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When to handle?

ostaragirl

Warren Scout
There are so many conflicting things on the internet about when you can handle kits. At 16 days old the nest is falling apart so I need to make a new one, which means moving them. I'm assuming it will be ok to do this. Can anyone who has experience of this give me some advice please?
 
I always handled mine from day 2. There is no reason you can't handle them at this old. If you think mum may stress then put a bit of vanilla essence above her nose and also stroke her before touching the kits. Make sure you don't have anything extremely smelly on your hands, like soap, so that you don't make the kits smell of anything major.

Mum should be fine though, to be honest.
 
You don't need to rebuild the nest, particularly in this weather. If it needs it mum will do it but as they are fully furred now they'll just sit in a pile together wherever they fancy.
 
Whenever I have had babies I have handled them from day 1 and made sure I had the does scent on my hands first. By 16 days,arent they starting to crawl around the hutch anyway?
 
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