Hi all - As i have mentioned in my introduction thread we have 5 rabbits in total. We initially had 3 which were supposed to be all female but discovered one was a male when young appeared. So at one point we had 18 of the little darlings! We managed to successfully home the kits, apart from the two we decided to keep.
Since then we have kept the boys and girls apart and hadn't had any problems until recently. Initially the two mothers were together but we separated them once we spotted the litters. Even after the kits were gone they didn't seem keen to live together anymore and have been living in separate hutches since.
We sometimes let the adults have the run of the garden and i have built a walk in pen so they can wander freely at times without falling victim to local cats or foxes. They are kept apart but obviously having children it is possible they may have been accidentally out together once?
Almost three weeks ago we spotted the hay moving and found another 6 kits. This was a complete surprise but they were feeding well and are a good size. With the storm that was threatened last night i decided that rather than leave the mother and kits in their existing hutch I would transfer them to a smaller hutch i could fit into my shed. I cleaned it out and used fresh sawdust and hay (same as always used) and transferred the nest from the other hutch. The kits decided straight away that this was a great adventure and were running about and having great fun. We were able to watch them feeding and felt secure that we had done all we could to give them a fair chance even through winter.
This evening we nipped out to check the water and food and found mum dead. She had shown no sign of any illness and was feeding the kits perfectly. When the earlier litters were born we had no experience of what they should look like and what size they should be at each day/stage so we weighed them daily and kept a chart. These new ones seem a little bigger than those ones and have grown rapidly. They are very lively and all have eyes open and are fully formed and are just mini rabbits. Whatever caused mum to die so suddenly was very fast. I am wondering whether the electrical storm this evening may have caused a heart attack?
Anyway we now have the problem of 6 young kits around three weeks old who now have no mother. I have other females but they wont be producing milk as they are not with kits. There seems to be so much conflicting information about feeding and hand rearing so some definitive answers would be good!
Since then we have kept the boys and girls apart and hadn't had any problems until recently. Initially the two mothers were together but we separated them once we spotted the litters. Even after the kits were gone they didn't seem keen to live together anymore and have been living in separate hutches since.
We sometimes let the adults have the run of the garden and i have built a walk in pen so they can wander freely at times without falling victim to local cats or foxes. They are kept apart but obviously having children it is possible they may have been accidentally out together once?
Almost three weeks ago we spotted the hay moving and found another 6 kits. This was a complete surprise but they were feeding well and are a good size. With the storm that was threatened last night i decided that rather than leave the mother and kits in their existing hutch I would transfer them to a smaller hutch i could fit into my shed. I cleaned it out and used fresh sawdust and hay (same as always used) and transferred the nest from the other hutch. The kits decided straight away that this was a great adventure and were running about and having great fun. We were able to watch them feeding and felt secure that we had done all we could to give them a fair chance even through winter.
This evening we nipped out to check the water and food and found mum dead. She had shown no sign of any illness and was feeding the kits perfectly. When the earlier litters were born we had no experience of what they should look like and what size they should be at each day/stage so we weighed them daily and kept a chart. These new ones seem a little bigger than those ones and have grown rapidly. They are very lively and all have eyes open and are fully formed and are just mini rabbits. Whatever caused mum to die so suddenly was very fast. I am wondering whether the electrical storm this evening may have caused a heart attack?
Anyway we now have the problem of 6 young kits around three weeks old who now have no mother. I have other females but they wont be producing milk as they are not with kits. There seems to be so much conflicting information about feeding and hand rearing so some definitive answers would be good!
