This summer, 10 bunnies were dumped at Fort Normandeau, one of whom has a wicked hernia. We suspected them to be around 2 months old, but without knowing their breed we have no solid metric against which to determine their age.
Anyway. They were being fostered by a young woman who has a rabbit farm which includes some adorable angoras. One of the mamas had 2 runts in her litter, and when it was revealed that they would likely die, we offered to try bottle feeding. She said yes, and we took the little ones home. That's when we hit the internet and all of the bunny blogs, recommended resources we've heard of since we opened the rescue, etc...
Bunny kits are not the same as kittens. Neonatal kittens get fed fairly often. Bunny kits get fed twice a day (thrice if you're careful and they desperately need it, but we will get there.) Their heat requirements are different, and unlike kittens, they don't appreciate being handled much. On every bunny blog we encountered, we found the feeding directions;
We followed these directions, and in very short order, one of the kits began to fade. I called around to bunny rescuers and was finally able to contact one who lives in New York, and she walked me through getting the little one back on track. Satisfied that I had succeeded in figuring out how to help these little dudes, I plodded on. Unlike kittens, kits don't need feeding every hour, which made it so, so much easier.
That night though, I lost the first kit. She faded quickly and there was simply nothing I could do. I got back on the phone with Kim, the New York rescuer. She and I discussed how to avoid this with the other one, and she sent me a recipe for a formula by a woman named Dana Kremple, who is a renowned Floridian biologist with an evidently wild knowledge base about rabbits.
Okay, I thought to myself, I got this.
I mixed up the formula and fed according to what I had found on multiple sites for these 3 day old kits. But still, the remaining guy was not thriving. I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong. He was getting hydrated through subcutaneous fluids, and I was feeding him the formula. He was in our incubator, so his heat was controlled and regular at 75°f as per everything I had found. His feedings were quick, all the conditions were right, so what was wrong?
I'll tell you what was wrong. All of those sites I had visited had given incomplete information. What it should have said was;
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| That 10% body weight note would have saved those little kits had it been present everywhere else. |
Do you see those first three sentences? At three days old, they had weighed 73 grams. They needed 7 mLs daily, NOT 2. This is why knowing the full story and passing on complete information is of vital importance.
I finally found a protocol from a rescue, the name of which now escapes me and somehow my ability to google effectively today is not present. The PDF I downloaded can be downloaded right here, and I do hope that people will use it rather than relying on the partial information so easily found elsewhere.
I was devastated to have lost the little ones, but now that I'm more well armed with knowledge and connections to resources should I ever find myself in the position to care for little ones like these again.
With great thanks to the helpful folks at Henry's Healthy Pets. Their fantastic formulas, knowledge, and advice have been priceless through this.
