I took in a rescue rabbit earlier this spring, I didn’t know she was pregnant and she had babies close to 3 weeks ago. I’ve kept the babies indoors and inside the mom’s cage the whole time, though a few days ago started letting the mom free range in the room, and kept the door open to the cage, or if I was there and could watch, would keep the whole top of the cage off so she could jump in and out.

The whole time until just recently I’ve kept her water dish inside the cage, I took it out recently because since she’s free ranging it doesn’t have to be inside the cage, and because she flips it sometimes. I read about when babies start drinking water and they’re around the age where they start drinking water along with milk, so I just got this small water dish for dogs that’s lower and can be more easily reached by the babies and also can’t be easy flipped over that I thought would work really well for the mom but also for the babies.

Everything was fine when I went to sleep, when I woke up this morning one of the babies was dead, she was on the other side of the cage near the new water dish, her head and shoulders were completely dry so she couldn’t have drowned, but the rear 2/3 of her was damp and there was no rigor mortis. So maybe she jumped in for some reason, and got cold enough that the cold killed her? It’s around 70 degrees inside and she’s close to 3 weeks old, so I didn’t think that could happen but it’s the only explanation I could come up with.

Any ideas? I already removed the water dish but want to try and figure out what happened so it doesn’t happen again.