Mastitis??? Help!!

I finally had a litter that didn't get eaten by rats eeeek-popples-d-t13750.html


I need some advice, I lost one kit today and the others are very skinny, wrinkly, etc. The mom is not eating and she wouldnt let me hold her for the kits to nurse.

I bought the mom March 2nd at a show, she was being fed manna pro but I didn't have any so I just gave her the ware milling feed that we use, she picked at it here and there and ate hay mostly, drank a little. Since I have had her she has not once emptied her water bottle or her feeder. I flew to TSC earlier and got some timothy hay (she stopped eating the costal bermuda hay that we had!) and some manna pro. So now I have her manna pro, ware milling, and two types of hay in her cage and her full water bottle.

That was about 2 hours ago, she still isn't eating and the kits are starving to death. A breeder friend said it sounds like mastitis, I soaked her belly with warm water but I don't know what else to do. I don't have another nursing doe to put them with. I don't want to let them starve to death.

Should I cull them? Should I cull HER? Can this be treated? Will it come back? Can it infect other rabbits in my barn?

I am attaching some photos

If she has mastitis, the area around the teats will feel thickened underneath the skin.

Try giving her some parsley- it stimulates the appetite, increases lactation, and causes the uterus to contract. I would also offer her some Gatorade or some type of electrolyte solution.

You might want to syringe it into her mouth. Put the syringe in the corner of her lip and push it back toward her molars, and then slowly squeeze the liquid into her mouth.

If the kits haven't been fed, they will have a hard time keeping themselves warm, and it will use calories that they can't spare. I would take the kits inside and keep them warm either by putting half of the nest on a heating pad set on low heat, or by filling a container with hot water and wrapping it in a towel and placing that in the nest. Just make sure they can move away from the heat source.

Thats how it feels, warm and like a dense fat but it feels like that mainly above the first two nipples.

How do I feed the kits, anything I can nurse them with?

My local WalMart doesnt have fresh parsley, will dried work?


Do I need to treat her with antibiotics and breed her back?

That does sound like mastitis. Apply hot compresses to the affected teats and try to express the milk.

Dried parsley will likely help. You can slice a small piece of apple or banana and coat it with the dried herb.

You might try treating with cabbage leaves as a compress:

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Or you can try herbs, as I did with a mild case in one of my does:

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There are a lot of posts in Rabbit Care on mastitis. Go to the Rabbit Care forum and enter mastitis in the search engine.

Sometimes it can be a while for the does milk to come in but it should be by now (40 hours)

The does teats dont look very full to me and you could just be feeling fat. The fact she hasn't been eating much since you got her makes me think she may have an underlying illness that may be affecting her milk and if she feels cruddy she is not going to look after her kits.

I have never heard of mastitis starting in less than 48 hours after birth. Usually it's after the first week in an over productive doe who had a small litter that cannot drink it all so the milk sits and goes funky with bacteria.

If its mastitis when you expess some milk it will be greenish, cheesy or chunky looking. Rabbit milk is naturally thick like evaporated milk with a SLIGHT yellow tinge.

I agree to keep the kits warm so they don't waste energy producing heat. I would try massaging the does teats, expressing a bit of milk so the kits can smell it and putting the kits with her to see if she clues in.

If it is mastitis, I don't think you would want to foster the kits to another doe. That might transfer the infection.

Ok after more research and y'alls posts its fat that I am feeling, not mastitis. There IS milk production just very little. It isnt stinky or nasty, just regular milk.

I'm thinking that she hasnt been eating because of the feed I had her on maybe? I hand fed the 5 kits, 4 took it very well but the 5th wont make it I don't think, very small and sluggish. The other 4 kits were zipping around like no tomorrow.

Crossing my fingers that she does ok the next couple days. This is her first litter. She doesnt feel like she has lost body condition, maybe she is just a low maintenance girl?


Re the fostering, its not an option for us I did hand feed them though

Try pulling fur from her belly, especially around her teats. It may help bring her milk in.

MaggieJ posted a good link for herbs that are useful in this thread when I asked what plants I could feed to stimulate milk production:

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Okay, I don't think its mastitis since the swolen part is closer to her dunlap so I am pretty sure that is just fat.

When I went back out to give everyone more hay she was in the nestbox, the little skinny kit was dead, but the other 4 seemed fine!

Feed her a richer diet while she is feeding the kits.

What should I feed? She is eating the manna pro now thankfully. I also feed her all the hay she wants as well as fresh fruit and veggies daily.

throw in some oats (teaspoon) if you have them( not quick oats) I feed this the first couple of days as a treat when my does could use a little pick me up. I am a guy so i couldn't imagine giving birth, let alone giving birth to 8 or 9 living beings. its gotta be tiring so i feed accordingly, just makes sense to me, I have no proof or solid evidence that it works, its just what I do. I am also on a fast breed back schedule as well, they normally get bred again 2-3 weeks after kindling.

I just re-read the post and note that you use water bottles, I would put in a crock as well just incase she is not great at drinking from a nipple.

I will add water in a crock pronto.

When I went out to hand feed them this afternoon she jumped in the nest and let me pet her, they started to nurse and she went to licking them so I left her alone. It does look like one of the castors may be fading away, but the others have big plump bellies now

Hopefully this means she is settling into motherhood. She is definitely more cuddly since she has had them.

You could also try adding in a teaspoon of Black Oil Sunflower Seeds (BOSS) ... they sell it in bags from 1pound to 40 pound ... and you want the BOSS only, not all the other millet and such.

Also, you keep saying "fresh fruit and veggies" ... can you list what all she is getting? I don't think you are feeding anything that can hurt her or the kits, but if you are feeding too much of the fresh fruits and veggies, she may not be eating enough pellets to support nursing.

I feed celery, spinach, sweet potato (limited), banana (limited), some carrots (mine don't really care for them).

Celery is the most popular with my crew and she likes her celery and spinach. She has picked up her appetite a little more with the manna pro.

I think one of the problems is that I have been supplementing with animax, and my rabbits have gotten to the point of digging out their pellets just to get the animax. I am weaning them off of the animax and wont be feeding it anymore unless it is in a seprate dish as needed.


Oh there are 4 babies left now, they could be growing a little better and are still a little wrinkly but they do have full bellies and are growing. They are starting to fuzz out, 2 castor and 2 broken castor.

I am not sure what animax is, but anything you feed as a supplement is better in a seperate dish (as you have found) ... as for the other veggies/fruit I would suggest that you only give one piece of one per day ... and carrot GREENS are way more liked than pieces of carrot. Of course, when I peel carrots for the roast, the peelings are inhaled by the buns as a treat

For the nursing does, they need more nutrition from the pellets rather than from the veggies/fruits you are offering. The pellets are a "balanced" diet for the rabbits and letting them fill up on anything else takes away from their balanced nutrition. This slight imbalance might be affecting the doe's ability to produce milk, especially if she has recently had a change in feed. You might also try offering her some BOSS and/or oats each day to help boost her protien levels if your pellets are less than 18%.

Also, if you want to feed celery, the dark green leaves are better for them than the (mostly water filled) stalks, but they do get a decent fiber percentage from the stalks. Spinach is a good dark green leafy vegetable, but still, too much of a good thing can turn it in to a bad thing, so less is better.

I will slice and freeze pieces of banana (with the skin on) as a cold summer treat and the buns really like them once they figure it out Sweet potato would be good for that too!

Not sure if I'm posting this in the right place but can someone tell me how to help a doe that got mastitis after weaning her kits?

I am not exactly sure how to treat mastitis, a vet would give antibiotics I'm sure. I know feeding mint can dry up the milk but I'm not sure if that helps mastitis or not. Other members will know more. It might be best to create a new topic for this.