What to feed babies vs mama

[gmtstars]

My bunny had a litter about three weeks ago. I read that they will start venturing out of the box and nibbling on hay.

Are they allowed to nibble on pellets too?
I have Pearle on alfalfa pellets because she is under a year (and gave birth) but I know at a year your supposed to switch to Timothy based pellets and limit them. She is going to turn a year in the next few months, but we plan on keeping one baby. How would you seperate the two? Or would you do something different?

 

[LakeCondo]

Unless you can be 100% sure that the one you're keeping is another female, they should be separate. And even then, when the young female reaches puberty, they probably will need to be separated then.

In addition, per L Moore's Rabbit Nutrition..., lactating rabbits should get 18-21% protein,which babies 3-9 weeks old should get only 12-13%. So it sounds to me like they need to be fed separately at least for awhile. Once lactation ends, the levels aren't that different.

But I;m sure you can get better advice from someone with experience.

 

[JBun]

At 3 weeks, aren't they already venturing out? My bunnies wouldn't stay in the nest box after about 2 weeks old, so I had to turn the box on it's side. After that they gradually started nibbling on more hay. I always kept a pile of grass hay in with them. I worried about pellets causing digestive problems, so I kept the pellet dish up high so only mom could get to it, but they could still get a little bit and pieces mom dropped. That way they weren't suddenly eating a bunch of pellets and were eating more hay. I felt like it gave there digestive systems more time to get used to the new foods. I fed mom a 16% alfalfa pellet, and the babies got the same. At 8 weeks I separated the babies gradually from mom, to wean them.

If you are going to keep the mom and one of the babies together, make sure it's a girl, or you will be having more babies. But for the sake of simplicity, I would just feed mom and baby the same kind of pellets, if you are keeping them together. The baby will still need to have alfalfa pellets til it's grown.

 

[majorv]

By 3 weeks our kits are jumping out of the box and stealing mom's pellets. They go between eating hay and her pellets to trying to snatch a drink from mom while she's eating, lol. Our pellets are alfalfa based @ 16%, but we show/breed rabbits. We also give nursing moms some extra protein via supplement. We have a mom and daughter together right now and they're best buds. The daughter is almost 4 months old. Not saying that this is always the case, but they're getting along very well.