what age to wean hand reared bun

hi as you will hopefuly remember im hand rearing a lionhead kit who will be 4 weeks in 3 days.......he is already nibbling hay and is tucking into his dry food very well, he doesnt seem to want as much milk, is this normal so soon? he's very inquisitive and lively, hopping around and binkying! we have decided to keep him, (hopefully nothing will go wrong, altho i kno it still may ) as a house bun as he seems very happy being in with the hoomans and the wuffle likes him 2! hoping to build him a little fenced off area all for him in our spare room, i couldnt put him outside in a hutch now, im too attatched, which i kno is bad! were having to change hit bottle teats evry feed tho coz he has started chewing them and i worry he will swallow it! anyway appologys 4 the waffle.......main reasons for post, what age should he be starting to drink water? is it a good idea to try and encourage him to take his milk from a cage bottle? after advice from our vet we will be starting him on probiotics at 4 weeks, how soon should he be able 2 try small amounts of veg? some hav said a cpl of mnth while others have said 6! any help would be great! thanx ps. charging bateries for piccys of buns!

mm I don't know, although I do know that handreared buns are more likely to get digestive upsets......

Rabbits start decreasing milk intake from around 4 weeks. If he's doing that by himself then great, let it tail off naturally.

He should be fine drinking from his milk from a bowl by now and you can put a water bowl in his cage too. You could try a water bottle, he may get the nack of it though a bowl is easier if that's practical.

I would start the probiotics now.

It fed small quantities of dry herbs/blackberry leaves etc from that age then swapped gradually to fresh. Any greens you introduce you need to do so gradually, that's the key. If he's used to them from the start of eating solids he's less likely to have problems.

thanx for replying, this may sound dumb but when u say dried herbs do you mean the kind you buy in supermarkets or would i have to dry them myself from fresh???? also he has never had a bowl, iv tried with a water bottle, also puting milk in but he isnt getting it yet, is ther a danger of drowning in a bowl? even if it only has a few mil in it?

I just held a small bowl for him to drink (it was what I keep the milk in to draw up into the syringes)




That was him at 26 days.

I dried blackberry leaves, grass and dandelion in the oven (lowest setting about 20 mins) to start with. I might have been a bit overly paranoid though He never had any problems so small quantities of fresh would probably have been the same. I used to give him a couple of blades of grass or a blackberry leaf after each feed.

lucifer is around the same size as tthe rabbit in the pic, going by the hand/bun proportion, and he's a lionheadx so im not as worried as i was about him being smaller than his siblings, do you think that this is normal? im probably being paranoid but im so attatched now, were going to keep him, i have homes for the other babys (for him as well but i dont want to let him go!) i know he may have gut problems for a long time and i wudnt trust anyone else to care for him, plus im in luv with him! he comes running to me whenever i go in the room and hops after me when he's out of his cage! thanx agen

The bun in the pic is Scamp, he's a wild bunny and now weighs in at 1.4kg I think that's a fairly average size so it didn't effect his growth much. Once he started on solids he really shot up in size. He's never had any gut problems at all and now eats a whole range of veg daily.

I know what you mean about attached. Scamp's great. He comes bounding over when I call him and gives me loads of licks.

my kits start drinking water at about three weeks and eating pellets at about four I try to get them to wait but they eat everything and they don't nurse much they have never had a problem so I would think yours should be ok also

im hoping to keep him as a house bun, however i do have a dog so lucifer is going to have his own area in my work/study room, what size area would be adequate? is it too soon 2 start litter training him? i plan on keeping him in him cage till he's alot bigger tho before creating his 'pen'. any ideas on a pen type enclosure would be greatly appreciated. thankyou for your advice so far.