Yesterday I went to take care of my bunnies to find that Sprinkles (one of my new Holland Lop Females) had 5 babies. What caught my eye first was the random piles of white fur. Then I noticed the babies.
Normally I would be really happy (even though I had no clue she was pregnant), but they were all dead. I think it was the cold, but even if it had been warm, Sprinkles had eaten parts of all the babies.
I had to pry heads, legs, and partial body parts of the 5 babies out of the wire. It was truly a hideous thing. I felt so bad for her, so I gave her lots of extra water, food, an apple, more hay, and a yogurt treat.
They would have been adorable too. From the different pieces of the babies, I managed to discover that there were 5, and that 2 were black, 1 was white, and then 2 would have been spotted in a really adorable pattern.
Then I came out today and with the help of my mom, we began feeding and watering all the rabbits. I opened up the hutch holding Calypso and Mara (2 females who I kept from the batch of the 16 free rabbits) and saw 6 baby bunnies, frozen to the wire bottom.
I called my mom over and we took their cold bodies out. This really puzzled me, because they're both supposed to be females and they haven't been with any males for quite some time.
I later went through my blog posts and actually was able to discover that I had moved the males out of their area February 2nd. Which means that either Achilles or Felix was the father.
Anyway, my first priority was to make sure they both really are girls. I checked them and yes, they're both definitely females. After checking them, I knew for fact that it was Mara who just had the babies. So I stuck her in Kizzy's old cage because I had moved Kizzy into Eleanor's old area.
Four of the babies were going to be a beautiful orangish coloring and then the other 2 were going to be white. My mom and I both agreed that we should just treat all new females as though they're pregnant.
We put hay with all the new females. So now, if they do have a surprise litter, they'll hopefully live. The problem with an entire litter dying on a female is first, they have no babies to drink their milk, and could get mastitis. Second, a female may never fully recover mentally and may end up killing all their babies in any future litters.
This is exactly what happened to my female Scarlet. She lost a huge litter during winter time and after that, she would kill off multiple babies every day when she had more litters. I would only ever find the babies' heads as she would eat the bodies.
It was because of that I had to get rid of her. I really liked her and she was extremely sweet. She was my second female for breeding ever and I had raised her from a baby, but I couldn't afford to keep her as she was no longer a good mother.
Consequently, I'm really hoping there won't be any more surprise litters, but if there are, hopefully we can keep them alive in this freezing weather and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Sprinkles and Mara will be able to cope with it and can be good mothers in the future.
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