Raising Baby Rabbits

Between 2 weeks of age and weaning - anywhere between 5 weeks (probably too early) and 8 weeks (maybe too old) ...

The kits sleep a lot, eat a lot, and grow like crazy.

The breeder’s job during this fun age is:

• Ensure a constant supply of food and water

• Put clean hay in the cage every day (to help prevent enterotoxemia). Enterotoxemia is probably the greatest threat to your kits’ lives at this age.
  
  
• Remove the nest box by Day 18, if the kits haven’t yet jumped out. You don't want to be raising baby rabbits that are blind, or infected with pasteurella in the eyes.

• Monitor the kits’ health (check their behinds, for example, to see that they are clean and free of diarrhea). Some kits during this age might go through a loose bowel stage. Their sensitive gastro-intestinal tracts have to obtain and maintain a healthy balance of bacteria during this age.

  (The kits in this picture are about 4 weeks old, and doing well. One kit dropped a food pellet on top of the doe's head!)

  In the last three years, I’ve lost just 3 unweaned bunnies to enteritis. I’m not sure why the good fortune to not have lost more.

  • We try to maintain a high level of cleanliness without obsessing over sterility
  • We don’t push our does to crank out babies. I’m not sure what the connection is, but worn out does don’t have enough to give to their kits. This is a pretty lame conclusion, but right now it’s the best I have come up with.
  • And, we always keep our kits flush with hay, which seems to be the key to short-circuiting gut problems.

Kits grow at different rates, even in the same litter. But having 24/7 access to hay and pellets means that the little runt that was pushed away from the tit in the nestbox now has a chance to catch up with the rest of the litter. By 6 weeks old you might not be able to tell him apart by size alone, or, it might a few months.

Raising baby rabbits is funnest at this age. Little 3-week-old kits are incredibly cute. Little fuzzballs, they zip around the cage, and then curl up with their littermates and knock out again for yet another nap in the hay.

But raising baby rabbits finally gets old for the doe, and she decides she’s done with the pesky kits.

(Dinnertime in the evening. 4 week old kits nursing. The 'meal' lasted 5 minutes, and the mama let me take her picture.)

If she were on her own in the wild, she would already be bred one or two days after the birth of the litter. She would HAVE to abandon the kits at 3 1/2 or 4 weeks of age in order to go dig a fresh burrow, in order to kindle her next litter just a few days after weaning. More than once I've reached into a doe's cage and patted her after discovering her new litter. The doe immediately lifted her rump. I could have tossed a buck into the doe's cage and she would have welcomed him. (For best practice, always take the doe to the buck.)

This basic drive still resides in her genetic makeup, although since we don't breed our does on day 1 after kindling, the primal drive may not push her as hard as if she had been bred. What you see is the doe driving the kits away from her. She pushes them aside, or even nips or chases them away from her.

Since the doe feeds the babies at night, and you’re not likely to observe the feeding very often, you may have to rely on other clues as to when it is right to wean.

Weaning the Bunnies

As you're raising baby rabbits, it is a temptation to leave the bunnies too long with the doe. A bunny's genetics are programmed to enable it to survive on its own in the wild by 4 weeks of age. Most breeders allow an extra couple weeks. More than 6-7 weeks is not necessary.

• If you see the doe nipping at the kits, it’s time. She can draw blood. Some rabbit judges think this nipping results in damaged skin and white hairs, which would spoil the show career of an otherwise excellent show-quality animal. When the doe is done raising baby rabbits, it's time to wean the buns.

• If you see the doe trying to back up to her little buck sons, as if begging for a breeding, it’s time! I observed this behavior once. It was springtime, the kits were young, around 6 weeks old, and the doe was obviously feeling a new set of hormones. She kept nudging the little guy, chasing him around the cage, and trying to get him to take the hint by mounting him--or trying--he was so little! I weaned that litter in a hurry, as I feared for the safety of the little guy!

• Wean between age 5 1/2 weeks and 7 weeks. For our Rex rabbits, we’ve weaned rarely at 5 1/2 weeks, and preferably 6 to 6 1/2 weeks. We feel any longer than about 7 weeks does not serve either the doe or the kits, as the doe will forcibly wean her litter by approximately 7 weeks. I suspect you could push it out to 8 weeks or so if you’re raising a giant breed.

I like to do weaning in two stages.

First, remove the doe to another cage. Send with her the littlest kit, for one or at most two days. This will give the little guy 8 separate tits all to himself, all full of milk, and he’ll get one more shot at good nutrition before being weaned.

Up until weaning, the doe was producing milk for 6 kits. If all of a sudden there’s none, her milk glands could get painfully engorged. Leaving a last kit on the doe helps drain some of the extra milk, reducing the pressure in the milk glands. Lack of suckling will cause milk production to slow and then cease, and her body will quickly reabsorb the milk.

Second, remove the last kit after 24 or 48 hours and return him to his littermates.

Removing the doe, as opposed to pulling the bunnies out of the cage, mimics Nature, and is believed to be less stressful for the kits. Their lives don't change at all, except that the mama is not there any longer. They stay healthier and less stressed this way.

At weaning time, you can probably identify several animals out of a litter of six or eight that won’t make the cut. A dutch rabbit might be marked poorly, or the harlequin pattern not distinct. These can be sold as pets, or placed into the market pen.

At the same time, you can examine the remaining bunnies for other factors, such as toenail color, teeth, white hairs in a colored coat (not counting brokens), topline, body type and other factors that are specific to the breed you’re raising, such as head and crown. (Each breed is distinct, thanks to generations of dedicated breeders who, while raising baby rabbits, made careful and wise selections as to which baby rabbit best represented the standard of perfection to which he was breeding.) This is when we weigh each bunny, give each a number in the ear with a magic marker so we can tell them apart, and begin keeping records for each bunny.
(Xena's kits are all weaned. They are about 7 weeks old in this picture. Go to Rabbits Giving Birth and Care of Baby Rabbits for pictures of Xena's kits when they were much younger.)

Raising Baby Rabbits from Seven to Nine Weeks Old

By 9 weeks old, your bunnies should be separated into their own cages so they can grow out a bit. Once they're weaned, and the more they grow, the better you’ll be able to recognize the show-stoppers. Excellence on the show table is for some breeders the true reward for successfully raising baby rabbits.

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