Kittens coming, and baby it's cold outside

Hello folks. Since I last started a thread, things have changed markedly in our rabbit-rearing life. Due to a series of unfortunate events, including a mis-sexing at the shop, and veterinary misadventure, we went from having two boy rabbits to having one girl who is possibly pregnant, according to the vet. She seems to be nesting and as best we can guess, babies may be due in a week.

But it's cold. It was down to zero Celsius last night. She's in a hutch and run in our garage, safe from winds and wet, but unheated. Jumpy should be fine but I'm worried about the kits. We'll have a nesting box ready soon and I'm wondering if mother nature needs a hand. I can get a heating lamp from the in-laws who raise poultry, but I've never read of anyone else doing this for rabbits.

So do you think a standard nesting box full of hay and paper will be enough or do we need something else?

Have you tried measuring how cold it gets inside the garage? Sometimes they can hold heat quite well so it might not get nearly as chilly in as out. I think you'd need to be careful not to overheat them as they don't move about much where as I've a feeling chicks move around so can get out of the direct heat?

Thanks Tamsin. I don't have anything to measure inside the garage but I'd say its a couple of degrees warmer than outside. But if overheating is an issue, and nobody ever mentions heat lamps, I think it's best to give them a miss.

Thanks again.

a heat lamp would be too hot and anything like a snuggle safe would be dangerous as well as they stay n one place and could overheat from that. Make sure there is a good nest - you could try and see if you could start brushing the doe now and collect the fluff in case she does not make much of a nest when the time comes - then you could add that fluff to it.

Straw retains heat better than hay - but make sure its dense and not all fluffed up so to speak - so that the babies cant 'fall through' it! Use newspaper at base of the straw etc as its an excellent insulator.

Its not an ideal time for a birth (hence it doesnt happen in nature) .

with only a week to go it would probably unsettle her to now move her indoors - but the problem is that rabbits do not 'sit' on the nest as you might expect - but in fact only visit the nest once or twice in 24hrs to do the feed - Ideally in fact the mother should be given a space she can get away from the kits - but most domestic rabbits I think end up sharing the hutch with the nest - they just sit at the opposite end to it for most of the day. We actually let the doe free range when we had our accidental litter - and she just popped back a couple of times like they would naturally.

Put a blanket over the roof and back and get a thermometer that shows you what the minimum temperature has been overnight (available in garden stores for greenhouses).

Thanks parsnipbun. I've got my homemade nesting box all ready to go anyway, and the temperature has picked up, so hopefully things will go well.