Is this normal? Will it happen again?

[LadyKarli]

:bunnyhop: My rabbit had 1 large baby. I was just wondering if this was a normal occurrence & will she likely do this again. I just bought her & she was not supposed to be pregnant at all. It could have been the first baby she ever had. I saved the poor little kit from the ground & now he is with Momma & I am pretty sure he is being taken care of. If I bring him in the house to keep him warm will she reject him? He has no litter mates to cuddle up to & it is down in the 50's tonight. I'm over protective. I bought the rabbits to raise as meat rabbits but that doesn't mean I don't want them to have the best life I could provide. <br /><br />__________ Tue Feb 21, 2012 2:39 pm __________<br /><br />Also my Mini rex is due any day. If I can keep this littl guy alive till then do you think I could try to slip him in with her litter? He is a New Zealand & I can see how that could NOT work but it is the only Idea I have if his Momma rejects & won't feed him.

 

[MamaSheepdog]

She will likely have more kits her second litter, and they will be smaller because there are more. My first experience was similar- 3 HUGE kits, one 1/2 eaten, all dead on the wire. The second litter was 10, 6 of which survived to weaning. You should have no problem slipping him in with the mini rex kits when they come. Just to be safe, you may want to dab a little vanilla on the doe's nose so she can't smell the difference. Once he nurses a couple of times, he'll smell just like the others.

Good luck! I hope everything works out.

 

[LadyKarli]

:thankyou: I was just worried about the size difference. Vanilla is a great idea.

 

[hoodat]

JMHO but I've always felt that having only one oversize kit comes from a barely succesful mating. Not enough sperm got in the right place and only one egg got fertilized so the doe puts everything she has into that one kit, which ends up oversize. It can lead to a prolapsed uterus which will ruin a doe for breeding.
If I'm not sure about the mating I always breed to an additional buck immediately. Once the ovulation process has started it can't be turned off and a litter of normal sized kits is preferable to one oversize one.
There's also the possibility that the live sperm count of the buck was low due to hot weather or some other factor.

 

[Miss M]

:bunnyhop: My rabbit had 1 large baby. I was just wondering if this was a normal occurrence & will she likely do this again. I just bought her & she was not supposed to be pregnant at all. It could have been the first baby she ever had. I saved the poor little kit from the ground & now he is with Momma & I am pretty sure he is being taken care of. If I bring him in the house to keep him warm will she reject him? He has no litter mates to cuddle up to & it is down in the 50's tonight. I'm over protective. I bought the rabbits to raise as meat rabbits but that doesn't mean I don't want them to have the best life I could provide.

__________ Tue Feb 21, 2012 2:39 pm __________

Also my Mini rex is due any day. If I can keep this littl guy alive till then do you think I could try to slip him in with her litter? He is a New Zealand & I can see how that could NOT work but it is the only Idea I have if his Momma rejects & won't feed him.

It isn't terribly common, but it does happen now and then. It should be fine to bring him inside, and take him out to his mom twice a day to nurse. She should not reject him. A hot water bottle in his box, set in a way that he can get away from it if he wants to, would help him stay warm until he furs out. A heating pad on low under half of his box would do that, too.

You aren't being over-protective, you're trying to provide the level of care any of us would. Many of us on here raise meat rabbits, and we try to give them -- breeders and offspring -- as good a life as possible.

He'll be quite a bit larger than the MR by the time they are born, but, since there's only one of him, I'd think it would be okay to put him in with them. He can't out-compete all the MR babies by himself, I don't think. It would be up to you whether to leave him with his mom, or foster him over. If you did foster him, you could breed his mother back right away. I'm assuming, of course, that she's old enough to be intentionally bred.

 

[akane]

I've mixed big and small kits lots of times. Provided you don't have lots of big kits and few small kits which causes them to get crowded out they do fine. Litters usually get bigger after the first 1 or 2 of any animal that has multiple young. Singletons are common in most animals for a first litter and happens a lot in the small breed rabbits but not usually so much in the large meat production breeds that have been bred for large litters consistently.