Weaning the Rabbits

The baby rabbits are now 7 weeks old since yesterday, October 06,2011.  We were going to separate the baby rabbits from their mothers yesterday but I was still feeling sick so we had to postpone it. The litters can actually stay all together in the same cage where they were born until they are almost 3 months old. This will help them to keep each other warm since it is getting cold here in the mountains. Late this afternoon, we finally separated the baby rabbits from their mothers. We first removed the two does from their individual cages and placed them in their new cages that were reserved for them. By leaving the baby rabbits alone in their cage and just taking out their mother, this will reduce the stress on the baby rabbits. Then we removed the two smallest rabbits among the litters and these went with their mothers in their new cage as well. They will stay with their mothers for a few days so they can get some more milk and this will also help the mother does from suffering because of a swollen breast. After a week, we will remove the two baby rabbits from their mother  and will put them back with the rest of the litters. We have not sexed the baby rabbits yet as of this writing. We'll do that when they turn 2 months old so they will not be too stressed because of this separation from their mother.  We also took this time to use the small handy butane flame torch to burn off the furs that were sticking on the wire cages of the newly weaned rabbits. After cleaning the cages, we gave them a new feeding bowl and new drinking water bottle.  Then before we left, we fed them some pellets and greens to distract them from the stress of being transferred to a new cage.They were happily munching away when we closed the rabbitry for the day.