The Bunny Business

Yesterday, Trevor and I were out in the yard and happened to walk by our bunny hutch. We have two females in there and to our utter surprise, we also had four baby bunnies in there with them. They had been born that morning. It was really quite the exciting/surprising event at our house. We were totally unprepared for this so the momma bunny didn't have a nest to have her babies in. She had pulled out her hair to make a nest, just no place to put it. The babies were kind of sprawled on the wire flooring of the hutch. We found a shoe box and put some nesting materials in it that Trevor has for his hampster, and put the babies in the box, hoping the momma bunny would take it from there.

We checked on the babies and the momma several times throughout the day and it seemed to us that she was taking care of her babies, all except for one she had kicked out of the nest. We brought that baby in the house and then Kent bought a tiny baby bottle and some goat milk from the pet store. We are now hand-feeding this little guy. We continued checking on our babies, but around 10:00 p.m. discovered the other three babies had died. The momma just didn't know how to take care of them and they got too cold. I'm not even sure she was feeding them. I think if she had been able to properly prepare a nest, her instincts would have kicked in and things would have gone much better. It was so sad. After all the emotion and elation of watching this miracle of new life unfold, we had gotten so attached to these babies and we were looking forward to watching them grow and get much cuter (right now they are pretty naked and frankly, quite ugly, but we still thought they were the cutest things ever). We are now on a vigil to keep the one remaining baby alive. Kent was kind enough to get up every two hours during the night to feed this baby bunny, whom we have named "Lucky" (hopefully, not prematurely).

Kind as he was to get up with the "baby", he is the one responsible, in part, for the litter. A few weeks ago we found a stray bunny hanging around our hutch. We knew it was someone's pet and not just a wild bunny because he was so friendly. So Kent and Trevor picked it up and put it in our hutch planning to keep him there just long enough for them to go the ten paces to our shed and fetch our extra bunny cage. (They didn't check to see if it was a male for female - Bunny Keeping 101). Kent swears that bunny was only in there for 10 seconds, but apparently that was enough time for him to do his business (not to mention the fact that both Kent and Trevor conveniently forgot to mention any of this to me. I could have at least been suspecting she was pregnant and watching for signs). It was quite the nervous morning yesterday, with me calling our vet more than once to get educated about taking care of these newborn babies. I desperately wish we had brought all four of the babies in the house, but I also knew if the momma would take care of them, that would be the best for the babies. It's hard being a first timer and hopefully, we will never have to do this again. No more male bunnies in with the females!!!