HELP? Strange birth

[Icarus]

I got a live, vigorous litter of out my Angora doe today. Her last one was really odd, I found one underdeveloped fetus and three over developed ones. All dead. She wasn't due for another three weeks.

I re-bred her and she was doing perfectly fine. Eating, drinking, and relaxed. Gaining weight properly and maintaining it. Over the past week she started dropping weight. She was wormed a good month or so ago, and has all the food and water in the world (I actually increased the amount of food, AND added some high-protein beet-pulp to the mix). Her poop is fine.
Other two rabbits (Angora buck and a little Dutch doe) are fine. Buck is a wee bit skinner than I'd like him to be, but he hasn't shown a significant change. He IS at a healthy weight, just not chubby.

Today, rather abruptly, she went into labor. She was out in the yard but mostly hung around in the duck's house. I took the roof off it so that I could clean it and started to shoo her out. Surprise! A rabbit kit! A robust baby boy, at that.

No pulling of fur, no nesting, no nothing, just 'plop' rabbit.
I got her nest box, put some extra fur I had bagged and nestled the kit right in there. Then I left her alone, still in the duck house, not wanting to disturb her to much, especially since she was obviously in labor. I left the roof off but closed the ramp.

I kept an eye on her until around 3:30 (no other kits, by this time I'm thinking 'She only had one'), when she decided to jump out of the house. She landed safely and I gently caught her and put her inside in the birthing/nursing cage. Put her nest box with her baby in it in there, and left her alone.

A good hour or so later, around 4:30 or so, I peek in. Theres a kit on the cage floor! I thought it was her first, so I picked him up (wondering why theres blood on his head) and realize that it's not a white, it's a beige.

New kit. Some three hours later.

I put him too into the box and leave her alone.

Fast forward to 6:00, I check on her again. Surprise! Now the nest box is full of kits. Three new whites, two browns, and one dead spotted with the placenta still attached. There is also an awesome amount of fresh blood. From what I've dealt with, theres some blood. The towel I put down on the bottom of the nest box (it's wired bottomed) to keep out drafts is soaked with blood.

Some five-or-so hours after the start of her labor. :?

Usual labor: One hour. Tops.


I'm going back in a moment to change out the bottom towel. I want to keep monitoring her closely for the next 48 hours to make sure the kits are getting fed and are starving or cold. I am definitely not putting her with the buck again. I'm seriously considering rehabbing her weight wise, (I'll be doing that, regardless. I'm thinking the buck could have stressed her out?) and placing her with a good pet home.

 

[Pipp]

How is she doing?

Make sure the doe is eating and that she isn't at all lethargic. The blood loss doesn't sound good especially after weight loss. You'll have to watch for pregnancy toxemia (which I'm not familiar with), ketosis, hepatic lipidosis, etc. as well as whatever might come from the blood loss itself.


sas :clover:

 

[Icarus]

Just got back from a second checking.

Doe: Bright eyed, alert, and curious. She was relaxed and stretched out when I checked on her. She hopped out of her cage and went for a little stroll while I checked the kits. She eats with an appetite and drinks readily.
She doesn't like to be petted (as usual, you can do anything around her, she just doesn't like being petted) and sounded a little stuffy when she grunted, her 'Ugh! Don't touch me!' noise. No signs of runny nose, no sneezing, no coughing, no signs of pain, no noise when she breaths, no mucus or discharge anywhere, just when she grunts she sounds stuffy. It -could- just be her grunt, I generally let her be, so I'm not to familiar with it.

Feces normal. The blood on the pan from her final batch is bright red and thin-ish looking.
I'm currently on Urine Watch , she did pee in the duck house, nothing abnormal, but I want another look at it when it's not on bedding.

Overall: Other than her weight, she seems content and healthy.

Kits: Warm and active, no scattering or chills. Bellies where plump, but not overly so, it seems like they got some milk, at the very least colostrum, which is good in case I have to foster them by hand or off another doe if I can find one.

It also looks like she pulled new fur for the final batch of kits.

 

[cirrustwi]

I moved this thread to the Rabbitry because there are more people who are knowledgeable about breeding.

 

[tonyshuman]

I would try to remove everything that is blood-soaked from the area and keep an eye on her for changes like Pipp mentioned, such as lethargy. It sounds like she may have had different litters at different developmental stages in her last batch, which may indicate a retained kit. This fetus can become infected and poison her. However, if she's not bleeding, she's active and alert, you should just clean up the nest (you'll have to distract her somehow) and replace it. I would definitely feel for more kits if you are able to do that, and check her for bleeding.

edit: Caveat: I am not a breeder but I have read a lot of "emergency pregnancy gone wrong" threads. We had one where the doe was clearly in distress after the birth was supposed to be over, and she later died from a retained kit that rotted and poisoned her blood.

 

[Icarus]

tonyshuman wrote:

I would try to remove everything that is blood-soaked from the area and keep an eye on her for changes like Pipp mentioned, such as lethargy. It sounds like she may have had different litters at different developmental stages in her last batch, which may indicate a retained kit. This fetus can become infected and poison her. However, if she's not bleeding, she's active and alert, you should just clean up the nest (you'll have to distract her somehow) and replace it. I would definitely feel for more kits if you are able to do that, and check her for bleeding.

I cleaned up everything, replaced the bottom towel, etc. She's still active, eating and drinking. She doesn't appear distressed and lays stretched out in her 'relaxed position' on her blanket. Sits normally when she stands up. Feces and urine are normal, theres no new bleeding. I gently felt her stomach and checked her rear, other than her annoyance at being bothered she didn't show any signs of pain.

In the last litter, the under-developed fetus I found was mostly eaten (not to be morbid) so I don't know how many she had all together. There was the regular spotting of blood, otherwise everything was normal. She did nest.

She loved the canned pumpkin and dandelion snacks I gave her yesterday and today. She's drinking no more or less than for a rabbit her size, and munches away on her pellets.

 

[tonyshuman]

That's good. Are the babies well fed with "ping-pong" bellies? The eating the dead baby is an instinct to keep the nest clean so that predators can't find it by smell, kind of like why they eat the afterbirth, etc. Yuck I know.