Babies!

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Published: Monday, 11 November 2013 14:17
Written by David DeCiero

After putting in the nest box, I waited for the magic day to arrive.  There was fur everywhere as my doe seemed to think that she had to pull all of her fur out.  She made a nice little next in the box, but couldn’t really tell if anything was in there.  On Oct 7th, I notice some movement and there were babies!  I had read that you should wait a couple days to remove any dead babies in case you spook the mama.  I did wait one more day before I felt around.  There was 1 dead baby and what appeared to be 7 live babies, so I removed the one and buried it.  There was also some blood in the nestbox as well as on the doe.  I was very unsure about this, but I simply removed the bedding with the blood and let the doe clean herself up.  In a couple days, everything was fine.

Over the next week, my does decided to start pooping in her nestbox.  Luckily, she wasn’t peeing, so I could just scoop out the dry pellets.  She only did this for about 2 days before she decided to use another area of the cage.  Then, at about 11 days after birth, the babies started to open their eyes.  I kept a watchful eye for any of them that did not open their eyes, but had no problems.  At this point, they started to come out of the next box and I discovered that I had 9 baby rabbits.

At 3 weeks, the babies were climbing everywhere and it was time to take out the nestbox.  I simply removed it, and added back the igloo.  They are now romping around and jumping on mom.  At night and during the day, they will all huddle together.  I don’t know how they don’t get mad getting climbed on.

I’ve now had the rabbits for 4 weeks.  They keep growing and eating and drinking.  They are eating about 3 lbs of food per day.  I reflected on the kindling process and there are a couple things I wish people had told me:

1.  There will be a lot of fur.  It will look like a rabbit has been ripped apart.

2.  There will be blood.  Pregnancy causes blood to spill.  Nothing to get worried about unless it doesn’t clear up in a day.

3.  Counting babies will be tough, just make sure they are alive and go from there.

4.  Babies love to poop and pee in a water dish.  I change mine 3 times a day now.

Anyway, hope that’s helpful.  Next post will be on the big day when the babies become food.