What causes rabbit miscarriages? I’ve had two rabbits have a miscarriage this week, two separate breeds one of them was 3 days before due date and other was 10 days before due date. One is usually a great mom other one was a first time mom. Feed hasnt changed, they seem completely healthy, just not sure what’s up. I’ve also had a lot of issues with fertility with them lately a lot of missed litters assuming heat sterility but I’m not completely sure. Any advice is appreciated!! TIA
It's smart to pick up on these trends at what may be the beginning of a big problem. I've lost entire breeding seasons and many of my prime breeding stock because I didn't figure out till late that what looked like bad litters and random deaths, were actually part of a barn-wide problem.
From my own experience, what pops into my mind are overweight does, feed or water problems, new stresses, or subclinical infections.
As
@ladysown notes, fat rabbits can have problems. Does that are overweight may have trouble conceiving, gestating, and/or kindling. In meat rabbit breeds, which are selected to put on weight easily, once does are mature, I have to be very careful to limit their pellets to keep them from getting fat. It especially becomes a problem after about the age of a year and a half. Your problem might be this simple.
Otherwise...
Even if you haven't changed the feed, it may still be that the feed has changed. Depending on what feed you buy and how it's stored, its nutrient composition can vary greatly if there's not good quality control in sourcing ingredients and/or transport and storage. When I hear about rabbits having spontaneous abortions and missed litters, my first thought is either Vitamin A or Vitamin E deficiency. I've had two rounds of Vitamin E deficiency take out entire seasons of production, resulting from two different brands of feed being deficient (after being just fine for years). Vitamin E deficiency can be indicated by some or any of the following: bucks and does losing interest in breeding, missed pregnancies, false pregnancies, spontaneous abortions, very small litters, high numbers of stillbirths, entire litters dying at or shortly after birth, and strangely enough, kits' ears flopping over almost like a lop when the kits are not lops. Of course if it's just one or two rabbits there might be something else going on, but if you're finding a range of these problems popping up throughout your herd, you might think about this. If there is even a possibility that this is the problem, it's pretty easy to fix (and if the fix works, shows you it was the problem). I supplemented with oats and black oil sunflower seeds coated in wheat germ oil, about a Tbl per rabbit per day. They bounced back very quickly. (I haven't personally dealt with Vit A deficiency, so don't have any direct experience with that.)
Another issue we weathered was a round of litter losses and deaths due to what I believe was lupine (aka "loco weed") baled into our hay. We found broad-leafed weeds in the bales that we had assumed were dandelion, but on closer examination were not. Not all species of lupine are neurotoxic, but apparently what we got was. It's also possible to expose rabbits to other noxious weeds, pesticides, or other harmful chemicals in hay, which can cause miscarriages, if your hay supplier is not careful or honest, or if you live near fields where they spray pesticides or herbicides. So that's a possibility.
Depending on your watering system, bacterial overgrowth or toxins in water bottles or water sources can cause reproductive failures. If you live where a big algae build-up can occur, you can have problems. Algae is a great bio-accumulator of toxins, and if the algae all dies off at once it can release a sudden concentration of those toxins into the water.
Possible stressors - barking dogs, unusually loud noise from neighbors, visits by rats or mice, etc. You say the rabbits appear healthy, but are they also acting normally, or are they more excitable than usual? My rabbits aren't usually affected by noise or activity since they are used to other animals and kids and travel. But I had some does that absolutely hated mice; I had several does stomp litters in their efforts to get rid of the mice that were managing to get into their feeders and nest boxes. My rabbits still tend to refuse to use nest boxes in which I've found evidence of mice, even after I clean and disinfect them. That to say, they were very stressed by mice, and it would not surprise me if that might not prompt a miscarriage.
And speaking of rodents, they can bring parasites and pathogens into the rabbitry. Sometimes a parasitic infestation that isn't bad enough to make your rabbit look sick can still affect reproductive success. Parasites that affect rabbits include various worm species; microsporidians like
E. cuniculi; and protozoans like coccidia (
Eimeria species). You could try administering a wormer; I'm not a fan of using drugs often or prophylactically, but if you rule out the other possibilities, you might be able to help your rabbits feel and perform a lot better if you helped them rid themselves of a parasite load. My first inclination is to try fenbendazole (brand name Safegaurd).
I feel your pain! I hope you can figure out what is going on!
