# Handrearing Bunnies



## KTedham (Feb 11, 2009)

Hi there, 
I am a regular volunteer at a local wildlife rescue centre and I've been given the responsibility of bringing home and handrearing a litter of rabbit kittens that were brought in to us after their burrow was dug up and the whole area concreted over for a building development.

Although the centre has taught me the basics of feeding and toileting the babies, but I was wondering if anyone else who's done this before has any tips or feeding techniques that I might find useful in rearing them.

I think they're roughly a week old as they are about the size of a syrian hamster, have developed most of their fur but their eyes are still closed.

They seem to be currently having trouble adjusting to feeding from a teat on a syringe (which I'm not surprised about) and one in particular has a nasty facial wound around it's chin, mouth and side of the nose which looks almost like a bite of some sort (maybe from the mother?).

We've been feeding them regular goats milk which has been warmed in a bowl that sits in another bowl of hot water and we're getting them to do the toilet without any difficulty after feeds (with the exception of the wounded one who seems to need a lot of extra encouragement).

Many thanks.


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## xNatashax (Nov 20, 2009)

i know nothing bout this but no one has replied all i know is keep them nice and warm and with the wonded one you may have to mother a bit more and keep its wound clean and prob spend more time trying to get it to feed and make it feel safe and know its not going to be hurt again this you prob been told already but thats all i know


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## KTedham (Feb 11, 2009)

Thanks xNatashax.  Will do. I feel so sad for them losing their mother at such a young age. Even though their eyes are still shut, it must be quite a traumatic experience for them. 
I was thinking of maybe bathing the wound with some very dilute saline solution just to try to keep it from getting infected, but not sure if this would be a good idea or not.


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## xNatashax (Nov 20, 2009)

i dont know much about that tbh but as they are soo young keep them in a very warm darkish place try to recreate a type of borrow effect to keep it as natural as possible i think wamth is the key for such young things but with the wound has it heal much at all? if not then you may have to bathe it with some kinda of solotion to prevent infection but if it has healed a bit then warm water might be ok


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## feorag (Jul 31, 2007)

I work at a wildlife centre and I did exactly the same thing a couple of years ago (at the same time I had 2 baby red squirrels and a young soprano pipistrelle bat, so I was very busy!) Mine were brought in by the local police who had found them underground when they dug up a concrete area in their yard. Their eyes were still closed and I estimated their age at about 6 days, but they were a good size and well plump!!

There were 4 of them and I estimated them at 6-7 days old. This was taken the first day - how do yours compare??










I think it might be an idea for you to consult a vet about the wound if it looks in any way infected because a course of anti-biotics might be needed.

I fed my kittens on goats milk, but when I'm hand rearing any animal I also add pro-biotic yoghurt (to assist with the gut flora) and ABIDEC baby vitamins. I suggest you make up a jug of food using a quarter pint full fat goats milk, a teaspoon of bio yoghurt and couple of drops of ABIDEC multi vitamins as a feeding mixture. Make up a fresh batch every day, warm up only what you need (you're already using the method I use) for each meal and keep the rest in the fridge, throw out after 24 hours and make up a fresh batch. You also need to have a bowl of fresh water available at all times as soon as they begin the weaning process, obviously don't use a bottle and when you begin weaning try to keep the diet as natural as possible, feed a minimum of dried food, if at all, and never change it. Try to find a variety of grasses and weeds for them. I used to go out and pick a bagful of dandelions, groundsel etc for mine.

I realise that in the wild, rabbits only feed their babies once a day, but their milk is incredibly rich and it's almost impossible to replicate that, so I fed mine every 4 hours.

Are you using one of the tiny Catac orphan feeding teats. I always use them, but they are very hard to find in pet shops, but they are so small any tiny animal can manage to suck from it. I even reared a stoat that only weighed 18g and she managed to suckle from it.

This is one of them 5 days later happily sucking from the teat










I kept mine on a heated pad I used for my feline kittens, half the box on the pad, half off so they could warm up or cool down as they chose and I kept them on that until they were hopping around. I used vet bed in the box because the top surface stays dry for them.

When I felt they were old enough to go outside, I put them outside in an old 2-tier rat cage on my lawn and kept away from them as much as possible. I waited until they stopped coming to meet me when I went to feed them and tended to hide from me and then I released them.

All 4 survived, as did the 2 red squirrels - and the stoat - so I think this mixture works very well for them.

If I can help with any other advice, feel free to ask.


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## xNatashax (Nov 20, 2009)

there we go i knew some one with more experience would come along =]


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## Beached (Jun 14, 2010)

They are adorable! Good luck with them KTedham!


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## xvickyx (Jul 21, 2009)

Good luck with them, well done on taking them in

Must have been horrible for them to loose their mother


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## feorag (Jul 31, 2007)

Sadly they aren't the only ones either! We've had 3 litters of fox cubs brought into our work because the farmer shot their mothers!!


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## Beached (Jun 14, 2010)

feorag said:


> Sadly they aren't the only ones either! We've had 3 litters of fox cubs brought into our work because the farmer shot their mothers!!


That's disgusting! At least they are in good hands now!


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## KTedham (Feb 11, 2009)

Thanks Beached and xvickyx. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they'll raise happy and healthy. They don't seem to have any problems which would prevent them growing well (with the exception of the injured one).

Wow, thanks for the great advice, feorag.  All those babies sounds hectic lol. Very rewarding though. Glad to hear they were all released with great success. ^^ The ones I have look very much like the top photo, so I'm guessing are very close to the same age. I'll try to get some pics up as soon as I can find out where the camera went lol.  They're a litter of 7 which surprised me as before now, I assumed rabbits had litters of 3-5. 

The wound doesn't really look infected, but it looks quite deep in a couple of places and the kitten seems very weak so I'm worried it may lead onto infection. I will definetely keep an eye on it though and will book a vet appointment in the next day or two.

Sorry to bombard you with even more questions, but which kind of bio-yoghurt do you use? Is it a particular brand? And how gradually should this be added to their milk so as not to shock their systems? I'm not really sure where to get the baby vitamins or how much of them to add. :?:

Sorry, I have no idea what brand the teat is, the refuge centre provided it with the bunnies. It's faded orange in colour and about two inches long and slightly curved. It's quite small at the end so the bunnies can get it in their mouths although the whole thing itself is quite big.




> Sadly they aren't the only ones either! We've had 3 litters of fox cubs brought into our work because the farmer shot their mothers!!


That's terrible.  We have a few fox cubs been brought in too, but they're a bit older and so don't need bottle fed. They do cry and howl a lot though and I worry that it's because they don't have the numbers of the litter and their mother to keep them calm.


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## feorag (Jul 31, 2007)

I use any kind of pro-biotic yoghurt that I can buy from my local supermarket - Yeo Valley is one that springs to mind as being good. You only need the small tub because it only keeps fresh for 2 or 3 days and then you'll have to throw the rest out. It shouldn't shock their system if you add it straight to their next feed. 

Actually I've just had a thought! When I was handrearing the baby stoat last year I spoke to the orphan feeder co-ordinator at St Tiggywinkles to see if they'd handreared a stoat before and could give me any advice. They hadn't but she told me to use half full fat goats milk and half double cream to make the milk richer and it worked fine for Little Miss Stoaty. Now I'm thinking that because rabbits' milk is very rich, it might be a good idea to use that recipe for baby rabbits in the future, so you might want to try that???

ABIDEC vitamins can be bought in any chemist and most supermarkets have them on their shelves in the baby section. Again if you are making up a quarter pint of food in one go then 1-2 drops as per the 'recipe' I mentioned in my earlier post.

These are the teats I use on the end of a 1ml syringe, but once the babies get the hang of sucking, I move onto a Catac feeding bottle like this Standard Kitten Foster Feeding Bottle by Catac Products Uk Ltd - Amazing Animal Accessories - as I prefer them. 










I said earlier I fed mine every 4 hours during the day, but I've just checked my notes and I didn't :sad: sorry :blush:. I fed the squirrels 4 hourly, but I fed the rabbits 4 *times* a day (not at night) until they were suckling well and I could see they were putting on weight, then I reduced it to 3 feeds a day, then 2. Ideally you're looking at feeding 10% of their body weight divided between however many feeds a day you are giving them. Again like with my feline kittens I weighed them every night at the same time so I could check and chart their weights looking for gains and losses, because I firmly believe you will see a loss on the scales long before you see it with your eye and can be on top of that fading kitten quicker. When I estimated they were about 2 weeks old I started putting dandelion leaves, grated carrots and apple into their box for them to nibble on, and they were eating on their own within another week.

As a guide when I brought my kittens home at an estimated 7 days one weighed 144g and the other 3 all weighed 132g. By the next day they'd all lost between 4g and 8g, the next day 2 were the same, one had put on 1g and one had put on 2g, so don't panic if they lose weight - it doesn't mean you're going to lose them!

When I was breeding cats I identified my kittens by nail varnish lol The kitten with no nail varnish was No.1, left front foreleg was No.2 etc etc. My friend on the other hand put a dot of felt tip pen on the inside of their ears Blue in the left ear was No.1, Blue in the right ear was No.2, red in the left ear was No.3 etc etc. So they are easy ways to identify individual babies for the purpose of weighing etc and quite safe too! I've also heard some people use Tippex, but I haven't used that method - nail varnish worked fine for me cos I never had more than 5 kittens.


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## feorag (Jul 31, 2007)

Any news on how the bunnies are doing??


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## KTedham (Feb 11, 2009)

Hiya, sorry it took me a while to respond. They're doing great. Their eyes are now open and they do the toilet themselves. The one with the wound is healing great too, he/she almost looks like the others again. ^^

The centre insisted on me popping some grass in with them and although they are generally disinterested, a couple of them have tried giving it experimental nibbles although they still love their milk. They are getting more difficult to keep still when being fed as they stretch their little paws out and move around a lot and pull the teat off the syringe while they're drinking. It's quite sweet, they seem to really enjoy it. ^^

The picture you showed is the same as the teat that the centre provided which is a relief as I was worried it might be the wrong type. 

The nail varnish trick sounds like a good idea. I can recognise one of them as he/she has a little white star patch on his/her forehead, but the rest are pretty much identical.  At the moment, I keep popping the fed ones in a separate box and then putting them all back into their main cage once they're all finished.

Glad to hear that weight fluxuations aren't always a bad thing. They all seem to be healthy strong little kittens though and they're growing fast. Not so much in actual size, but more in weight and also their appearance.


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## feorag (Jul 31, 2007)

that's excellent news! Well done you! :2thumb:

Photos at some stage would be most appreciated! I took photos of mine all the time.

Here they are at 3 weeks when they were outside with guard cat on duty, but she's not doing a very good job is she, bless her! :lol2:










6 weeks and nearly ready to go










And release day


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## KTedham (Feb 11, 2009)

Aww, such lovely photos. ^^

I finally found my camera but it's decided that it's not working anymore. I can't even get the thing to turn on.:2wallbang: I can't afford another one so I'm absolutely gutted. 

They've grown a lot though and are a lot like the ones in your pics. They run up to the door of their cage when I go near them which is sweet (although I hope it doesn't mean they're getting too tame). 
They're also eating grass now which I think is good.  
They just seem to be growing up so quickly. O_O


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## feorag (Jul 31, 2007)

They will be tame because you are their only source of food and comfort, so basically you are mum - at the minute.

The thing to do is to distance yourself from them once they no longer need nursing and they'll soon revert back to being wild and nervous of people and then can be released.


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## KTedham (Feb 11, 2009)

That's good then, I think with all the farmers, etc, the last thing they need is to be unafraid of people. I've been distancing myself from them and they're now in a hutch back at the rescue centre, so hopefully, they'll go completely wild in no time.
They're so sweet.  I'm really glad all 7 have survived too as I was really worried because when I first read up about rearing bunnies on the internet, there were so many articles saying that it was so difficult and that most times were unsuccessful. These haven't been any trouble at all.


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## feorag (Jul 31, 2007)

That's excellent news! :2thumb:

As long as they're away from you and people, they will 'wild up'.

Presumably if they're at your rescue centre you'll be able to do a soft release?

I couldn't do that with mine because myxy was rife in the area where my sanctuary is based, so I couldn't release them there -had to find another site and do a hard release, unfortunately.


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## KTedham (Feb 11, 2009)

I think they are planning to soft release them. They're in a large mesh run type thing at the moment. 
Sadly, I don't get to do much with them anymore since they went back, but probably for the best as I can't help but get too attached to little babies. 

There used to be mixamatosis where I grew up. It was awful. Every summer I'd find dead rabbits and ones acting like they were in shock with their faces all crusted and gunked up.  I tried taking them home, but my parents used to freak out at them (probably thinking they had something very contageous) and made me take them back to the woods.

I think the worst thing about it is that I'm sure I read somewhere that it's not the actual disease that kills, but the fact it leaves the rabbit so completely helpless to predators and elements. It might have been rubbish, but if the rabbit was given fluids with a drip, kept safe and clean etc and fed somehow, they'd probably survive it like we do with the flu.

The problem is that even if it's true, there is no way that people could do that for all the little wild bunnies out there, there's just too many and it would cost the rescue centres too much. I wish vets would develop a vaccine for it.


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