Baby Diet!

[bastion]

All right, I know this has been discussed a fair amount but I wanted to post anyway due to a slightly unique situation.

Long story short – my friend, partner, and I rescued a lost/abandoned (probably escaped “livestock”) rabbit in December. Two days after bringing her inside, she had a litter of EIGHT kits. I am happy to say that all kits are healthy, active, and social. They are now nine weeks old, well-weaned, and seem very healthy (a vet check is already scheduled to make sure). Four of them are living with me – two of them have already found a great new home, two of them will stay with us (far from senior bunny Theodore’s new luxury mansion in the living room lol), two of them I will be hand-selecting a new home for, and two are staying with mom with my friend in Maine.

Okay, so now cutting to the chase: I’ve got four babies on my hands.

They have been eating a steady diet of alfalfa and Timothy hay (about 80% Timothy and 20% Alfalfa), and have actually been successfully introduced to a couple of greens, though I’m being very careful about that. My main question concerns pellet amount. I know that 1/4 cup of pellets (alfalfa in this case) per day is standard, but here’s the rub: feeding four baby bunnies at once doesn’t really guarantee that everyone’s getting the same amount.

I have been seeing a couple excess cecotropes in the litterbox, which cues me to think I should cut down on their pellet intake, but I also want to make sure everyone is getting what they need to grow well.

Let me know any thoughts you have – I may also report back on what my new rabbit vet says (just moved to Boston).

[Bam]

Oh wow, eight kits! 🙂 Thank you for rescuing mama bun! She was very lucky.

The simplest way to see so all buns get the food they need would be to weigh them regularly and keep a weight diary. If you see that somebunny is falling behind in weight, you could feed some extra pellets once or twice per day in a place away from the other buns. I weigh my rabbits in a kitchen bowl on digital kitchen scales. As long as you keep using the same scales you’ll see the trend, even if kitchen scales might not be quite as accurate as baby scales or the the scales vet clinics use.

It is great that they have hay with both timothy and alfalfa. As you probably know, baby buns that eat a lot of hay develop a diverse and sturdy gut microbiome, which makes them less sensitive to GI disturbances due to new food, such as fresh vegs. Hay is a lot more important than fresh vegs though. Vegetables are nowadays considered more of a treat/enrichment than an important source of nutrients.

 

[bastion]

Thank you so much, Bam! I love the idea of keeping tabs on their weight. I’ll try to do that!! (Also very cute image of bunny in a bowl being weighed.)

[Author]

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