Bunnies and Loss

Makayla got bunnies for her Birthday in January. Thrilling for her, her first real "pet with fur". For our nature loving girl this was huge. The people who gave us the bunnies actually had two, so we let Gavyn have the "boy", Max, and Makayla the "girl",Velveteen. We were told they had never had babies and were fine. They came with a hutch and everything. Well, within a week they were mating. Makayla was even more ecstatic thinking about baby bunnies. Bryan and I.... not so ecstatic..

 

The day came as a surprise. Cousins ran back after school to see the bunnies and yelled there are babies in here. Makayla had fed them that morning before school, so they were new from a few hours. Unfortunately, one bunny had an ear gone with fresh blood there and another one had all the skin gone from it's back end. It was so sad. I had a friend tell me that the mother bunny will sometimes eat their babies. We got on line and frantically started to try and figure out what to do. We separated the "boy" and "girl", helped make more of a nest and eventually brought them inside because it was really cold outside. It didn't work....I had written this back when it happened.......

"My sweet Makayla has called this the worst day of her life because three of her four baby bunnies that were born yesterday have died. I cried and cried with her as each one passed away. It is heartbreaking because they were all breathing and crawling around yesterday and now they have stopped. The one surviving bunny is skinny and we aren't sure how to help. the mother rabbit is a first time mother and doesn't seem to know what to do, we can't find any teats and don't know if she can or will feed them. We tried to give this one a little water, but it seemed to aspirate to me and I am concerned it won't make it until morning. We are learning all that we have done wrong and trying to do what we can."

You can guess the ending...all the babies died. We kept the parents separated from then on. Still, our story has not ended, but takes a weird twist.

A month later, Bryton goes to the "boy" hutch and says there are baby rabbits up here. WHAT????!!!! We found five baby rabbits eventually that were pushed out of the cage. Somehow between when the first bunch was born and us finding them there was some mating going on again. After some more investigation, Bryan found definite boy parts on Velveteen and some teats on Max. We had trusted the people who had initially given us the rabbits to know their sex and they have very diffeent markings, but oh well.So they were quickly traded from Makayla to Gavyn and renamed "Green Lantern" and "Ginger". Once again though, it all ended in tragedy for our little girl. Four babies were dead when we found them and the one surving one was put with its mother (not the father this time....aghh so sad) in a warm and cozy nest. By evening there was no bunny to be found anywhere. The only explanation is that Ginger, formerly known as Max, ate her last baby. We may have interrupted her before when we unknowingly separated her from her babies. Either way, YUCK!!!! From what we have read, if the mother does this more than once you just don't breed them anymore. We have decided to let Makayla have one more try in a few months, maybe with her older and not stressed, she will figure out how to care for babies.

Who would have thought that bunnies are so NOT maternal??!!!