed the ones that she hops over first. The other babies won't get fed if they are too far away to wiggle over.

I think getting the skinny ones some extra feedings at least once day should help them catch up. Once the babies are bigger, they should be able to fend for themselves during feeding.

--Dawn

 

[Pipp]

OakRidgeRabbits wrote:

LOL! Yep! Speaking of...I don't know how you personally feel about it, but I know several people who swear by yogurt for bringing back rabbits that they honestly thought wouldn't make it. I (luckily) have not experienced more than one digestive incident in nearly 10 years. *knock on wood* However, I did syringe him yogurt as soon as he went off his feed, and the buck was perfectly fine by morning.

I actually have a theory that too little importance is placed on the diet of the mother and how it relates to the longterm health of the kits. Maybe they end up with immunity against food sensitivitioes through their mothers' milk and weaning diets. Foreign food is more likely to cause problems. Mom gets hay, veggies and pellets and the kits adapt. Mom and kits only get pellets, and their systems are more easily upset when they get suddenly dumped in a pet store or somebody's living room with little or no preparation. But babies within the breeder community conssistantly fed pellets from from generation to generation are healthier because of the consistency.

Although not so much for the longterm health of the family. Fatty liver disease, tooth issues, etc, do take their toll in old age. A lot of breeders will have rabbits short on exercise and fibre, but the uterine tumors and other natural ailments will get them first. And breeders can't always know why their rabbits expired (although I do appreciate the ones who do their own necropsies and share the info).

I have no idea what my dwarf ate before I got her, but she won't touch hay and that certainly contributes to molar spurs. I've since been able to control them through her veggie intake.

I'll have slight problems during molts, but they're easily handled by their veggie diets and pumpkin supplements.

I've only used pro-biotics in conjunction with antibiotics prescribed for abscesses, etc.

And the only problem I had with Pipp's digestive track was when she od'd once on something surgary (keeping in mind yogurt is pretty sugary), and once when she OD'd on oats. (Dill would get gas, but I think it was due to his cancer. I also lost one boy to a genetic defect).

If Pipp was perfectly normal and adjusting to antibiotics well, I'd probably try yogurt as a probiotic in a pinch. However, if she's got a wonky digestive track, definitely not about to risk cecal dysbiosis with an influx of more sugar.

So it's all very individual.


sas :bunnydance: