HELP! Weight loss in kit

[Paigehenderson]

I need some advice on a baby bunny I’m hand rearing after a friend purchased a pregnant doe. The mom stopped producing milk around day 9. There’s only one kit left and I’ve been feeding him goats milk. He probably went about 48 hours with little to no food until we realised he wasn’t getting milk. He’s 13 days old now but is losing weight. I’m was feeding 15ml a day and have just upped it to 20ml today. He won’t drink from the syringe and when I put it into his mouth it seems most of it gets spilled so for the last 3 days he has been lapping it up from the palm of my hand. He has only started peeing properly the last 2 days and seems to lose a lot of weight after he does.

The day we began feeding he was 117g, that has now dropped to 106g. It goes up to around 114g some point of the day but as soon as he pees it goes back down again. He is very lively when awake, has started to nibble on hay and pellets. Has a good appetite. His poops are normal, not runny or anything. But the weight loss is really worrying me. Is it possible for him to have 7g of just water weight? Is there anything I can do to put weight on him? Other than increasing his milk intake?

Thank you in advance for helping, I know it’s such a long post

 

[JBun]

If the weight goes down immediately after relieving himself, then I would attribute the decrease in weight to the urination.

Slow weight gain can happen with hand fed kits. They don't seem to grow as quickly as kits raised by their moms. Probably due to the replacement milk not being as nutrient dense as rabbit milk is. As long as he's not looking dehydrated(wrinkly), has good flesh condition(not bony), and doesn't develop diarrhea, I would assume that he is doing well and continue on with what I'm doing, gradually increasing the milk amounts as he grows and gets older. To help with weight gain, if you aren't already, some feeding recipes have plain heavy cream added to them(rabbit milk is higher in fat and protein than most other milks).
http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/orphan.html

One thing I would be cautious of is with you letting him lap up the milk from your hand, that could be a possible route of passing bacteria to him, which hand fed kits will be more susceptible to contracting. So I would either make sure to wash my hands thoroughly or put the warm milk in a shallow dish with the dish being prewarmed to keep the milk warm(the dish being the preferable method if the kit will continue to drink well from it).