Need advice for orphaned 4 week olds

[Lil Acorn Acres Farm]

Found the mom dead tonight. The kits will be 4 weeks old Thursday.
Can another doe foster them at this age or will she reject them?
What do I need to do to give them a chance?
Don't know why their mom passed. She gets producers pride pellets, a pinch of oatmeal, a pinch of boss daily. Alfalfa and Timothy hay. She shared with the kits.

 

[RabbitsOfTheCreek]

Someone posted a different thread with a video saying that something was going wrong with Producer's Pride feed
https://rabbittalk.com/threads/producers-pride-rabbit-chow-may-be-compromised.36824/

 

[MaggieJ]

At four weeks old, the kits are old enough to be weaned. Give them oatmeal (large flake/old fashioned is best) in addition to whatever you have been feeding them.

I suggest you don't feed the pellets in case they were contaminated. Return them to the feed story and they will likely give you a replacement or refund.

If the kits are reluctant to eat the dry oatmeal, it can be softened with warm water or goat's milk. A tiny amount of brown sugar will make it more appealing. Be sure not to overdo it! If you are feeding moistened oatmeal, you will need to take the dish away after 12 hours or so to prevent mold or bacteria from forming.

I once had to wean an orphaned kit at 21 days. It did just fine. I brought it into the house so I could keep a closer eye on it.

One further reminder -- make sure the kits have plenty of fresh water and that they are drinking it. They need to take enough to replace the fluid of the milk they are not getting.

 

[CedarRidge]

Take a look back at my thread regarding this very issue. (You should be able to do a search for Cedarridge and find my first post.) We had a mother go lame at just shy of 3 weeks. Left 7 kits for us to deal with. At 4 weeks you should be good to go with little heartache or effort.

https://rabbittalk.com/threads/can-kits-be-given-too-much-formula.36712/post-355801

 

[MaggieJ]

It was late when I posted last night and I missed mentioning a couple of points. Please give your young rabbits hay to prevent gut issues. Grass hay is best if they are also getting pellets. (An alfalfa/grass mix works if you are feeding a pelletless diet.)

I suggest finding a new brand of pellets since the one you were feeding may have issues. Unless you are set up to feed a natural diet, the rabbits will need a good quality pellet as well. When you get the new pellets, add them slowly to the orphaned bunnies' diet. If the transition from nursing to solid food is too abrupt, it can result in weaning enteritis. Feeding hay alongside the pellets helps to prevent this.

 

[Lil Acorn Acres Farm]

Thank you. I'm not convinced the pellets were to blame. Otherwise there would be more dead rabbits.
I'm thinking it might have been the heat. It turned hot really quick yesterday. 90° I had the misters on and the fan going. But I didn't do frozen water bottles. I thought we were done with this heat.
The bunnies like the oatmeal in raw goat milk. Timothy hay and alfalfa hay. They are drinking water. (I think. They all look alike.) So day 1 is going smooth.

 

[ladysown]

after day 17 I find saving baby rabbits quite easy to do. Hay, pellets, oatmeal, ... whatever they were eating before mom passed away. Here that would include safe greens for young rabbits as well.

 

[Lil Acorn Acres Farm]

They made it through day 2 fine. Technically 4 weeks old today. Another hot day 90° again. Not much activity on the pellets, but they munch down on the Timothy and alfalfa hay. Drinking water well too. I'm starting to feel good about their outcome.

 

[Lil Acorn Acres Farm]

Oops

 

[Skai]

My babies are munching on mom's food at about two weeks and are little eating machines by 4 weeks. Not that I recommend it but I've moved some 4 week olds to a grow out cage before, leaving smaller kits with mom for another couple weeks. They all did fine and ended up dressing out around the same weight.

 

[Scooter1A]

Found the mom dead tonight. The kits will be 4 weeks old Thursday.
Can another doe foster them at this age or will she reject them?
What do I need to do to give them a chance?
Don't know why their mom passed. She gets producers pride pellets, a pinch of oatmeal, a pinch of boss daily. Alfalfa and Timothy hay. She shared with the kits.

Must have been the heat

 

[jodib90]

Take a look back at my thread regarding this very issue. (You should be able to do a search for Cedarridge and find my first post.) We had a mother go lame at just shy of 3 weeks. Left 7 kits for us to deal with. At 4 weeks you should be good to go with little heartache or effort.

https://rabbittalk.com/threads/can-kits-be-given-too-much-formula.36712/post-355801

Hiya, I'm really hoping you can help me!!

I'm currently dealing with 5 kits we've had ro separate from muma, unfortunately due to aggressive overprotectiveness as she was actually doing a fantastic job otherwise.


They're eating hay & pellets and drinking small amounts of water, I'm about ro collect some KMR from my vets this morning all ordered, at this stage obviously hand feeding isn't needed so will add either small amounts to a water bottle.or bowl for the kits to self feed. Any other advice you can give me would be amazing?

This was Dorris's first litter and sadly/amazingly I'm not sure which you'd call it she's already nesting again, we have a pair of indoor rabbits as pets Borris & Dorris and we clearly hadn't separated them quickly enough after she birthed in May. So please no hate just help. I feel terrible enough.

 

[CedarRidge]

Hiya, I'm really hoping you can help me!!

I'm currently dealing with 5 kits we've had ro separate from muma, unfortunately due to aggressive overprotectiveness as she was actually doing a fantastic job otherwise.


They're eating hay & pellets and drinking small amounts of water, I'm about ro collect some KMR from my vets this morning all ordered, at this stage obviously hand feeding isn't needed so will add either small amounts to a water bottle.or bowl for the kits to self feed. Any other advice you can give me would be amazing?

This was Dorris's first litter and sadly/amazingly I'm not sure which you'd call it she's already nesting again, we have a pair of indoor rabbits as pets Borris & Dorris and we clearly hadn't separated them quickly enough after she birthed in May. So please no hate just help. I feel terrible enough.

Sorry for the late response. Folks here will tell you I don't do "hate." We are all here to learn. How old are your kits? Being that my response was so late, your kits are 11 days older than they were. And if they were eating and drinking when you messaged, by now there should be no worries? For what it is worth, we never added anything to the water. We bottle fed them KMR, whole goats milk, and heavy whipping cream. As they began to eat, we just tapered off the amount until they were off the bottle at five weeks. But, I now believe that was overkill. They could have come off much sooner.