Mother bunny is abandoning her babies what should I do?

[Tiger789]

I rescued a pregnat bunny and she had 7 babies on Saturday. Now she has not been feeding all of them and when I check on the babies they jump and cry like they are looking for food when I pull the hair off the top of there nest.. What should I do? Should I take them from there mother and put them in a box and bottle feed them or should I let them stay with her..?  

[Sarita]

I would keep them with their mom but bottle feed them. Bless you for rescuing her.

Are you entirely positive she is not feeding them all. That is a large litter and I wonder if some are bullying the other for food.

[Tiger789]

She is feeding some of them. Just not all of them at once I guess.. Shes a very small bunny so for her to have a big litter was a lot for her im sure! I’ll keep an eye on them. Thank you!

[jerseygirl]

You might have to help the ones that you don’t think are being fed to find the teat. It seems it is survival of the fittest…

This HRS article has great detail. http://www.rabbit.org/care/babies.html

[RabbitPam]

I would keep them with their mother, and help some of them as jerseygirl suggested. Just remember that a mother bunny generally only comes around the babies to feed them twice a day, so if she appears to be ignoring them, she may have fed them when she felt it was safe to (you weren’t around) and avoiding them at times is her instinct to protect them from predators finding them. Check their bellies for roundness. That’s the indicator that they have been fed well. If some are not, get those to the mother, but if they are all getting round, they are doing well.

We have several threads on “Oops” litters here, if you want to do a search. They can help you with advice, details and steps to expect as well. We don’t condone intentional breeding, but saving a mother who turned out to be pregnant was lovely.

[Author]

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