Dani123
Member
A little background information:
I had two rabbits, one male and one female. They are mostly housed outside (bad parenting number one probably). The people I got them from had so many rabbits (outside as well) that I don't think I made it any worse for them in that respect at least.
I do have a huge hutch/building for them that has a roof and a built in fan for the summer months (and I did read that a fan may not help cool a rabbit down) so I do make sure they have frozen water bottles in the hot summer days and they have lots of bedding and things for cool days. I live in Georgia so it has been relatively warm (even this winter) but the summer can be brutal.
For a long time they have been healthy and I think happy despite being outside.
Until I made a horrible mistake about a month ago and when I left my rabbits for the night after checking on them, etc I must have shut the hutch/pen door too hard and the fan fell out of the side of the hutch leaving a hole. I did not realize that it had fallen out, and I left went in for the night.
The next day I found that my (male) rabbit had gotten out, and been killed by a dog.
I know this is horrible and could/should have been prevented.
The other thing I did that probably screams "this lady doesn't need animals" is a few days just before this incident I let my rabbits out in the yard for some free time. I do this a lot while watching them to make sure they don't get out and/or get together. I turned my back for literally less than five minutes and sure enough I saw that the male was with the female rabbit. (I had let them run around before and for whatever reason they didn't seem interested in each other)
I thought I stopped this in time.
Well, it has been about a month since this incident occured and I did have some suspicions as I knew they had gotten together for a very short time and the female rabbit was getting larger...
Sure enough three days ago I saw a ton of fur covering a deep well in the hay in her pen. I read online that although you shouldn't mess with them too much you can touch the babies and she wouldn't kill them abandon them (at least I hope that is true) and I moved the fur and saw little squirming babies in there. at the time I could only make out at least five.
Today I actually picked them up to see if they were all healthy looking and I found seven. They seem healthy enough, but I really wish I could know for sure.
Thier bellies are fat, they are not making noises (until I picked them up and then they wiggled and made little tiny cute agitated noises) and although I never see the mom with them, she made quite an awesome nest. Lots of fur, and the hay is packed so tightly on all sides, it is better than any nesting box I could have provided. If I open her "cage" she does tend to get right in front of the next, so she seems like she is "protecting" them.
Is there any way to know for sure they are getting fed?
I took a picture of one.
(They all look the same, I imagine they will all look like the mom as she is agouti (I think) colored.
(Well, i tried putting the URL in the post image button, but it didn't work)
