Found doe dead in nesting box

[lobanz]

One of our New Zealand White does was found dead in her nesting box yesterday. She has had 1 successful litter before, 7 total, 5 living. She was first bread about 7 months old. Litter was weaned at about 6 weeks. She was bred again to the same Californian buck at about 8 weeks. She didn't seems very receptive to the buck, but he did the falling over thing and he must have been successful. At 28 days, I put the nesting box in her cage and she pulled lots of hair and made a nest. Nesting material was clean pine straw (of which she ate some). The kids found her dead in the nesting box yesterday morning. No kits were delivered. Slight bloody discharge but not much.

I have no idea what happened. I don't think it was disease. The other does right next to her are fine. Another is due to kindle in a few days. The first time, we used wheat straw as bedding material. Would the pine straw cause something like this?

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Let me preface this by saying I know next to nothing about breeding rabbits, but it sounds to me like maybe she had a stuck kit and died from it, especially with the bloody discharge. That happened to my hamster. Poor girl.

 

[Nancy McClelland]

Anything pine is a very big no unless it's been kiln dried to remove the phenols. Usually hay of any kind is alright to use. Sorry for your loss. We lost our NZ, Hoss a few months ago, but he was old for a bunny--more than 10 years.

 

[hillrise]

That's too bad. I would guess that most likely she died from complications in labor (breech kit perhaps). How many days along would she have been when she died? She had probably gone into advanced labor about the time she started pulling fur, some does can go through two nights after they start into that, but some have complications within just a couple hours.