Care for Pregnant Rabbit

[Brett-CRanchTX]

Hi all. I am a new (again) bunny owner. I used to have a rabbit that I adopted to live in my photo studio that was with me for 10 years. 🙂 I have a basic knowledge of rabbit care. 

I live on a ranch and a local student raised rabbits for 4H and didn’t want them to go to slaughter, so I took them. I was under the impression i had until 4.5 months to get them fixed. :-\ They’ve been together (a male and female) for a while in a 90 square foot run in our barn aisle. They’re super personable and sweet. The boy has been mounting and attempting to breed to the female for at least a month. I thought it was just practice. 

Today I took him to be neutered and the vet said he was full of sperm and to keep him separate for 2 weeks in case he still had sperm left inside. !!!! Each vet I have spoken to said it’s sort of a guessing game if the female could have gotten pregnant now, she will be 4 months old in 4 days. 

Since he has to be separate for 2 weeks anyway, I’ll just go ahead and separate them for one month to see if she is pregnant. What do I need to be prepared for her? What size hutch is a minimum for a pregnant rabbit? I have two small hutches inside the run, and can keep her easily in one of those, but I can’t really separate the run. How much space will she need if she has babies? I need to be prepared for that I guess while I research how to prepare otherwise. Thanks in advance!

[Bam]

Thank you for saving these rabbits!

As for the perhaps-pregnant mama bun: Give her extra food and provide her with a nestbox. She won’t nest until she’s about to give birth – like the day before or so. She will then pull out her own hair and use as bedding, but that’s ok because pregnancy hormones make the hair loosen, so it’s not like she’ll be hurting herself.

The nest box should have sides so the kits can’t crawl out of it, but not so high sides that mama bun can’t jump in there and feed her babies. She won’t lie with her kits like cats and dogs do, she’ll just hop in to feed them 1-2 times per day. In nature mama bun puts the babies in a separate burrow. The kits keep warm because they’re wrapped in fur and lie close together, plus rabbit milk is super fat and high in calories.

Here’s a few links that might be of help:
http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/surpriselitter.html
http://rabbit.org/care/babies.html
https://rabbit.org/care/newborn.html
http://www.mybunny.org/info/caring-for-newborn-baby-rabbits/

The links have info about a variety of situations, so you’ll have to sift through them to find what’s relevant for you.

[Hazel]

I think you should take her to the vet right away. Delivering a litter at this age could easily kill her. A vet needs to determine if she’s in fact pregnant, and if so, perform an emergency spay if it’s not too late.

[Author]

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