Little black bunny

Question
Hey Pat. I talked to you about 2 weeks ago about my little black bunny. He's still alive and well. In 2 days he'll be 4 weeks old. He's not scrawny like he used to be, he's furry and plump. When he turned 12 days old we decided to stop feeding him separately on his mother. Hes maturing as good and fast and healthy as the others. His hair is all grown in. However, he still is half the size as the others! He's not as hyper as the other bunnies. And he doesn't binky. But he IS pretty active and runs around. He adores humans, and loves to be held. The others, not so much.  He's doing awesome and I just wanted to tell you that since you wanted an update. We might end up keeping him. If not we'll give him to a relative or close friend.

I did have a question, kinda. I guess he didn't end up getting the dwarf gene but I wanted to know why a rabbit would fall so behind on growing. He was just as big as the others when he was born... It was 4 days when we realized he was 'shrinking'. 5 days when we found him out of his nest box and he didn't move, was cold, and felt like a skeleton; he was, very unhealthy.
But thank you pat. :)

Answer
Hi Kylee. I am glad to hear that your little one is doing so much better! Mother rabbits only visit the nest once or twice a day to feed the babies. If one of them is week or gets pushed out by more aggressive kits,just a time or two, it can fall behind drastically. If it then gets pushed to a corner of the nest and gets cold it would become too weak to compete for milk and quickly fall behind never to catch up again and often die. We may never know what happened to your little one, but thank goodness that it is doing well now. He still may have gotten one copy of the dwarf gene, and that is what he needs to be small. Sometimes a whole litter will get two copies and they all die. Sometimes none of the litter gets the one copy and they are all bigger than they should be. We call these false dwarfs. They will be a dwarf breed but fail to be dwarf in size. In a good litter we get some of both. Bunnies with one copy of the dwarf gene will be smaller than ones without the gene. They will have shorter ears, a boxier face, and  smaller back feet in comparison to the others. I hope this helps answer some of your concerns. Good luck to you and your little friends.   Pat