Surprise Litter!

[Morganbadillo]

I have a black female rabbit that was nine weeks old when I got her on Feb. 18th, I was under the impression that she was a male even though sexing wasn’t 100%. I monitored playtime with my male rabbit who is almost a year old. My older male rabbit was humping and I thought it was a dominance thing but turns out they were mating. After that I separated them and a month later I have babies! My female showed no real signs of pregnancy other than digging( I thought she was just trying to dig out of the backyard) she has a very large cage that litterie in right now. We made a nest for them but I’m just worried about her being too young to care for them. I know they only feed once or twice a day. We have her on pellets we got from the local feed store that’s supposed to give her protein to lactate but I’m just very worried about how this is going to go. Can a rabbit this young successfully raise her kits?

[Mikey]

Shes about 4 or 5 months old? She likely is too young. You are lucky she survived that if she is. Having a litter too young can do a lot of damage to the mother bun given that their bodies are not fully grown yet. She may not care for the litter as well given her age, and often mothers dont care for the first litter without some extra help anyway. To be honest, you should be less worried about the kits and more worried about your female.

Dont put them together until they are both fixed and healed. As soon as she can be separated from the babies, she needs to be seen by a vet asap to ensure this didnt negatively effect her health. Rabbits need to have a diet that is 70 percent timothy hay; you mentioned pellets, but not hay. I dont see anything on google about safe pellets that aid in lactation for rabbits, so I dont believe the ones you have are safe for her health; youll want to nix them immediately. If the babies make it, youll want to separate them once they are old enough to avoid more accidental litters.

[SeeShmemilyPlay]

As for the kits’ health, check on them every day to make sure they’re warm and their bellies are round. There’s also a white line down their tummies called the “milk line”. As long as it’s white, it should mean they’re being fed.
If they aren’t warm, and they aren’t fat, and there’s no milk line, use kitten formula to feed them. My foster bunnies had surprise babies, but luckily they’ve been doing very well as moms (even though they’re likely much too young), so I don’t know the specifics of formula feeding babies.
But if mama’s doing her job, then there’s not much for you to do but provide, as stated above, timothy hay, and since she’s nursing+young, alfalfa hay is important too.
Keep the babies with her for eight weeks. That is when they should be weaned. After that eight weeks is up, you can get her spayed

[Morganbadillo]

Thank you both! The kits are two weeks old now, (all survived and are healthy) the mother made a nest and is doing pretty good. I notice she gets a little aggitated when the babies run around her, do you think this will affect her feeding? They seem to be bothering her quite a lot recently.

[Mikey]

If they irritate her too much, she could ignore or injure them depending on how irritated she actually is with them.

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