HAND REARING RABBITS
MY PLAN OF HAND REARING BABY RABBITS FROM 2 WEEKS OLD.
Please note, all baby rabbits should be left with their mother to be reared, but if for some reason that the mother may die or stop producing any milk, then only a last resort is to hand rear babies, that is if you do not have a foster mother that can rear them for you.
My experience is from 2 weeks old and I hope I will never have to do it again.
2nd week warm some full fat goats milk up in the microwave and fed them with a 1ml syringe around 6ml feeds (slowly as they can ingest the milk into there lungs and die,) at a time at 8am, 1pm, 6pm, then 11.30 pm for about a week.
3rd week we noticed that some of them were still hungry so we gave them as much as they wanted, also at this stage we put in pellets that mum was eating covered them with bran hearts (99p from Sainsbury’s) and hay which they started eating themselves and a dish of water.
4th week we went on to semi skimmed milk and we are now using 2.5 ml and 5ml syringes, some were taking 25ml where as others were only taking 7ml but we did notice that the ones that were not taking much milk were eating more food.
5th week they seem to go off the milk so we just topped them up at night time some weren't even interested in it then and we started putting them outside in the daytime
6th week got them outside all day and spending night outside coved up.
7th week just started but looks like they are doing really fine just feeding them as normal like all the other rabbits.
8th week all are doing great waiting to go to new homes now but will leave another week to be sure of everything has gone alright.
This is what we did, it is not veterinary advice, but it worked for us.
Everyone is different; it is like taking medication works for one person and not the next one.