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Abandoned babies

22 9:54:35

Question
Hi,
I really hope you can help me. My Rabbit seems to have dumped her babies outside the hutch. She already moved them to a different area yesterday & this morning they were left outside in the cold. They are coming up to 2 weeks old. she only had 3 & unfortunately I can only see 2 of them now. I have searched everywhere for the other one. I have bought the remaining 2 babies inside & left them in a box with hay. They seem ok. I dont know what to do?? Shall I put them back into the nest?? I dont know if mum has eaten the other one?? Someone said they do?? Im so worried about the 2 babies. I am going to carry on searching for the other one.
Please please help me. Thank you in advance
Fran

Answer
Hi,

you can make a little nestbox and line it with cut up clean cotton tshirts and towels, make a little 'well' in the middle with your fist, and place the little guys in there.  About 2 ft above them put a 60 watt light buld for indirect warmth.

Feeding - get heavy cream and kitten milk replacement and mix up.  Use the cream instead of water as rabbit milk is a lot richer than cat/dog milk.  Feed every few hours, whatever they will take.  The bottle nipple will probably have to have the hole widened for the thicker milk to flow better.  Feed slowly so it does not go into their lungs which will be a big problem.

You can start putting little timothy food pellets in there with them, and pieces of hay (change out the hay daily with fresh) so that when they start exploring and nibbling they will start eating this.  At 3 weeks you could give them a little bowl full of pellets, some water too.

You can read up more about taking care of orphans at the House Rabbit Society web site:

www.rabbit.org

Do a search for articles on "babies" and "newborn" and "orphan".