Looking for some help- breeding issues

[Col56]

Hello, I'm new here and did my intro already but to give you a idea I have 2 doe and 1 buck that are Silver Fox.

I have 2 questions that I would really appreciate if someone could help.

I finally bred both does, they are 11 months old. 1 week apart. The first one gave birth , her first pregnancy yesterday. 9 kits. At 2:00 in the morning I went to check on her and noticed her in the box and saw hair throughout the cage. So far a good. I went back inside and went out 1 hour later only to discover that all 9 kits were stone cold and not moving. I immediately picked them up and brought them inside to try to save them. I got 3 back.... the smallest of the 9. After about 2 hours I took them back and put them in the box and put a lot of fur under and on top. I went back out 2 hours to check and they were cold and not moving. I tried again to save them trying everything to re warm them but nothing.
I contacted a rabbit breeder and he said to put her back in with the buck because she would most likely be receptive.

1. After the second fall off, she urinated what appeared to be a little dark red blood. Not much and it wasn't bright. Like old blood My question is would she be bred of did the urine "wash" out the sperm ?

2. is this small amount of old blood normal after giving birth some 31 hours post birth ?

Thanks for replies,

 

[Col56]

Anyone ?

 

[SableSteel]

That's not unusual. They can still take if they urinate after breeding. Could be old blood. Could be dark urine; they often have darker/redder urine after stressful events like kindling.

 

[SableSteel]

If the cold seems to be an issue, you might want to look in to shelving rabbits. Baby rabbits should do fine in the nestbox by themselves, as long as they have a good amount of hay and/or shavings beneath them, and enough hay/fur on top of and around them, but especially with first time mothers they often don't make good enough of nests. A lot of people shelve the babies; bringing the nestbox in to the house, then returning it twice a day for the doe to nurse, until the babies are old enough that they have enough fur to withstand the cold. I am not very knowledgeable about shelving but that might be something you might want to look into.

 

[Col56]

Thank you both for the help. Greatly appreciated.

After giving it some thought I went back up to the cages yesterday afternoon and looked more closely to what came out of the female. I put a rubber glove on and picked up what appeared to be a jellylike material which I have no doubt now it was sperm. It was about the size of a regular Bayer aspirin.

Not sure how much comes out at once. There was prior to that 2 good fall offs and then she wouldn't lift (Not sure if that is normal either)
for him anymore. She urinated about 10 seconds after he fell off.

I looked at her bottom and she is red/dark red. I'm going to put her with the Buck this morning and hopefully she will let him do his duty.