Tips for Handraising Kits

[Joey0246]

I recently had an enlightening experience with a litter. My NZ doe kindled nine days ago. I have an indoor colony, and one of my does killed off my NZ's first litter. She attacked them again, the second litter, and I removed the five surviving kits. I brought my NZ and the kits into the house in the hopes that she would rear them with no issues, now that she was out of that setting. What happened instead, was that she abandoned them. I tried for a day to get her to take them, and she wouldn't.

So I decided to try and raise the litter myself.

Tip #1: Keep those babies warm! A litter full may be able to do it themselves, but check and make sure they are warm to the touch. When mine began dying, the first symptom I noticed was that they could not stay warm. Keeping them warm did not keep them alive, but it is something to look for.

Tip #2: If you can, get a rabbit to feed those kits. Even if you have to flip a doe, the rates of survival in kits fed a formula is abysmal. The milk has everything they need, in the proportions they need it, and has a perfect delivery system. There is no chance that a kit will aspirate if it is nursing, but the risk is pretty high if you are trying to feed it yourself.

If mom dies and you have no other lactating does, or baby just isn't getting what it needs from mom, I found this homemade rabbit formula recipe, which claims better success than KMR. My kit wouldn't take it, so I have no idea how well it works, but there are rabbit raisers who have used it and the kits survived, although they showed signs of having been malnourished as adults. I can't find the link right now, but here is the recipe:

Rabbit Formula Recipe

1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup water
1 egg yolk
1 Tablespoon corn syrup

Mix well, heat to body temp. Feed the formula slowly, as rabbits can aspirate easily. DO NOT force the food in their mouths. If they breathe it in, they will likely get pneumonia and die within a few days.

I did not have a dropper, and still had mom, so I decided to flip mom and allow her kits to nurse.

Tip #3: ALWAYS remember to potty your kits. I didn't realize this was needed, and on day three, four of the five kits died. The remaining kit I was careful to always potty, but it didn't always go, and I believe that was a sign of the kit not getting enough milk. Once the rest of the litter died, I had a much harder time getting milk into the baby, and believe it was a combination of factors, stemming from the fact that the rest were gone.

It is very easy to potty your kits, although it can be frustrating. All you need is warm water, a cotton ball (I just used soft fabric) and to rub the baby's genitals and lower belly gently until they pee. Be caerful! It comes out in a LONG stream. And it doesn't smell pretty either. I never was able to get my kit to poo, but when I watched him, I noticed he was pooing on his own.

Tip #4: I had better success getting my lonely only to feed if I was irritating and annoying him. There will be a video of the process I used. Basically, I tried to simulate a litter full of bunnies kicking and squirming for a nipple. It did seem to make him suck harder and get more milk than he had been.



The morning of day nine, I awoke to a chilled baby, when he had been doing fine with the fur in his nest. I warmed him up and tried to get food into him, but he would not nurse. I put him out of his misery. Sadly, I think that I didn't start the body stimulation early enough, and think that if I had done that from the beginning, he would have been more likely to not have gotten thin in the first place, as once he got thin, he never seemed to have enough strength to nurse until he had a full tummy. His life was short and sad, but it is my hope that my experience can help others who find themselves with a baby to care for.

I would appreciate any other tips and tricks others may have learned in their own rabbit raising experiences!

Thank you so much for all the info! Just yesterday I had to take in a kit on my own! This helps more than you know

 

[Easy Ears]

Tip #3: ALWAYS remember to potty your kits. I didn't realize this was needed, and on day three, four of the five kits died. The remaining kit I was careful to always potty, but it didn't always go, and I believe that was a sign of the kit not getting enough milk. Once the rest of the litter died, I had a much harder time getting milk into the baby, and believe it was a combination of factors, stemming from the fact that the rest were gone.

It is very easy to potty your kits, although it can be frustrating. All you need is warm water, a cotton ball (I just used soft fabric) and to rub the baby's genitals and lower belly gently until they pee. Be caerful! It comes out in a LONG stream. And it doesn't smell pretty either. I never was able to get my kit to poo, but when I watched him, I noticed he was pooing on his own.

For how long do you "potty" your kits? I've done mine up to 2 weeks before ....it is needed longer?

 

[Thorn]

I had a doe abandon her first litter. I noticed they where not getting fed so I brought them it. I had to take them everywhere with me, because of young children and the house cat.Every morning I held the mother so they could feed. I rubbed them from the start, which I think helped them survive. At first I had them in fur and hay, but it was soiled and since the mother wasn't there to care if they smelled like her babies,I threw out the bedding and put them on a fuzzy fabric we had downstairs,which was used in cloth baby diapers. It was easy to clean, and when it got smelly,I threw it out and cut another strip.I placed them on the strip in a box, and folded the strip over top of them.They seemed to do fine at room temperature. All four made it, and seemed to be doing great until they where big enough to butcher.


Edit:

On One kit: Kits seem to need siblings in order to do well. They get depressed and lonely, and it kills them.This can happen with human twins, kittens,etc. Also they stimulate each other to feed as the post mentioned.

Theory:Something that I think would help is if you cuddled it/kept it near your body. This would make it feel like it wasn't alone, something the kit cannot even comprehend. Even in the womb it wasn't alone.It would need to be cuddled nearly constantly. It would be a lot of work for one kit. Another thing that could work if if you had a cat that just had kittens. (Ive read about this before.) If you make the rabbit smell like the kittens before the cat notices its a rabbit it should be safe in the kitten pile. A gentle cat wouldn't even care that it was a rabbit. It would still be fed mothers milk, although it may nurse from the cat. Cats have done this with rabbits, squirrels, small puppies, and even ducklings.Yes they nurse the ducklings too.

 

[Nymphadora]

Hi Thorn,

I noticed you're still a bit new to RabbitTalk, so I just wanted to let you know that the date of the last post in this thread was in June 2016. As such, the issues have probably been resolved.

I do find it slightly funny that you "resurrected" an old thread on Easter. :rabbit-hop3: op:

:rotfl:

Have a great day!