baby rabbits and their mum

Question
Hi, my dwarf lop has had her first set of babies and had six. When the babies were about 3-4 weeks they started to nibble on their mums greens and food and continued in doing this. When the babies reached around 4-5 weeks their mum had another set of babies, to my suprise as the older ones were trampling over the newborns i had to take them from the hutch and put them in there own one. Now the first set are coming up for 6 weeks old and have been without their mum for around a week, and have been eating great and have still kept with the greens as they have been used to them as their first food as well as the rabbit food. Will the fact they left their mum earlyer have any effect on them? will they be as healthy? can they leave each other when they are passed the 6 week stage? if you could offer any advice it would be very gratefull, Also at what age could they start to breed?

Answer
I would recommend slowly taking the greens out of their diet for now. Greens are great for older rabbits, but young babies, especially ones that left their mother early, often do very poorly on greens. It could cause serious digestive problems. Don't take them away suddenly, though, as sudden changes in a diet can also cause the very problems you are hoping to prevent.

Reintroduce the greens to their diet when they are about 3 1/2 to 4 months old. I would also suggest not letting the mother eat greens (except while hand fed or out of the cage away from the babies) when her current litter is old enough to be out of the nestbox.

It is best to keep the babies together until they are 8 weeks of age. At which point, it is fine to seperate them. That gives them plenty of time to get used to all the changes, but you will be seperating them before there is a chance of them breeding together.

The earliest rabbits can usually breed is around 3 months (12 weeks), but occassionally the rare rabbit will successfully mate as early as around 8 weeks (which is why it is good to seperate them at least into groups of males and females at 8 weeks of age). They shouldn't be bred until at least 5 months, though, as that gives their body time to mature. 6-7 months is better.

Most likely the babies will be just fine. However, both now and in the future, be very careful to make sure there are no sudden changes in the diet and they get a high fibre diet (including plenty of timothy hay, grass hay, and/or oat hay). Babies weaned early sometimes have lifelong problems with their digestive systems, so it is better to just be safe.