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Don't feel qualified enough

bunnyhuggger

Warren Veteran
to answer this question I was asked a couple of days ago (by email):

At how many weeks can one handle newly born rabbits? How long is it before you can clean the nesting area? I have been looking after my daughters rabbit while she is on holiday, she gave birth to seven babies. How long is it before they can be moved to go back to my daughters home? They are eighteen days old already hopping about all over the cage and trying dried food. They are adorable I am enjoying every minute looking after them I will be sorry to see them go. Hoping you can give me some advice.
Thank you very much.


Can someone please help me and this lady, and I'll post the answers back to her. I did ask if she'd like to post the question here herself but she doesn't appear to have done so. And there was me telling her how nice you all were too! :lol:
 
Hi Lynda, baby bunnies should not be handled until they have opened their eyes and are spending more time out of the nest than in it.
We carefully handled some babies at about ten days old, but did not disturb the nest until then.
I think at 18 days old the baby should now be gently held but only near to the nest do not remove them from the actual environment and only allow one person to handle them.
This early handling is important though as otherwise it can create problems later.
we moved home and an entire nest of baby bunnies at 14 days old out of necessity, but they were all fine.
You will know when to remove the nest properly, probably anytime from now...basically when the bunnies are more interested in hiding in the hay than the fur.

The only time you should interfere with a bunnies nest is to check the babies eyes at about 7 days onwards to ensure they have opened properly, else they can stick and bunny go blind.
This can all be done within the nest though and it is best not to handle babies till they leave the nest to explore and come up to have a peep at you. :D :lol:
Does can attack and even kill their babies if a strange smell is noticed on the babies, so again, keep away until the babies are exploring and then take advantage and begin you bunny socialisation in earnest!!..
hope this helps :D
 
Lynda, Adele gave some good advice. Personally I always check the nest just after birth to ensure that the litter is OK and remove any dead kits (sorry but it happens).

Not much point in disturbing both the kits and the Does until you need to check for eyes.

From that point forward I did tend to handle (or my children did LOL) the kits as frequently as possible within reason and that was evident in the friendliness and confidence of my buns at such an early age.

Regarding cleaning you can do this now. What I would suggest is that after cleaning you replace some of the soiled bedding back to “start” another bed with familiar feels and smells.

Different people have different ways of doing things and this worked extremely well for me.
 
Read this a bit late but i check my new borne the day they are born and idearly would not move them untill they started coming out of the nest then i would clean out the whole nest. this can be done with no stress to mum as ive found that all my buns trust me.If in your case they had to be moved for whotever reason it would probebly be all right, take the nest with them and put it in the new cage and let the mym run all day in a run and put her in at the end of the day with a nice lot of treats to eat. I have in the past had a doe that used to wee all over the nest so i used to have to clean them out long before they would normally be done. rabbits are not as bad as most people think about there offspring but theres always one. You should be able to guess her reaction by here behaviour when you open the nest dorr to take a peek, if shes protevtive then remove her while you do whot needs to be done, then treet her with veggies when you put her bavk to stop her rushing back in to the nest. val
 
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