Emergency Rabbit info needed!!!!! FAST!!!!!

[chickenprnces]

My 6 month old french lop gave birth to 2 babies on FRIDAY afternoon! She wouldn't pay any attention to them and 1 died! We fostered the other to a different doe! Out of nowhere we found 3 more babies on SUNDAY afternoon! 1 was still born and looked all twisted up! A second died shortly after! We fostered the third to the same momma as the very first! We know they were not there before because we cleaned her cage Sunday morning!Pretty sure I still feel more inside her! What is going on???????

 

[DianeS]

When a rabbit gets bred multiple times, sometimes that creates kits at different times, which means they stay at different stages of development while inside the doe. Usually when the first set of kits is born, that expells ALL the kits. When that happens, the premature ones usually die. But obviously sometimes when the first set of kits is born, the rest stay in utero and are born later at their normal birth time.

Also, first-time mothers often have no clue how to care for their kits. Most of the time those does figure it out with their second litter and do fine from then on.

A good mother rabbit will pull fur from her belly and use it in a pile of straw to create a nest. She will have the babies in the nest, and clean them up. Then she will completely ignore them, returning to the nest only one or two times every 24 hours to nurse them. You are likely to never see her near the kits or the nest. That's normal.

If this mom did not nurse her kits within 24 hours after birth, then you were right to foster the kits to a different doe.

If you think there might still be more kits, then give the doe a nestbox and keep checking, you might be able to catch the newborns before too much time has passed and get them fostered out too.

Hope that helps!

 

[chickenprnces]

Thanks for the info! I just don't understand how they could be different conceptions because the one and only time she was with the buck was for about half an hour one time! Could that still cause two separate conceptions or is she having problems?

 

[pennylove]

If she was only bred once she could not have had multiple conceptions. It is possible she conceived in both horns of her uterus from a single mating, but it would be a stretch to assume they'd be born at dramatically different times. It's more likely she had some kind of complication. The kit you described as 'twisted' might have been blocking the birth canal or lodged inside of it. If that's the case, it may have caused bruising or swelling, which might account for what you thought were more kits when you palpated her . . . . but that's a lot of maybes and mights! Keep a close eye on her eating habits and her behavior. Make sure she doesn't seem lethargic, over-heated, etc., because retained kits can lead to infections and septicemia.