# Wean at 5 weeks?



## daniel-delarosa (Jan 23, 2012)

Anyone wean their NZ's at 5 weeks? I have people insisting on buying mine at 5 weeks. I was planning on weaning at 6 weeks.  As fast as these things develop, it seems like one week is ALOT. Also, how to you wean anyways? Take them out for an amount of time and increase every day, or just take them out and put them in their own cage without returning them to the doe. Im also lost on the sexing thing.  I only found one website that has a tutorial but the pictures are blurry.


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## brentr (Jan 23, 2012)

Only real guideline for weaning in my opinion is "are the young rabbits eating/drinking well on their own ?"  People will say wean at 4 weeks, some as long as 8 weeks.  Four weeks is the EARLIEST I would wean.  My own experience has been that the does sometimes wean the litters at different times.  When I see the young ones active in the cage, trying to slide under Mom for a drink and she is having none of it, I know that they are not dependent on mom for food.

When I wean, I simply remove the litter from mom's cage and put them in the grow out pen - all at once - and they never return to the doe.  At the same time, I reduce mom's feed back to maintenance ration.  She no longer gets free choice feed.  That will help dry her off too.  Seems to work for me.


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## AZ Rabbits (Jan 23, 2012)

I start weaning my biggest of the litter at 4.5 weeks and the rest at 5 weeks. I do this to help the mother's milk dry up.

5 weeks is fine for NZ's.


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## ohiogoatgirl (Jan 24, 2012)

i dont have rabbits yet. but from what i have read thus far is that in a colony setting does will wean at 4 or 5 weeks. what i will likely be doing when i get my own rabbits (i will have a sort of colony set up but with a few twists) is to pull out and sell/butcher the biggest of the litter first. this leaves the smaller ones some extra time to grow and that way momma bun doesnt go from stress of feeding a full littler, to stress of having full milk production and having no kits to feed. weans mom and kits in a way.


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## oneacrefarm (Jan 26, 2012)

I do a mix of what BrentR and AZ do, I watch for the doe to tell me that she is DONE with these kits...  that is usually around the 4 wk mark with mine. I take half out, then I take the other half out in a couple days.


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