New here...Lionhead kit question

[Somebunny2love]

Hi there! I'll start with a little about me...my name is Amanda. My husband is Matt, and we have 4 daughters, ages 11, 9, 7, and 3. Our older girls joined 4-H last year and decided to take rabbits. 2 of them chose Lionhead rabbits. We thought we had 2 does. Even the 4-H guy confirmed they were both does! Since they were still young, we chose to keep them together. To make a long story short, I went out to our cages one morning and found babies in the Lionhead cage. We figured out really fast which rabbit was the doe and which was the buck, and we separated them. They have not been together at all since then. However, Tuesday morning I found yet another litter in the cage. The first litter was 5 weeks on Wednesday. I had read that a rabbit can get pregnant again immediately following birth, so I'm guessing we didn't get the doe and buck separated fast enough. After talking with a friend who breeds mini lops, we decided to go ahead and remove the older kits to allow her to care for the newborns. All seem to be fine, and my older babies will be going to their new homes over the next several days. My question is, what is the best age to wean a litter under normal circumstances? I tried googling but got answers that varied from 4 weeks all the way to 12 weeks!

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

yep you will get varying answers from 4 until 12 weeks. i seperated mine at 4wks because they were eating lots of pellets and hay and grass fine and i never saw them under mom. and when one did try and go for mom she would hop away and not let them nurse. i had a litter that i left in until 5wks but i could have taken them out at 4wks because mom had weaned them.
if the doe has a second litter then she will wean the first litter so she can feed the new one. just like she would do in a colony setting.
if you want to keep them with the doe for longer then thats fine as long as they have room in their cage for all of them. and be sure not to leave them all together for too long.
good luck

 

[pennylove]

With most animals, the mother decides when to wean and unfortunately it can vary pretty wildly even with a species/breed. I know a lot of people that keep the kits with their mothers until 6-8 weeks, but just as many I've heard take them away at 4 weeks. If you plan to sell the kits at 5-6 weeks, I think it's best to separate them at least a week beforehand, to give them time to adjust.

 

[DianeS]

Yes, everyone has a "best age" opinion. Mine is that mom should do the weaning. Give her a place she can get away from the kits (somewhere higher than the kits can jump is great), and when she doesn't let them nurse anymore then I consider them weaned. That's when I can move them to individual hutches (or whatever the plan is for them). That tends to happen between 4-12 weeks, just like you read.

If you must wean by a calendar, do mom a favor and remove only a couple at a time, over a several day period. That'll keep her from being full of milk with no kit at all to drink it - that's uncomfortable for all species.