Mating like bunnies…. (*update*) (Rabbits in general)

Member Name: lrs73

Product:	Rabbits in general
Date:	13/09/01 (3584 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: soooo cute!

Disadvantages: need lots of space, high mortality of babies

If you have read my profile you will know that I have a pregnant rabbit. She is due to give birth this weekend (around Sept 15th), so before she has her litter I thought I would write an op on the preparation needed for this event.

One thing I would like to say before I start is that there are lots of things to consider before breeding your rabbit. Once the babies are born they will need to be kept with the mother for 8 weeks minimum – you’ll need the space for this, as well as the patience and money. If you know where the babies are going once they leave you then great, but if your rabbit has more than you are planning for, you’ll have to be willing to take care of them too. And sad though it is, rabbits breed a lot because there is a relatively high mortality rate in the young ones – this is the only thing I am not looking forward to, though I am prepared for it.

My husband and I got our Dwarf Lop rabbit as part of a lovely wedding present from my husband’s sister and her boyfriend (they also bought us the hutch and all the other necessaries like water bottle, food bowl etc) – she’s white in colour with a light grey tail and dark grey eyes. When we bought her she was 10 weeks old and is now just a little over 7 months old.

The doe produces several eggs in each cycle – a doe’s cycle lasts from 16 to 18 days and she can get pregnant at anything from around 4 months old. Our rabbit was 6 months when she was mated and this will be her first litter. From around 12 weeks old bucks are able to mate, and are ready and willing when needs be!

The doe should always be taken to where the buck is. If the buck is brought to the doe’s home, she is likely to attack him while trying to protect her territory. We took our rabbit to the buck at a neutral place where the buck had been for the past 3 weeks (the owners were on holiday, but don’t worry, they knew what we were planning!
) and let the two of them out in the garden together to discover each other in their own time. We then left them together for about an hour, during which time they mated 4 or 5 times. When the buck has done the deed he lets out a grunt (and then in our buck’s case falls off the doe backwards!) It was the first time for both our doe and the buck she was mating with, which led to some amusement when the buck tried to mate from the wrong end… but in the end they got the hang of it and afterwards had a lie down together on the grass!

There are several methods to see if the doe is pregnant. Some people suggest putting the buck and doe together again after 15 days. If the doe is pregnant, she will not let the buck near her, growling and running away and if necessary physically fighting him off. However, if the buck does manage to mate with her, there is a chance that she will lose any babies she is already carrying, so this can be unsafe. Another method is called palpating, which again can be done around 15 days after mating. It involves feeling the side and belly of the rabbit to see if you can feel the babies. If this works the babies will feel like marbles. If you can’t feel them it doesn’t mean she isn’t pregnant, just that the litter may be small or the babies are deeper inside the doe. This method is also risky as you can damage the babies when trying to feel them.

Some rabbits increase their food intake when pregnant, others get aggressive, some get shy – it’s different for every rabbit. Ours got very soppy and ate lots (though this was harder to tell as she has always liked her food). We decided the best way was to wait and see. Over the last week she has begun to build a nest in the bed section of her hutch. Usually she moves all the hay and bedding out, but she was picking up hay and woodchips in her mouth and moving them in there, so we are taking this as a good sign of pregnancy. There is such a thi
ng as phantom pregnancies in rabbits where she will do everything as if she were pregnant but she’s not. If this happens then it’s best to let her carry on as it does no harm.

In the wild the doe would build her nest within the safety and warmth of the burrow. For pet rabbits, the doe needs to be given some help. The best way is to buy or build a nesting box – I would suggest building one as it is much cheaper and very simple. For my nesting box I used untreated plywood and a handful of screws (making sure that the screws are flush to the wood and the pointy end is not sticking out, or even nearly sticking out in case the rabbits chew the wood near that end). The dimensions of the nesting box varies for different breeds of rabbit – the one I built had a base size of around 10” by 14”. It needs to be large enough for the doe to get in and move around a little, as she will need get in there to nurse the babies after she has them. The sides of the nestbox should be low enough so the doe can jump in and out easily but high enough so the baby rabbits cannot climb out until they are ready. From all I have read, sides of around six inches seem to be about right. Some people build three of the sides higher and put a half-roof on their box, so that the doe can lie on that above the babies, but as my nestbox is placed inside our rabbit’s hutch, there wasn’t room for this. The nestbox needs to be as clean as possible to eliminate as much chance of any infection. It needs to go into place about four or five days before the doe is due to give birth. If it goes in too early she may use it as a toilet and if it goes in too late she may not have time to get used to it and build a good nest there. This can lead to her giving birth on the floor of the hutch was can mean the babies aren’t kept warm enough and can freeze to death.

We put our nesting box into the bed part of the hutch where our rabbit had started
to build her nest (she had stopped sleeping in there when she started to build the nest) and used some of the nest as a base in the box. The nesting box has only been in her hutch one day and already she has filled it up more. Again this differs in rabbits, but either a few days before or on the day of giving birth, she will pull fur out from her chest (the softest bit) and line the nestbox with this, in order to have extra softness and warmth for her babies.

Kindling is the name given to the time when the doe actually gives birth. The gestation period for a rabbit is 31 days, though of course some give birth a few days earlier or later than this. Litter sizes can range greatly depending on the age and breed of the rabbit, as well as how many times she has been bred before. As this is our rabbits first time and she is a dwarf, we are expecting between 3 and 5 babies, though prepared for as many as she likes! Some litters can be as few as 2 babies while others are up to 15 babies. The average is 8 to 12 babies per litter.

When the time comes for kindling the doe will want to be left alone. She will need to be calm so it’s best to not let anybody else near her, especially strangers as this may frighten her. The only time you should intervene during the births is to save the life of either the mother or one of her babies.

I’ve got to say that while I am apprehensive because of the things that can go wrong, I am also very excited and looking forward to this weekend. I’ll be writing an op on how it goes and how to look after baby bunnies next week….

*****UPDATE*****

September 15th 2001

I was awake at about 6:30 in the morning so went to check on the rabbit. In the corner of the hutch (not in the nestbox!) was a pile of rabbit fur with a few wiggles going on underneath! She'd had them! I was so proud. She had 3 babies and mother and babies are all doing very well.

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