Help Pleeeeaaasse!!!!

[Lavender]

One of my AMC Does had her first litter today (we have an open shed on a fenced in yard for the rabbits) and I am sov worried. She dug a burrow and put straw and fur down in there and had her kits then covered the hole with dirt!!! I uncovered the hole and then she went back and covered it back up!!!! What should I do? Is this normal? Will the kits be able to breath? Should I take them out with gloves and put them, the straw, and the fur in a nesting box?

 

[akane]

The hole is supposed to be covered. They make it look like there is no hole so predators do not find the kits and it maintains temperature.

 

[Lavender]

Thank you so much Akane for replying, I have read conflictind views on this so I wasn't completely sure. This is also my first time having rabbit babies around, do you think she'll be ok should I uncover the hole tomorow morning to see how their doing or just leave everything alone? Thanks so much for any advice!!

 

[akane]

Can you actually reach them? Have you tried? They can dig 8' long tunnels in a day and ours were out of reach within 2 days before they then had kits so we couldn't do anything. Unfortunately our first time does got confused and the kits got fed up until they would normally start leaving the tunnels and then were blocked by the does and died. At this stage though I would not uncover them. It would do nothing except make her either cover them back up or possibly give up on that nesting site and decide not to care for them. Dirt is not air proof and rabbits use much less air than we do so that combined with their long tunnels prevents any suffocation even when there are dozens down there. They are so tiny the space of the tunnel even if it's shorter than usual is like the space of you in a regular sized room full of air. After they get bigger theoretically the tunnel should start staying unblocked but mine failed at that part out of confusion and we decided we disliked a tunnel system where we couldn't reach and check the kits so we covered it in plywood temporarily and plan to poor quikcrete before building our new pens over the area.

 

[Cindi Davis]

Boy Im not sure that Id do the colony set up,even though its a more natural set up for them..

 

[AngelsGirl]

Its normal, they do this in the wild

 

[GBov]

WHOOPS!!!

I had two does and a buck loose in my chicken pen for the last three weeks, found a humongus hole yesterday and thought yipes! I missed my window for caging them up again but today the hole was filled in. It looked totally filled in. One of the does was exposed to a buck for a few hours a week earlier than the other but I saw no sign of breeding so I thought we were clear.

My only doe in a colony setting didnt fill in her holes, just made the entrance very narrow when she had kits.

Could my big does have filled in the burrow and if so, how far filled might it be?