Babies won't stay in the nest -_-

[Fireclaws bunnbutts]

Ok, so. My doe had 9 babies 5 days ago 1 was dead at birth and lost one so now there's 7. Everyones growing well, except they won't stay in the dang nest!

I checked on them yesterday to find them scattered all over the nest box, 6 were fed and 1 was not. So I put them all back and expected everyone to have full bellies this morning. Nope -_- checked to find only 3 actually in the nest, nice and fat and 4 which had made it to the opposite corner of the nest box, luckily everyone was still warm, but the 4 had missed last night/this mornings feeding and were mighty hungry opcorn:

I'm at a loss as to what to do. Should I start taking the babies out of the nest box and only put them back at night and then take them back out in the morning? Or should I put them in something smaller inside the nest box? I'd rather not lose anymore cause I'd be sad and I've already got a huge waiting list to fill from a litter ago when I only had 4 :lol: But it's also irritating to check on them to find that half haven't been fed, all because they wanna flop around. I took a bunch of hay out of the nest box to see if that would help any, but otherwise I dunno.

 

[a7736100]

Sounds to me the nest box is too big. Usually the kits will seek warmth and end up in a pile. When you say nest box are you talking a box you put in the cage or are you talking about the enclosed part of a hutch which is much bigger? To me a nest box is about the size of a shoe box.

 

[Fireclaws bunnbutts]

My nest boxes are all the same for all my doe cages (even though two does are too young to breed yet) I'd say 10 gallon solid colored Sterilite totes fixed to the outside of the cage with a hole in the side, obviously for your typical entering and exiting activities. Kinda like bird nest boxes. I did that, well mostly because it was cheaper than buying or building nest boxes and because I figured, for some reason that they'd be big enough to keep mom and babies comfortable as they grew but small enough to keep everyone neatly contained. Kinda the same reason I keep a bit of hay on the bottom of my cages, people say rabbits don't mind sitting on wire but I don't like the idea lol.


I have a couple shoe boxes I could stick the babies in, at least until they can see, but will mom not have a hissy fit and or not be able to find them? I've never had this issue before, even with her last litter of 8, who all stayed neatly in their nest. But every litter is different I suppose.

 

[LPH_NY]

What you do might depend on HOW they are getting out of the nest. Can they just walk out? And if so, can they simply walk back in? Or are they trapped on the outside once they have left the box?

Maybe the entrance to the box needs to be higher, so it is harder for them to get out - and then lowered again once they open their eyes. If that's the case, it's odd that you never had this problem before. How is the ventilation in the nestbox? Could they be trying to escape from a heat trap? Since it is a plastic box, is it retaining too much moisture? Or is it the opposite problem, like a77 suggested - that the box is too big and they are straying too far away from each other to stay warm? The box only needs to be big enough for the mama bunny to turn around in. By the time the babies are too big to fit in there WITH the mama, they'll be mostly eating outside the nestbox anyway.

 

[Fireclaws bunnbutts]

They're not actually falling out of the nest box, but crawling away from the actual nest their mother made and curling up under the hay in other parts of the nest box. It probably is a bit too big, but I took into acount that her babies don't generally leave the nest box until about 3 weeks anyway and my brain thought they'd need room to move around lol.

I'll check them again here in a few hours and if they've moved around again, I'll put some hay and moms nest in a shoe box and just hope she doesn't forget how to feed them lol. I've moved her babies around like that before and she continued to care for them, so who knows. Maybe I'm overthinking things again.