Fostering the Cottontail Family

[hokankai]

My housemates and I decided to take on the enormous undertaking of fostering a mama rabbit and her 3 three week old kits until January. They are adorable and a lot of fun, but boy are they messy little pigs! None of us have had rabbits before, but so far I think we're doing an alright job . We just started trying to hold them and they seem to be tolerating it all right. I want these babies to be as socialized and friendly as possible before they go on to be adopted.

Anyway, here are the babies! We color-coded them in case you were wondering what was on their ears .

Blue

Fatty

Pip, the smallest and my favorite <3

Their cage

 

[Nancy McClelland]

They are adorable. You know your going to have to sex them and separate the boys and the girls fairly soon. It's also very good to be holding and handling as much as you can so they get used to it instead of being wild and uncontrolled. Best of luck.

 

[hokankai]

The babies are about 4 weeks old now, when do they need to be separated? I thought males weren't sexually mature until 10 weeks of age. Mama is due to get spayed in a week at the shelter, maybe I'll just bring everyone in and have the babies sexed then.

 

[tonyshuman]

They are just too cute! I am not sure, but they look older than 4 weeks. 8 weeks is the normal time to wean babies, and it's good to have them separated around 10 weeks. I wouldn't separate them before 8 weeks even if they're on solid food because their immune systems still get a boost from being around Momma.

 

[hokankai]

Oh great, I was afraid of that. Haha, they look pretty big to be 4 weeks old, but we've never had rabbits before so I have no idea what a 4 week old bunny looks like. But they are eating LOTS of solid food (in fact I don't think I've ever seen them nurse) so I wouldn't be too surprised.

I decided to give sexing ago (a success! Huzzah!) and it looks like Blue and Pip are girls, and Fatty is a boy.

Edit: Just looked at some videos on youtube and they look about 5 weeks old I guess? What do you think?

 

[tonyshuman]

You can put some pics up in the Rabbitry, where people who breed bunnies frequent. They look like New Zealands, and there are several people on the forum who breed those rabbits and would be better at guessing the age. I am by no means an expert on that. If you can determine gender, taken together with with their size, I bet they're older than 4 weeks. It's hard to determine gender on very young bunnies. I would guess they're around 6 weeks but I haven't seen a ton of baby bunnies.

 

[Wabbitdad12]

I would like to welcome you to Rabbits Online, my name is Dave and I am a moderator on the forum. So if I can be of any help please let me know. This is a terrific website for rabbits and their slaves, not only is it very active but also friendly. I am so glad you’re here and I know you will enjoy it.

Cute bunners, good luck!

Many bunnies’ recommend their slaves to this site so we may learn of others methods to keeping our furry masters happy.

If you everhave a sick bunny, please post in The Infirmary and include your rabbit's age, breed and health history as well diet and output details leading up to the problem.

Here are somelinks I thought you might find interesting:

*For reference the Library section

*To brag or tell everyone about the antics of your bunny or just to talk about your day here is where to start a Bunny Blog, you can also look back at it later and remember when you had a life before your bunny.

*Now all the bunny’s like talk to each other when we mere slaves aren’t around in the Bunny Chat is the spot to be.

*The House Rabbit Society has a lot of good information on what veggies are safe for bunny’s, etc.

*Here is a link to learn what your furry master is trying to say to you How to Understand Your Bunny's Language

*Rabbits Online also has regional forums , this a good way to find a vet in your area that has experience with rabbits and to find out from other nearby of good sources of rabbit supplies.

The Let Your Hare Down section is for anything non-bunny related.

Here is a link tothat will help you and your bunny to connect, How to Bond with Your Bunny.

Now every forum has rules and ours can be found with this link Rabbits Online Forum Rules. This gives guidelines on what is acceptable, what is not and how we hope everyone will treat each other.

Everyone on this forum loves to see pictures of each other’s bunnies. So if you would like to post a picture this link will help you do that, Upload Photo's to Photo Gallery. Then in the post, you click on the "G" in the tool bar to insert your photo. Many people also use Photobucket. You just copy the img file and paste it into the post.

Don’t hesitate to ask questions and I am glad you have joined rabbits online; I look forward to seeing you around.