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Kits in the nest needing help

Mileycyrus

New Kit
Hi there, I have a minilop doe who gave birth to 5 (what I thought were healthy) kits about 5 days ago (no penuts). They all started off the same size and I inspect the nest every day to make sure they are doing well. On about the second day I noticed that 3 out of the 5 were not growing very well and obviously not getting their fair share of milk so I have been trying to assist my doe feeding by giving the smaller kits a feed on their own in the day. Its now day 5 and I found one kit, next to the hutch door dead, so I assume my doe has removed it when its died. Looking at the nest again today, it looks like one is doing really well but the other 3 are looking much smaller. My doe (a 10 month old minilop) is rather small and I was wondering if she is not producing enough milk? Is there a way to encourage lactation in does?I would hate to lose any more kits.

Any advice is appreciated....
 
Are you now free feeding her pellets?

I think giving additional feeds, without the bigger ones, is important, but it may just be that these kits are not going to thrive and have something wrong which may explain why they are not thriving.

The baby out of the nest could be there for many reasons. It might just have been suckling on mum when mum moved and got dragged out and died of the cold (did you warm it up to ensure it was dead and not just really cold?). Mum's don't move their babies, although I have heard of mum's kicking out dead babies, but not that commonly, to be honest, which is is advised to check the nest regularly.
 
Are you rubbing your hands in the nest material before handling the babies so that mum doesnt realise you have been in.

I would just give mum more pellets and veggies. If there is something wrong with the babies mum will know and normally take baby out of nest and start to eat.
 
The mum needs a lot more extra collories to produce Extra milk.
Like extra pellets, carrots nice fresh greens and vegetables.
She needs alot more calories to produce the extra milk.
 
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