Sick kit--cull or antibiotic? What illness?

[dangerbunny]

Oh I sincerely hope no one allows a rabbit to suffer needlessly in their barn. As stewards of our animals sometimes we need to make hard choices and that includes culling humanely. In the case of a sick kit that won't recover, put on your big girl panties and do what needs to be done.

I am very strict with health, because I would rather have a barn full of robust and healthy animals over weak and sickly ones, it is always sad to lose one but much sadder in the long run to not have healthy stock.

 

[JenerationX]

No to the putting a live animal in a freezer. I had a friend who bred mice to feed to his snake. When they'd gotten to the size he wanted, they went in a zip-lock baggie in the freezer. He was thinking they'd just go to sleep and he wouldn't have to kill them. Well, he found they had scratched and chewed through the bag and had gotten through it and started clawing at the ice at the edge of the freezer.... a few had torn their nails and bled. Poor things died trying to get away from the cold... that's far from humane.

 

[michaels4gardens]

An adult rabbit is only as good as its worst day as a youngster.

Be done with it. You'll save yourself uncounted problems later on. I know
I sound cold-hearted and cruel. For that I apologize. However, realistically
it's the most humane thing to do for the youngster and the best thing for
yourself later on.

Best guess would be some form of non-specific enteritis.

grumpy.

JMHO-- a big part of responsible animal husbandry, is to take responsibility for breed selection/ improvement, and cowboy-up and do what ever is necessary to prevent an animal from suffering. -in this world,- death is not optional, but suffering is. -We should take responsibility for the health and comfort of our animal stewardship. [even when it is not comfortable , or convenient for us.]

 

[Comet007]

I just had a thought - I'm not a vet, so this is just my take based on just 9 litters of babies - not counting our new ones that were born yesterday! I'm in doubt as to whether that rabbit is even "sick". It's fairly common to have a runt, and it's also fairly common among kits to have what you describe as "gelatinous" urine that its clear with very small kits. We check our babies routinely to make sure that their "outlets' (haha) remain clear, as we've seen several times in the babies that they can have urine/poo block create an external blockage. They are always fine once we clean them up a little, and we don't use anything but herbs & seeds for medicine.

The other thought I have is that there really isn't a significant difference in the weight of your kits, if you discount the runt. We weigh our babies daily for the first two weeks of life, then twice the third week, then weekly thereafter until processing. We've seen many times that a kit who starts out smaller can outpace larger siblings a few weeks down the line. In most of our litters, when I pick out a couple that are potential keepers early on, inevitably those kits are not the ones who stand out at 8 weeks, so I would just watch and see.

There are also a couple other things that I wonder if they are in play - first, that doe only had 3 kits and lost 2 early on. It's harder for the babies to stay warm in the beginning when there are just a few kits in the nest, plus it could indicate that the doe was having some issues to begin with, since she had such a small litter. Taking that into consideration, it seems like she did pretty well taking on four foster kits. Second - do you have the weights of all the kits at the time of fostering? I'm wondering if it's possible they were smaller to begin with, particularly that runt.

If it were my rabbit it wouldn't be those kits sizes that would have me thinking about culling the doe, it would be the fact that she only had 3 kits. Most people on here have a three strikes rule, and that would count as one. Even so, it sounds like she's worth keeping around until you have a replacement, because anything could happen to your other doe and you could lose her suddenly and really be in trouble! We bred 4 does in our current set of litters (born yesterday!), and TWO of our does got skinny and miscarried. Fortunately our other two does had litters, and we have another held back previously who will be ready to be bred when it's time for the next round.

I hope that your kits are all healthy and grow!

 

[Anemone]

Thanks everyone for the help and comments. I have to say, this board has given me a lot of entertainment watching the kit killing ideas unfold. An update on the sick kit: we woke up on Christmas morning to an OPEN cage door and almost all of the bunnies wandering around the yard (thank you, dear husband, for not properly latching it :lol: ). I was terrified that I had lost my doe, worried about how I would care for a bunch of three week old babies. I caught all the babies I could find, and found the doe under the porch. I was able to lure her out with pellets, and then counted the babies. Everyone was there except the sick kit. My thought is that I must have gotten out there within a few minutes of their escape, because not all of them had left the cage and the cats were just starting to creep up in hunting mode. HOWEVER, I think what happened to the sick kit is that the dogs chased them as they escaped and everyone made it to cover except that little runt. Several days later and I've seen no evidence of it. Saved me from having to stick it in the freezer I suppose. (kidding! I would never do that!)

I'm sure I'll be back here if I'm in a kit-culling position again.

@comet007, I am impressed with your ability to weigh all your babies EVERY DAY for three weeks!! Sheesh, how do you have that kind of time? I do think that is a good idea, though, at least weekly. That would have answered whether that was just a runt, or what. I think I'll weigh weekly from the beginning from now on. Regarding your comment about the doe only having three, it seems as though my two does are from a line that maybe has a small litter the first time. The other doe I have also only had two kits her first litter. She bounced back with her second litter, though, of 10, so I'm not too worried. I predict that both of them will have large litters from now on.

@mamasheepdog, how did you solve the dog waiting by the cage for a dead kit? I definitely see my dogs (one aussie, one border collie), VERY interested in the cage door opening. Mostly my aussie, who devoured the dead baby kit from my doe in about two bites. Do you save them and feed them later, at a different location? I want to be able to feed them to my dogs (raw dog food!), but I agree it would be good to have some sort of mental separation for them. And I don't think I'd feed them a live one, because I do not want to promote them killing the bunnies. Good points.

Thanks again for all the sage advice. So thankful for this message board! <br /><br /> __________ Tue Dec 30, 2014 11:37 pm __________ <br /><br /> Thanks everyone for the help and comments. I have to say, this board has given me a lot of entertainment watching the kit killing ideas unfold. An update on the sick kit: we woke up on Christmas morning to an OPEN cage door and almost all of the bunnies wandering around the yard (thank you, dear husband, for not properly latching it :lol: ). I was terrified that I had lost my doe, worried about how I would care for a bunch of three week old babies. I caught all the babies I could find, and found the doe under the porch. I was able to lure her out with pellets, and then counted the babies. Everyone was there except the sick kit. My thought is that I must have gotten out there within a few minutes of their escape, because not all of them had left the cage and the cats were just starting to creep up in hunting mode. HOWEVER, I think what happened to the sick kit is that the dogs chased them as they escaped and everyone made it to cover except that little runt. Several days later and I've seen no evidence of it. Saved me from having to stick it in the freezer I suppose. (kidding! I would never do that!)

I'm sure I'll be back here if I'm in a kit-culling position again.

@comet007, I am impressed with your ability to weigh all your babies EVERY DAY for three weeks!! Sheesh, how do you have that kind of time? I do think that is a good idea, though, at least weekly. That would have answered whether that was just a runt, or what. I think I'll weigh weekly from the beginning from now on. Regarding your comment about the doe only having three, it seems as though my two does are from a line that maybe has a small litter the first time. The other doe I have also only had two kits her first litter. She bounced back with her second litter, though, of 10, so I'm not too worried. I predict that both of them will have large litters from now on.

@mamasheepdog, how did you solve the dog waiting by the cage for a dead kit? I definitely see my dogs (one aussie, one border collie), VERY interested in the cage door opening. Mostly my aussie, who devoured the dead baby kit from my doe in about two bites. Do you save them and feed them later, at a different location? I want to be able to feed them to my dogs (raw dog food!), but I agree it would be good to have some sort of mental separation for them. And I don't think I'd feed them a live one, because I do not want to promote them killing the bunnies. Good points.

Thanks again for all the sage advice. So thankful for this message board!

 

[Comet007]

The weighing and charting only takes about 15-20 minutes per day, so it's not a huge thing. Plus it's fun to watch up close as the babies grow! We are new to rabbits this year, our first breeding date was April 15th, and we only had 11 litters this year. It does help that we sync our does so they have their kits on the same day - or within a day of each other at most.

Right now we are charting closely just to establish bench marks. It already has come in handy when we bred one of our grow outs for the first time. Side by side with litters from more experienced does, her kits looked really small in her first litter. But then I remembered there was a big size difference between the first and second litters of our other does, and did a comparison of first litter weights. Sure enough, they lined right up.

It's also been a useful tool to tweak our feed strategies, and compare litter to litter for each doe - it allowed us to spot when one of our does wasn't producing as much milk as a previous litter - based on kit growth - and so monitor her for health and as a mother. Eventually we won't monitor as closely, because we'll have compiled enough data that we can check our stats with less intensive measurements in future litters. I'm not sure what our routine will be once we have enough data, and for that matter haven't decided how much data I need for it to be useful!

Our hope is that the info will give us guidance and feedback as we try to improve our herd of meat rabbits, letting us know quite specifically how one doe produces vs. another, and also let us know what the kits should look like at every stage once we've reached our ultimate goal of NZR litters that are ready for processing at 8 weeks.

 

[michaels4gardens]

The weighing and charting only takes about 15-20 minutes per day, so it's not a huge thing. Plus it's fun to watch up close as the babies grow! We are new to rabbits this year, our first breeding date was April 15th, and we only had 11 litters this year. It does help that we sync our does so they have their kits on the same day - or within a day of each other at most.

Right now we are charting closely just to establish bench marks. It already has come in handy when we bred one of our grow outs for the first time. Side by side with litters from more experienced does, her kits looked really small in her first litter. But then I remembered there was a big size difference between the first and second litters of our other does, and did a comparison of first litter weights. Sure enough, they lined right up.

It's also been a useful tool to tweak our feed strategies, and compare litter to litter for each doe - it allowed us to spot when one of our does wasn't producing as much milk as a previous litter - based on kit growth - and so monitor her for health and as a mother. Eventually we won't monitor as closely, because we'll have compiled enough data that we can check our stats with less intensive measurements in future litters. I'm not sure what our routine will be once we have enough data, and for that matter haven't decided how much data I need for it to be useful!

Our hope is that the info will give us guidance and feedback as we try to improve our herd of meat rabbits, letting us know quite specifically how one doe produces vs. another, and also let us know what the kits should look like at every stage once we've reached our ultimate goal of NZR litters that are ready for processing at 8 weeks.

, Good for you, --keeping accurate records is a must if you want to improve your stock, or evaluate feed

 

[Easy Ears]

I know this thread is kind of old....but I wanted to ask if there is any way to get some kind of injection to put them to sleep? Would that only be at the vet? And would you have to give them proof of the sick animal that it needed to be put down?

My first litter 4 out of 5 kits died from bloat. It was simply awful seeing them suffer. I tried to save the ones that seemed to have a chance by giving them pedialyte but they didn't make it. We were about to go take the frying pan to the 2nd when it died, they all died without us having to do anything, but I kept being at the point of doing something when it went "naturally." If you can call that natural. Well, I just wanted to have a way that would be better in the future if I am ever faced with this. By collecting all your ideas I think I would be the most ok with taking a cast iron pan to a kit. I've heard it is messy, so how about putting them in a baggy then hitting them with the pan? :x
I hope I never have to test this out.