baby formula for cottontails

Question
Hello,
I am a permitted wildlife rehabilitator. I am always seeking information to try to help the tiny newborn bunnies I get in every year.With baby season approaching i am looking for help with a formula for the newborns without eyes open. Most times I can get the rescuer to put them back in the nest but sometimes they come for humane societies and it is too late to put them back. I know they need mothers milk until their eyes open. I feed the babies either kmr or esbilac. I have a high survival rate if they come in with eyes open. I have never had one with eyes closed make it. Last summer I had one live come in with eyes still closed , opened eyes days late and died four days after that. I have not found anything in the rebab literature that has been helpful. Do you have any ideas? I am wondering if goat closterum alone can be used to sustain the bunny until eyes open and then introducing formula? Thanks.

Answer
Dear Mary,

Bless you for taking care of the little cotties. (I have a real soft spot for them;  they are so intelligent!)

The formula I've used to raise baby hares and rabbits is here:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/orphan.html

I don't think colostrum alone will do the trick, but I do think it's an essential part of the formula.  One of the main reasons these babies die is from E. coli intestinal infection, and the colostrum will help prevent this.

You don't say if the babies get diarrhea before they die, but if that's the case, then I'm sending you my recently developed protocol for saving babies with diarrhea.  I don't know if it will work on very wee babies, but I had never been able to save a baby with diarrhea, even with eyes open, before I did this:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/squirts.pdf

I hope this helps, and that you have great success raising these difficult little weebles.

Good luck!

Dana