Help! I found a baby!

[GiggilyPuffBunny]

Hello, so my friend found a baby bunny and she is on her way over and is going to give it to me because I’m the only one with a bunny haha. And so what do I do? I have a mini velveteen rex who is fixed she’s the sweetest thing ever. However, I don’t know how she’ll react to a baby. Cuz it’s a baby baby, like tiny. So what do I do? I’m guessing it is wild but it doesn’t look like it because it is like black and white. Anyway, it won’t go by my bunny because I don’t know what it has because it was outside.  

I have oxbow feed and timothy hay. But I think it needs milk. What should I do? What do I feed it? Should I take it somewhere? I was just going to put it in a little box for now. I don’t even know if it can walk. 

If anyone has any comments or suggestions please let me know! Thank you! 

[RabbitEducation]

Is this a wild rabbit or a domestic rabbit? There is a big difference as people think that when they find baby rabbits, that they’re abandon. But their mother only nurses them once a day for five minutes. Please take this rabbit to a vet before bonding, we don’t know if this rabbit has an illness or it’s most likely not spayed or neutered.

[MoxieMeadows]

Wild rabbits are not black and white, so it seems to me it’s probably a dumped baby bunny/dumped or escaped rabbit had babies… I’m not too expierienced in making the milk formula, hopefully somebody more educated in this area can help out. Please keep us updated!

(BTW, by black and white do you mean spotted, patched or dutch markings? I’ll post some pics comparing wild babies and domestic. It should be fairly easy to tell them apart once you see her in person. )

[MoxieMeadows]

Here are some photos of wild rabbits (at least how they generally look in my area) vs black and white domestic buns.

vs

 

Like RabbitEducation said, you would want to bring this baby to the vet to get a check up. And I’d personally quarantine her/him until that can happen or until you know there is nothing seriously wrong about him/her. Good luck, and I’d love to see some pics!

[tobyluv]

If it’s truly a very young bunny that hasn’t been weaned, you could use kitten milk replacer. Here are some articles on baby bunnies: http://rabbit.org/domestic-baby-bunnies-and-their-mom/

http://rabbit.org/caring-for-orphans/.

[Eepster]

Do not put it with your rabbit. She is not going to be able to mother the kit even if she wants to since she can’t make milk.

If the bunny really needs to feed, I’ve heard cat/kitten formula works in a pinch. I’ve never actually tried it myself, and it’s always sounded odd to me, cats being obligate carnivores and rabbits being obligate herbivores, but I’ve seen it from multiple sources.

Good luck.

[Shannon]

Moxie.. Actually Wild rabbits can be black. Our first rabbit White-sox was one that we caught. All the bunnies that were wild in our neighborhood were black with some white markings. We thought they were cute. My mom said to me as a kindergartner that if i could catch one I could keep one. I don’t think she ever thought I would at age 6, But i did and we had him for 4 ish years. We were very inexperienced and obviously this is no way to obtain a pet. I believe that this was just one mothers way of saying yes without saying no. She never thought i would be successful..

[LBJ10]

Wild rabbits aren’t the same species in all places. Are we talking in the US here? That being said, I have seen melanistic cottontails. They are very rare though. Now melanistic fox squirrels, those are everywhere. LOL

Can you post a picture of the bunny in question?

[MoxieMeadows]

Shannon— That’s interesting, we don’t have any of those here. They are brown, and in the winters they are whitish. Do you live in the U.S.? And if so, what general part? (Like west/south/south-east/north/north-east ect) I’ve never seen a wild black+white rabbit, unless there was some mutation coloration and it was faint markings. You learn something new everyday!
I know there are some other types of wild rabbits (like volcano rabbit ect) but never really thought about there being other wild rabbit colors than the ones we have here.

[Shannon]

Moxie. At the time I Lived in Illinois. I’m not sure if this was a pair of rabbits that escaped somehow and populated our area with black rabbits? All i know is we had them and they were there in a large number.

[MoxieMeadows]

[Bam]

Gigglypuff, any update?

We get melanistic wild rabbits here. We also get melanistic vipers. But I’ve never seen it in squirrels. I used to see a leuceistic squirrel with half it’s tail white around in the parks here a couple of years ago.
Shannon, that’s a lovely story, I bet your mother was surprised! She kept her word though, that was great.

[LBJ10]

Yep, melanistic fox squirrels everywhere, but their population is still confined to a specific area. There was a paper on it a couple of years ago where they looked at how they were expanding outward. There is supposed to be a leucistic population in Washington DC too. Wow, melanistic vipers? Cool!

[Eepster]

Shannon, I’d be curious to see pictures of the rabbits you are talking about. Color mutations in wild population will pop up in pockets now and then. One of the local nature centers that takes in injured and unreleasable wild animals had a deer with white patches. However, there are also plenty of populations of naturalized feral domestic rabbits around the US.

The condo complex my husband and I lived in back in the Bronx, before we moved to the suburbs, had a population of beautiful deep reddish almost black squirrels. Basically they looked simply black till the sun hit them just the right way and then the red would glow through. They were pretty tame too, people would sit on the benches and hand out nuts and they would all come bouncing over.

[LBJ10]

Eepster – That’s true. If the feral bunnies are in a fairly protected area, they can survive long enough to reproduce and establish themselves.

[Shannon]

This THE only picture i have of white sock.  Please be nice.  remember I was six & have stuck with rabbits and have since learned to evne hold them properly  Also his ears are not loped its just hard to see the definition of the picture.  My estimation here based on time of year is he would be about 3 months old.  This rabbit ended up being huge by my memory.

[GiggilyPuffBunny]

Hey guys! Thank you so much for all your help! My friend ended up bringing her to a wild life emergency care center. They said that they would feed it and whatnot. I would send a picture, but it won’t upload. Thank you guys! I hope everyone has an awesome week!

[Author]

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