Urgent Help needed, orpahned 10 hour old Easter Bunnies :0(

[EasterBunnies]

Today had the suprise of my life, when hubby rang us and told me Belle had given birth to 4 bunnies..

We have Fezzi who is 7 years old and Belle who is 2 year old lops, they never normally meet but other week with high winds one got out for about 5 10 mins.. before we re secured everthing.. they are outside rabbits, their choice but do come indoors to play and wind the dogs and cats up..

Belle wasnt impressed at all and she did make a bed for them but wanted nothing to do with them what so ever, two sadly passed away by time we got to them and two were very very cold..

She was like stamping over them..and at this point decided to remove them from her..

We took some of the bedding and we have a small aquarium where we placed paper in the bottom and some hay etc and made up some kitten forumla and fed them, read several sites who said 2ml a day at moment and to clean backsides.. we then turned heating on full blast and put them in a shelf in warmest room in house.

I checked on them later this evening and they are very content and warm and bedded down ok for the night, but did notice on both were cuts prob caused by mum, on one its not so bad but the other is like on hind leg.. i cleaned it very gently and it seemed happy for me to touch them.

Is their anything else i can do to help them.. their is no way mum will let us put them on her teats and has totally rejected them.. she was more concerned about eating her dinner and if we had left them with her they were so cold i dont think they would have survived to this point..

We will be keeping these two if they survive but they will be having a visit to the vets for the snip and will book them in with the vets on Tuesday:biggrin:

 

[Maureen Las]

Oh I "m so sorry that this happened ; there is a more complicated formula that I will pass on to you if you can make it


http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/orphan.html

 

[TinysMom]

I have used that formula for quite a while now - just a couple of things.

DO NOT BUY HARTZ version of KMR. Try to get the "real thing". Its going to be cheaper if you buy the powder too. In fact, I buy powdered everything.

Also - when I added the goats milk to what I was making for the last batch of rabbits - I started losing them. So - I switched it to just KMR, colostrum (even kept out the cream) and I added a tiny bit of powdered pro-bios. It worked.

My point...you can do it without the goats milk if you have to. Its great if you have it - but even the KMR with colostrum is a help.

Finally - at this age - it is very very hard to feed them. I suggest using an eye dropper and then moving onto a syringe in a few days and then moving on to a bottle when they're older and their eyes are open. My guy is still using a syringe even though he's about 5 weeks old - he's learned to turbo-suck and buy waiting for me to refill the 12 cc syringe - it slows him down just a little bit.

Also - I do not feed them with them on their backs. I hold them at an angle - almost as if I was holding them in my arms like a baby - but a bit more of an angle.

I also wrap them with a paper towel that I keep changing as it gets wet and I try to cover their feet so that it is easier to feed them.

 

[Sweetie]

I am sorry you lost two of them. Hope the other two survive. Good luck on keeping them alive, you have great support here.

 

[EasterBunnies]

Thanks for the advice will try that forumla out, the tincy syringe i had is still to big, luckily i had a dropper from one of the rescue remedies so sterilised it and they are feeding from that..

glad to say at day two they are still with us.. just hope they decide to stay with us forever, they have just had their evening feed and bums all nice and clean and put back to bed for the night..

fingers crossed they will survive but certainly are in a better position than they were yesterday morning and are now all nice and pinky and warm.. on one of them we can see small fur appearing .. they look so cute bless them..:biggrin:

 

[TinysMom]

I'm sure you're doing this - but just checking - are you stimulating them to pee and poo? If not - make sure that you do this!

 

[I_heart_Fraggles]

Sounds like your doing a great job. Be sure to name one "easter" lol. Oh and yes make sure your stimulating for pee and poo

 

[naturestee]

Can you hold the mom still and put the babies under her to feed? This is the best way to do it if you can manage it. Then just bring the babies to the mom to feed every time.