One skinny weanling ...

[Pongo]

My VM blue eyed (is that redundant? can you be VM with brown eyes?) doe and kits are doing well - except one kit is quite thin when compared to the others ... he seems bright enough and I've seen him eating and drinking but I can feel his backbone ... looked in his mouth everything seems ok ...

thoughts on what to do (he's not suffering so euthanasia is not happening at this point) for him welcomed ...

thanks

 

[Jack]

BOSS and oats and calfmanna (don't over do it with the CM) help to supplement, and sometimes you get a runt, watch to see if she is able to feed or if the others are pushing her out.

 

[Pongo]

good point Jack - she wasn't the runt - the runt was the light brown baby - but she's doing great now - maybe this little one just isn't as assertive at chow time ... they sure do polish everything I give them off - I've really put a ton of hay to them since I noticed she was skinny (last Thursday) so she always has something to nibble - maybe I'll pull her and a buddy out twice a day for uninterrupted chow

 

[Jack]

I free feed my growouts, till the get big enough I have to separate, they all have nice round bellies.

 

[Pongo]

I've been trying to but I literally can't ... 2 full water bottles 2 or three times a day, free choice hay and pellets refilled twice a day and some treats too (branches mostly at this time of year)
time to move everybody around I think ...

 

[Jack]

yeap
happens

 

[Shara]

Some rabbits seem to be genetically thin. Spooky always has a backbone on her, and it really doesn't matter what I do.
Maybe it is just a geneticaly thin rabbit?

 

[MaggieJ]

If it's feasible, I think the idea of pulling the kit and a buddy out for uninterrupted feeding is a good one. It likely just isn't aggressive enough to hold its own. Another thing that sometimes works is to put a second or even third pan of feed into the cage or enclosure. I do this with large litters. It spaces the kits out and the less assertive ones can still get in somewhere. Large pie plates work well for this because the kits will sit side by side all the way around. At a J-feeder, the aggressive ones can hog it more easily.

 

[Pongo]

maybe ... he died over night last night - but I really don't think he suffered ... he was snuggled in with his siblings and had eaten last night (I had three pans out so he certainly had access to chow)
he was hydrated (I had given him fluids over the weekend twice)
I guess he had something brewing as the rest of the litter are fine and fat and happy

 

[MaggieJ]

Sorry you lost him, but if there was a congenital problem then he likely didn't have much of a future anyway. Definitely sounds as though he had other issues than mere competition at the feeders.

 

[Pongo]

Yup - my thoughts exactly
I'm happy to give everybunny a chance .. but am pretty pragmatic about losses too - birth and weaning seem to be particularly vulnerable times

 

[DevonW]

Sounds like a failure to thrive situation, they grow normally for a while and then all of a sudden even though they're eating and drinking they just get skinny and die and no matter what you try nothing ever seems to work. If it had weanling enteritis or something along those lines you usually have another sign other then weight loss; like a pot belly, diarrhea, teeth grinding or listlessness.

As for the VM they can have brown eyes.

 

[Pongo]

failure to thrive sums it up perfectly - poor little thing - I figure the weaning crisis often pops up cause they get to nurse less and have to provide more for themselves ... I did a teeth check but all looked ok (though I couldn't see the very back teeth)

thanks for the VM info too