Update on the Bunny Babies

On my last posts, I mentioned that we are currently taking care of six bunny babies. Their mom suddenly died the night from April 28th to April 29th and we still have no idea why. We didn't have her examined, but we had the babies checked when we were sure that they would make it. Luckily, they were all healthy. And it appears that they still are.

My mom named this one "Nickel", after the german word Karnickel, meaning bunny.

Well, I mentioned it in my first post about them, the german one, that the biggest obstacle was actually finding food for them on the very first day. It happened to be a sunday and that means all stores are closed here in Germany. We were quite shocked that no vet and no pet shelter had some baby cat milk available. We don't know if they really didn't have any, or if they just didn't want to hand it out. But seriously, what vet doesn't have stuff like that available!? There could always be a cat mom dying too. We managed to get some baby cat milk from a private cat shelter in the end, but had to drive quite a bit to get it.

This one doesn't have a name yet. It's the "green" one.

We started feeding them about 12 hours after their mother died, which should have been allright, because bunny moms apparently only feed 1-2 times a day. But they didn't take a lot of the milk, so were were really worried. At first, we were feeding 5-6 times a day to make up for the lack of volume. I read that they should have at least 25ml a day, so 5 x 5ml was the goal. But they didn't gain weight at all. After a few days, we asked the vet and he said that we should try to mix some whole egg into the milk. Since my mom keeps chickens too, we had some really fresh eggs around. And voilà, they started to gain weight. Ok, at the same time, I convinced my mom to let them have some wild herbs too, so maybe the combination was the key.

They sure love to shock us. When it did this for the first time, we thought it died in the bowl!

"Leo", the only one that takes after their dad

By now, we are down to 3-4 times of feeding every day, depending on how well they drink their milk. They now drink about 20ml per feeding and eat about 50g of herbs and vegetables. They are constantly gaining weight (except one) and are very active little bunnies. They love to run around the kitchen and it even appears  that they are playing catch.

They like to hide in there. We still have an infrared lamp on sometimes.

No name yet, it's the "blue" one

One of the bunnies appears to have hurt itself though. It stopped gaining weight as quickly as the others and drinks a lot less too. It was the only one that got sick inbetween. Watching it run with the others, it also seems like it somewhere hurt its leg. So were are taking extra care of this one. But since it is drinking and eating, slowly gaining weight and likes to run with the others, it seems ok.

The "red" is the one that hurt itself. It like to sit in this glass bowl

I'm really happy to see them grow up. It means a lot to me that the time and effort shows up in their growth. Still, I'm looking forward to the day they don't have to drink any milk anymore. It's not like they like to be fed. They are struggling a lot. I didn't sleep enough the first nights and got sick myself too. We will probably slowly stop feeding them baby cat milk in 1-2 weeks. That's about the time we take them to the vet for the first vaccination. Afterwards, we plan on having the outdoor enclosure ready for them. My mom still didn't decide how many she is going to keep, but considering that they are no pet bunnies and will be as big as a cat with a weight around 4-5kg, it will not be easy to find them a new home. But since we fed them by hand and they are not afraid of humans at all, it's not as easy to just consider them as future food. This will be a problem at some point. But there is still a lot of time until then.

Diagram of them gaining weight. The colors corelate with our simple naming "red", "blue", etc.