Any ideas?

[TamiPac]

I had a rabbit kindle yesterday and I found them in the morning. She hadn't been looking comfortable for days but the timing was right on. This is her second litter.

She had 5 fat healthy kits in the nest bowl covered with her fur but she also had 2 dead kits at the other end of the nest box on top of the hay with the placentas still attached. One looked perfectly normal and one looked like it had an air pocket in it's tummy. I really wish I had gotten pics but my mind went straight to "clean up the mess so it doesn't rot on the healthy kits".

Just wondering if they were maybe still born or defective in some way or some reason for this behavior. Her first litter was 100% normal with everything.

 

[Rabbits by Accident]

I had a rabbit kindle yesterday and I found them in the morning. She hadn't been looking comfortable for days but the timing was right on. This is her second litter.

She had 5 fat healthy kits in the nest bowl covered with her fur but she also had 2 dead kits at the other end of the nest box on top of the hay with the placentas still attached. One looked perfectly normal and one looked like it had an air pocket in it's tummy. I really wish I had gotten pics but my mind went straight to "clean up the mess so it doesn't rot on the healthy kits".

Just wondering if they were maybe still born or defective in some way or some reason for this behavior. Her first litter was 100% normal with everything.

Interested in this info. Hope someone answers, I have no idea so can't help.

 

[CedarRidge]

I've had 2 born with placentas the mother didn't remove. Both were alive. First time it happened I didn't intervene because I figured I'd disrupt the mother as she continued her labor. It died from suffocation. The second time it happened (next litter by a different doe) I took off the placenta, massaged and gave it rescue breaths, and stuck it under the still delivering mother. She took care of it and it did fine. I call these squirters, because both times, instead of being delivered toward their mother's chest, they squirted out the gap between her tail and hindquarter. Each doe never knew they were even there... until I intervened. My most recent kindling was a new mother with only 2 kits. One was dead by the time I checked (just minutes after delivery). It had been cleaned up, and was very warm. But it appeared to have been squashed by the mother during labor. Very hard to tell. One thing we do is mount a ring camera over the nest box so we can at least know when they are going into labor. This has alerted us to a number of situations that allowed us to intervene early.

 

[TamiPac]

I've had 2 born with placentas the mother didn't remove. Both were alive. First time it happened I didn't intervene because I figured I'd disrupt the mother as she continued her labor. It died from suffocation. The second time it happened (next litter by a different doe) I took off the placenta, massaged and gave it rescue breaths, and stuck it under the still delivering mother. She took care of it and it did fine. I call these squirters, because both times, instead of being delivered toward their mother's chest, they squirted out the gap between her tail and hindquarter. Each doe never knew they were even there... until I intervened. My most recent kindling was a new mother with only 2 kits. One was dead by the time I checked (just minutes after delivery). It had been cleaned up, and was very warm. But it appeared to have been squashed by the mother during labor. Very hard to tell. One thing we do is mount a ring camera over the nest box so we can at least know when they are going into labor. This has alerted us to a number of situations that allowed us to intervene early.

This makes perfect sense! The Squirter hypothesis would explain exactly where they were located and why they were never cleaned up. Thank you so much!