cojo
Member
As you may know, I'm fostering 3 female angora rabbits. I've had them a little less than 4 weeks. One had a litter of 6 the day I got her; one of the babies just never seemed to grow, at all, and passed away after about 12 days. The other female had a litter of 8(!) on July 7.
The new kits on the block (get it?) are SMALL. As small as the other kits were when they were first born, and they're 6 days old. 6 of them are less than half as small as the largest two. The largest two are filled out, with extremely pudgy bellies The 6 don't have golf-ball bellies. They're a little wrinkled. I worry for them...there are 8, and I'm starting to doubt that the mom can handle them all. It is weird to me that only 2 look like healthy filled-out bunnies.
It seemed like the 2 chubsters were hogging more than their share of the milk, so I moved them into a warm nest outside the cage to snuggle each other just for tonight, and left the other 6 in the nest box with mom, so they can get first dibs.
As a result of removing the 2 fatties, the remaining part of the litter were maybe not quite as warm, so I heated up a microwave stuffed-kitty thing the rescue gave me and I put it underneath their bedding.
As I was moving them back into the nest onto the now-warm bedding, one was completely stiff. "Oh Lord," I thought, "He didn't make it." But I held him between my hands to warm him and finally he started to wiggle. But I knew he was in deep trouble. I tried to get him warm, put a little drop of honey on his mouth to get his blood sugar up, and I tried over and over again to position him under his mom to get him to eat (like, his mouth literally up to her nipple, but he didn't suckle at all). I even tried positioning him under the other mom I have. But within 20 minutes he was gone. He literally died in my hands. :cry1: He's in a tea box on my desk until it's light out enough to dig him a place in the yard.
I just feel terrible. I've never done this before. I never even had a rabbit before. All I did was read on the Internet about this stuff. And here I held two dying ones in the span of two weeks. I keep second-guessing myself, first thinking that things would be better if I jump in and start hand-feeding them the instant I think they're not eating enough, but on the other hand I feel like I'm already stressing them out by interfering and it's only creating bad endings. I'm just terrified now that I'll wake up in the morning and another one will be gone. Someone reassure me and tell me what I can do better, or tell me if it's normal for this many kits to go to the Rainbow Bridge.
Thank you, and my heart is breaking for the tiny bunnies.
The new kits on the block (get it?) are SMALL. As small as the other kits were when they were first born, and they're 6 days old. 6 of them are less than half as small as the largest two. The largest two are filled out, with extremely pudgy bellies The 6 don't have golf-ball bellies. They're a little wrinkled. I worry for them...there are 8, and I'm starting to doubt that the mom can handle them all. It is weird to me that only 2 look like healthy filled-out bunnies.
It seemed like the 2 chubsters were hogging more than their share of the milk, so I moved them into a warm nest outside the cage to snuggle each other just for tonight, and left the other 6 in the nest box with mom, so they can get first dibs.
As a result of removing the 2 fatties, the remaining part of the litter were maybe not quite as warm, so I heated up a microwave stuffed-kitty thing the rescue gave me and I put it underneath their bedding.
As I was moving them back into the nest onto the now-warm bedding, one was completely stiff. "Oh Lord," I thought, "He didn't make it." But I held him between my hands to warm him and finally he started to wiggle. But I knew he was in deep trouble. I tried to get him warm, put a little drop of honey on his mouth to get his blood sugar up, and I tried over and over again to position him under his mom to get him to eat (like, his mouth literally up to her nipple, but he didn't suckle at all). I even tried positioning him under the other mom I have. But within 20 minutes he was gone. He literally died in my hands. :cry1: He's in a tea box on my desk until it's light out enough to dig him a place in the yard.
I just feel terrible. I've never done this before. I never even had a rabbit before. All I did was read on the Internet about this stuff. And here I held two dying ones in the span of two weeks. I keep second-guessing myself, first thinking that things would be better if I jump in and start hand-feeding them the instant I think they're not eating enough, but on the other hand I feel like I'm already stressing them out by interfering and it's only creating bad endings. I'm just terrified now that I'll wake up in the morning and another one will be gone. Someone reassure me and tell me what I can do better, or tell me if it's normal for this many kits to go to the Rainbow Bridge.
Thank you, and my heart is breaking for the tiny bunnies.
