Seventeen days ago we welcomed some Rabbits onto our homestead. You may have seen the YouTube about building the hutches and getting them settled. We have wanted some for years but hadn’t tried to get them until we saw that another foster family needed to downsize their family of rabbits and they were free to a good home. It seemed like a great opportunity.
We have enjoyed the rabbits. The kids argue over who gets to
check on them multiple times a day. Engineer bear checked them this morning around
breakfast time. Around one thirty this afternoon the kids were showing the
rabbits to some friends.
“Mom!” They called. “There are dead mice in the females
cage!” Before I could get there, they asked “Is it normal for rabbits to pull
the fur off mice?”
I knew then what had happened.
Rabbits gestate for around 31 days. One of the does had been
pregnant when she joined our family. We didn’t know. Her old owner hadn’t
known. If she had suspected she hadn’t mentioned it to us. Sometime this
morning our rabbit had given birth to seven babies, but since we weren’t
prepared, they all died.
I feel at fault. We failed our poor mamma bunny. We weren’t
planning on breeding them immediately so we hadn’t prepared a birthing box or
area for them. Mamma bunny had tried to prepare. When bunnies are about to give
birth, they pull out their own fur to make a soft nest for the offspring. She
had done that, but because it was a grate floor most of it fell through. We
failed in our stewardship.
We know more now. We’ll prepare the birthing area just in
case. We also need to check the bunnies and make sure we know which ones are
males or females. We just accepted what the previous owner had said but now we’ll
check, just in case. We’ll do better next time.
