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August 1st, 2018

Bottle Babies & Gender Changing Bunnies



Sorry for the lack of new posts lately. There was a computer crash and the old computer completely died. Won't even boot up, it's that dead. A lot of the programs won't run on WinDoze 10, so an old computer was found and fixed up. It's been awhile training the replacement computer to be functional but now we have most things back again. Even though the computer died, the bunnies were still hopping around so things are good.

baby bunnies in their nest

Suzie & Zorro's baby bunnies

Suzie & Zorro have a litter of baby bunnies. I'd at first thought Suzie was feeding them properly, but after a day or two it became apparent that they weren't getting fed either enough or not at all. I checked her and she didn't seem to have any milk for them. Not a good situation at all.

I've tried feeding baby bunnies before and it's never worked before and I didn't have food for them and things looked dire. However, I was chatting with a friend online and she gave me a recipe for replacement baby bunny milk made from basic kitchen foods. It seemed worth a try since otherwise Suzie would lose her litter. Here's the URL for the recipe, although I'm not sure if it will be a clickable link: University of Florida Baby Bunny Milk Recipe

If that doesn't work, copy and paste this URL: http://florida4h.org/projects/rabbits/MarketRabbits/ActivityRP_Orphans2.html

Kitchen Made Bunny Milk

Kitchen Made Bunny Milk

This is the basic recipe:

2 cups of 2% milk
2 egg yolks
2 Tbsp powdered milk
2 Tbsp. corn syrup
1 tsp. bone meal

Most of these ingredients are easy to find in many kitchens so there was now hope for Suzie's babies. We had the 2% milk and since there was only one litter, I made half the recipe. So, we started with one cup of milk. Then I added one whole egg since I wasn't sure what else to do with the egg white. We did have powdered milk, so that was added as well. We didn't have the corn syrup, so molasses was added instead. And we didn't have the bone meal, so that part was omitted. I have since gotten some to keep on hand just in case we have to make more baby bunny milk at some later date.

Even at half a recipe, we still had quite a bit of baby bunny milk. It was warmed up to ninety degrees Farenheit, although we used the traditional 'test it on the inner wrist' to check the temperature so it probably wasn't precisely accurate. There were still small syringes left over from giving the penicillin shots earlier this year and we tried those first. They worked, sorta, but it was hard to regulate the amount of milk going into their mouths. Baby bunny mouths are very small and their noses are nearby and it's important not to get milk up their noses. They also wiggle around a lot during the process and it can get pretty messy. As long as the mess doesn't get up their nose, it's all good. After fussing with the syringe for awhile, we tried an eye dropper and that worked much better. We managed to get about a half teaspoon full - if not a bit more - into each baby bunny. Whew! No bunny drowned. Success!

month old baby bunnies

A month later and they're still here!

After a couple days of eye dropper feedings, then Suzie started feeding them on her own so we only had to hand feed the baby bunnies for a couple of days. I'm not sure why it takes Suzie so long to provide milk. If we hadn't fed them with the eye dropper for a couple of days, I don't know if they'd still be here. However, a month later, and the babies are not only still here but much bigger. This has been our first successful hand feeding of baby bunnies.

There's five babies, four of them are black and one of them is chocolate. I checked genders today and I think the chocolate one is male. He does have a white dot which is a "Vienna Mark" on his forehead. Which is a disqualification should he ever go to a bunny show. However, there hasn't been a bunny show around here for a couple of years, so maybe "the dot" doesn't matter. Of the other four bunnies, I'm guessing there's two males and two females. It's pretty hard to be certain at this age.

black tortoiseshell Gender Changing Bunny

Gender Changing Blondie

The four baby bunnies from the early litters are still here. They're a week apart in age and are doing well. Originally, when checking genders, I'd thought there were three males and one female. HOWEVER, checking again today when they are much older, we have a gender changing bunny! Blondie went from being a girl bunny to being a boy bunny. Sigh! They never seem to change from boys to girls. So Sydney & Ziggy's two babies, currently being called "Spot" and "Blondie" are both males. Sydney and Tootsie's two babies, currently being called "Goldie Fawn" and "Reepicheep" are also both male. All four of the older babies are male and only two of the five younger babies are female. Out of a total of nine baby bunnies, there are two females and seven males.

Fawn and Lilac baby bunnies

Goldie Fawn and Reepicheep

Goldie Fawn and Reepicheep are doing well, although Reepicheep seems to have dropped one of his ears. He'd lose points for that, should he ever go to a bunny show. But the pair of them are almost absurdly friendly. They're some of the friendliest baby bunnies we've ever had around here. Considering how horrible of a time they had as really baby bunnies, what with the rain getting on them and all, they are amazingly friendly. Maybe they remember people drying them off and warming them up.