Accidental babies..

[New to the bunny life]

Hello,
I am very new to the bunny owning world. Not too long ago we purchased 2 bunnies and were told that they were both femal. Well, they were wrong!! We now have accidental babies… Earlier I noticed one of the babies humping one of his siblings!! They are only 4 weeks old so they cannot be seperated from Mom yet. Do I need to worry about the babies getting pregnant????

[jerseygirl]

This happens to people a lot! This is worth a read:  http://rabbit.org/domestic-baby-bunnies-and-their-mom/ 

How many babies did you end up with?

You don’t need to worry about the 4 week olds mounting each other. Did you remove the older male rabbit as soon as you discovered there were babies? It is quite possible he mated with the mum right after giving birth to this litter. How is she acting? Is she showing any nesting behaviours again?

[joea64]

Agreed, the male needs to be kept separate from the female (far enough away so that they can’t mate through their habitat bars, which is definitely possible if they’re kept in separate cages which are still too close together). I’m glad to hear, at any rate, that the babies seem to have made it through the critical newborn phase; we have a lot of sad stories here about accidental litters where at least some or all of the babies pass within days, which is all too frequent with first litters.

Being that they’ve made it to four weeks, presumably they’re overall healthy and well-fed. They should be ready to wean in another month or so, so get ready to start introducing them to solid food if you haven’t already; they will need alfalfa pellets and alfalfa hay (for the protein) to about 6 months of age when they can start transitioning to timothy, and they should also be introduced slowly to greens during this time (slowly, to get their systems accustomed to vegetables and to find out what they like and don’t like). Their mother should also be getting alfalfa while she’s still nursing her babies, also for the protein.

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