Litter of 9 born 28th (having to hand feed)

[jaxmarblebuns]

Seven had a litter of 9 on 5/28. She is an amazing mom, takes great care of the kits, has good sized litters (her first litter was 12, and 10 survived), makes amazing nests, but refuses to use the nest box every time :|

To remedy this we line the cage bottom and about three inches up the walls with cardboard and just fill the entire cage with hay. Then, three days or so later, after she has had a cooled down, we move them into the box and remove the extra hay. Works like a charm.

When moving the nest we noticed some kits that could use a little extra milk, but I wasn't stressed about it at the time. They day after there were three that were still a little empty so we went ahead and nursed off the doe. two of the three got nice and full, but one wasn't really wanting to latch, they all got enough that we were not too worried so we put them back with the doe. The next morning one had passed, but not the one that wasn't latching. Yesterday there were two that we nursed off the mom, one was very active and had a little belly, we just needed a little more. The other one was the weak latcher and extreamly skinny and had no energy really, he ate enough that we felt confident in putting him back out though. This morning one more had passed but it was nether of the ones that we fed last night. Six of the remaining seven were all nice and full and active.

The weak latcher:
this kit is still holding on. He was practically not moving this morning when I went to check, honestly I thought he was dying in my hand. We brought him in and gave him a couple drops of sugar water to see is that would wake I'm up, and it did a bit. We researched some milk formulas to feed him as we had no KMR and honestly that stuff doesn't work anyway. We also cant go to the store ATM so were trying to find things we had on hand.

Formula mix we decided on:
1/2 cup evaporated milk.
1/2 cup water.
1 egg yolk.
1 tbs honey.

He has eaten about 3 mils so far. After the first dose he finally started moving more. During the second does he stated to latch into the syringe, I did have a little scare as I accidentally gave him too much and it came out his nose a little, but he IS OK. The third syringe was by far his best, he was able to latch twice and pull the milk out himself, only a little, but a win is a win.
He is inside on a hot water bottle atm, as I cannot find my heating pad, but it is working for now.
He is very skinny still (obviously) but the amount he has eaten and his activity improvement is promising. We will continue to feed once an hour for today, and hope he can nurse off mom at least once today. We are still figuring out what to do tonight. (if i can find the heating pad we will probably just keep him inside, if not he will probably have t go back out in the nest.)

pictures:
#1 first day
#2 #3 third day, day moved into box
#4 #5 #6 the week latcher after feeding.