Urgent Advice needed for orphan kit

[Semperfichic818]

Hi all.

I am currently fostering a wild cottontail that I estimate to be about a week and a half old. I have him on KMR and he's been doing well. I have years of experience with rabbits in general and quite a bit of experience hand raising orphans (I've hand raised one cottontail prior to this and hand raised two domestic litters). However, it's been two years since I last fostered a cottontail and my last foster just so happened to come along when I had a domestic litter. The doe that had that litter was nothing short of an angel and adopted the orphan cottontail. I basically let her raise him until he was old enough to release. Prior to that, as noted above, I had success hand raising one other cottontail kit that I released at about 4 weeks of age.

Because it's been so long since I last fostered, I read a few articles about raising cottontails to make sure I wasn't missing anything. The only thing that I forgot about was introducing cecotropes to facilitate healthy gut flora. This wasn't an issue with my last foster because of the doe taking care of him and I didn't know to do that with the foster prior.

Basically, I've successfully raised two kits, one with and one without the cecotropes. I am afraid to not introduce this kit to them because I know that it is improbable that he will survive without them. However, I don't have ready access to them as my doe died earlier this year.

I have been mixing in some human acidophilus into the formula for this kit. Has anyone had any success with this? Also, I am in Bucks County Pennsylvania right outside of Philadelphia. If anyone knows of a rabbitry around here that I could collect cecotropes from for this kit please let me know.

He's doing fabulous, I would hate to see him crash and burn.

Thanks in advance for your advice and help! :brownbunny

 

[Semperfichic818]

Bump

 

[ladysown]

have you asked on your local kijiji or craigslist?

 

[Semperfichic818]

I'm super leery of both. I did actually find someone in my area with an adult doe though so fingers crossed we will be harvesting cecotropes tonight.

I noticed today that he was a little more depressed than usual and he hasn't been gaining as much weight as I feel like he should. I did some reading and decided to change his formula. This was all so much easier when I had a nursing doe!

Unfortunately I had picked up Hartz KMR the other night because that was all that was available. Usually I avoid their products like the plague, but since it was all that was available and I had to buy a huge can I decided to try it. Since he wasn't exactly thriving on it I went back out and bought Pet Ag's KMR formula which I've always used before. I felt like he may have been a bit dehydrated, so I also got some pedialyte. To complement the KMR I got some heavy cream and goats milk. I gave him a little bit of the pedialyte and then mixed up the new formula. I used two teaspoons of KMR, two teaspoons of goats milk, and one teaspoon of heavy cream. After both the pedialyte and a few cc's of the formula he seems much brighter.

Fingers crossed on the cecotropes though - I'm worried that if we don't get them he ultimately won't make it. :sigh:

 

[majorv]

If you're unable to get some tonight you could try giving him some probiotics - benebac or probios - to help the gut.