Baby Rabbits

By now you probably realize there’s a lot of nutty information on the internet on weaning age, how long the bunnies need to stay with the doe, and how old they should be when they are sold.

Let us clear up some of the confusion so you can skip the guilt trips and go get a healthy, worry-free baby rabbit.

Purchasing baby rabbits

(This little guy is exactly 27 days old, and fully capable of eating and drinking on its own. Nevertheless we didn't move the doe out of the cage for another couple weeks, just because we didn't need to.)

A lesser consideration is the kit’s stress level. If necessary, ask when the rabbit was weaned, in hopes that it has had a couple days between weaning and the day it gets sold, either to a pet shop or to you, its new pet owner. (If it's been at the pet store for a few days and is healthy, then problem solved.)

2. No sticky butt:
Flip the bunny over and ensure its bottom is either clean or that any sign of bunny diarrhea is well in the past. If the hind end was once soiled but is now clearly on the mend, this means that the kit’s healthy flora are already establishing themselves and it has most likely passed any danger period.

While you’re checking the rabbit’s health, check its nose too. Any sneezing or white gunk in the bunny’s nose means it’s sick. Don’t take it. If you hear sneezing or see white gunk in its littermates or in nearby animals, these are huge warning signs. We recommend you just walk away and get your bunny elsewhere.

3. Quiet Time:
When you get the young bunny home, give it a few days of quiet time, so it can get used to your home or rabbitry environment. THEN start socializing with it.

4. Grass Hay:
Always give young bunnies plenty of grass hay 24/7 until around age 10 weeks. It’s cheap health insurance. The high-fiber grass hay helps keep the carb levels in check and will help prevent the proliferation of clostridium and other pathogenic germs that can kill a rabbit of any age, including adult rabbits.

5. Breeder or Pet Store?
We recommend you purchase your bunnies from an honest rabbit breeder, but we have absolutely nothing against purchasing from a pet store either. We occasionally sell our bunnies to a pet store, and if you purchased our rabbits from the pet store, you got some fabulous and healthy bunnies. Even so, if you have a relationship with the breeder, you have a valuable resource for getting questions answered at a later date. (You can find answers right here on Raising-Rabbits, too, of course.)

Here's our First Days Rabbit Care Checklist - everything you need to know for the first few days after bringing your pet rabbit home.

Warning: Misguided Craigslist Post

So, we'd like to dismantle the confusion and eliminate the guilt, shame, and hysteria.

Then go ahead! Find yourself an honest rabbit breeder and acquire a perfectly healthy bunny that's fully weaned.

Here’s that Craigslist post, followed by our clarifications. We’ll try really hard to be nice about it...

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/grd/2858963924.html
(PS: this particular post has been deleted recently, but we're waiting to see if it returns with a new posting number...here's what it used to say....)

ANYONE INTERESTED IN PURCHASING BABY BUNNY'S [sic]:
Please, PLEASE! Be sure to ask the age! Bunny's [sic] sold before the age of 6 weeks will usually die due to lack of milk and their body not processing food (they get diarrhea) also called Enteritis. Do your research http://www.raising-rabbits.com/rabbit-diarrhea.html before buying a bunny and watching it suffer until death. An honest rabbitry will not knowingly sell a rabbit before 6 weeks of age because does not have a good chance of survival. Once a rabbit gets Diarrhea it is hard to save and usually considered gone. There is a reason for a weaning age! IT IS THE LAW a bunny is NOT sold before 8 weeks of age!!!

I have seen bunny rabbits before the age of 8 weeks all over Craigslist lately. Just because someone says they are weaned does not mean they are of correct age! Many will selfishly sell rabbits before weaning age because they are "CUTE" at that age and sell quickly but only to doom them for death in the end. Even at 8 weeks some bunnies are not ready to be weaned. Look for diarrhea on the bottom to see if bunny's are truly ready to be weaned.

Wow...

That was, erm, misguided on so many levels it’s hard to count all the levels.

Perhaps the person who made that post was traumatized by the loss of one or more bunnies from an imbalanced diet. If so, we’re very sorry for the loss. Nevertheless, that person’s catastrophe does not change the facts about baby rabbits and weaning.

The point of this page is not to see how early one can wean, but to clarify confusion with bunny-raising truth. The truth is: These little guys are fully ready to face the world, should they need to.

You can quote us on this:

• Weaning does not cause diarrhea. A proliferation of disease germs in the hind gut flora causes bunny diarrhea. We have seen 5-week-old kits dead in the cage from enterotoxemia. They had not yet been removed from their mama.

• There isn’t a single baby rabbit alive that isn’t already weaned at 8 weeks. 100%. Whether a person recognizes it or not is another story.

• Selling a weanling does not doom the bunny to death.

• Honest rabbitries are run by educated breeders.

• Weaning age in the wild is 3 3/4 - 4 weeks of age. A doe naturally weans her kits at this young age because she’s pregnant with the next litter. If you take rabbits of the same species and put them in a cage, the underlying genetics do not change. The kits are still weaned around 4 weeks of age.

  The doe *might* continue to allow the kits to nurse, especially if she has not been rebred. This does not mean the kits are not weaned. It does not mean the kits will DIE if removed from the doe at 4 weeks old.

• Honest breeders don’t sell baby rabbits before weaning age, which is 4 weeks of age, people, not some invented and inflated number of days or weeks.

  (FYI: we heard tell recently of someone saying baby rabbits could be weaned at 1-2 weeks of age...?!? Heavens, no. Bunnies are still nursing full throttle at 3 weeks of age, but are weaned by 4 weeks.)

• Honest and experienced breeders recognize the stress to a bunny that occurs at weaning and at the point of sale, and doesn’t combine these two events on purpose if it can be helped.

• The honest breeder also advises the new rabbit owner on how to minimize the stress and keep the bunny’s guts working well.

• "Once a rabbit gets diarrhea it is hard to save..." Huh? Who says it is hard to save? Okay, it’ll be hard to save if you keep feeding it all those apples! So much depends on the kind and the severity of the diarrhea. If we’re talking mild bunny diarrhea, which is the context of the craigslist post, it is easy enough to turn around, if you take the correct measures right away.

  This baby rabbit died of sudden severe enterotoxemia - fine in the evening, and dead as you see it in the morning. Nothing we could do. It was 2 1/2 weeks old, and not weaned. Being one of just 2 kits, it got way overfed by the doe. The only sign of diarrhea was a hint of brown moisture around the vent.

  We took measures to preserve the life of the littermate, despite the fact that it seemed completely normal.

  We immediately removed all pellets from the cage, and filled it with even more grass hay for 24 hours. The hope was that the doe's milk production would slow down slightly, and the abundance of grass hay would provide fiber that would ensure the little kit's intestinal health. The second baby rabbit did great. In the picture of it perched on the back of its dam, the kit is pictured at 3 weeks old, still very much on the gravy- (or milk-) train.

These 5 1/2 week old bunnies are more than ready to go to new homes.

Here are some other links you may enjoy:

• World of Raising Rabbits

• Pet Rabbits

• Homemade Pet Food

Go from Baby Rabbits to Bunny Enterotoxemia
Go from Baby Rabbits to Rabbit Diseases
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