When we were living in Hawaii, my husband and I adopted our second rabbit, Poppy. The lady who gave us the paperwork to fill out assured us that Poppy was a little girl, although, later on, we found this to be very, very wrong. Poppy was a male rabbit after all.
This past Christmas, my sister, Emma, got a bunny. She was told that this bunny was a male as well. She named him Lancelot. And so, we felt, this past spring, as the bunnies were both boys, a play date couldn't hurt. They ran together in the chicken coop our mother's house, and everything seemed fine.
And then, last Friday, my mother called me. "Poppy is a daddy." she told me, "And Lancelot is a girl." There were six gorgeous baby bunnies born that morning. No one had even suspected Lancelot was pregnant, apparently rabbits don't show many signs besides simply giving birth. It was like an episode of "I Didn't Know I was Pregnant", except, this situation would be better titled "I Didn't Know I Was a Woman, and BTW, I Got Pregnant".
My mother is adopting the runt, a small dark bunny she calls Button (A safe, unisex name because we have yet to determine the genders). I am going to adopt one as well, and I am most definitely not delaying in fixing Poppy after this. Although babies are blessings. rabbits multiply like...well...rabbits, and a few can get out of control rather quickly.
We have learned a lot about baby rabbits this past week. My mother has learned the correct amount of baby bunny formula to feed the runt so that he catches up with his siblings, but isn't overfed. We found out that mother rabbits tend to be rather aloof, and only feed the kittens once a day. And of course, we learned that determining the gender is not as clear cut as with human babies, and is of utmost importance. We have also learned, that when you Google for information on how to determine rabbit gender, you have to be prepared for your browser to be bombarded by adult materials and bizzare images.
We learned that baby rabbits cannot open their eyes for ten days after birth, and they wiggle about in a cluster together, testing out their limbs although they are as of yet still blind. They have the sweetest little yawns, and already have little tiny teeth. Baby rabbits nurse while lying on their backs, and knead their mother's underbelly with their tiny little paws. I don't think I could manage being a proper mama bunny, these tiny creatures are too precious for me to imagine treating them with the proper amount of distance and ambiguity. Altogether, this past week has been an exciting learning experience, and I wish I could keep them all.
The babies, on their birthday
Tiny and wrinkled little beauty
Weighing. They all were born between 1 and 2 oz.
Bunny face
Babies and mama, not cuddling
Pile 'O' Bunnies
Seeet Button's Face
Growing a lttle bigger!
Feeding Button
Oh how well I know what you are going thru! Same thing happened to Dez and I with our rabbits. Dezi's Kiki was a girl, and the lady I adopted my Cookie from said Cookie was a girl. The pet store she had bought from told her so.
ReplyDeleteCookie and Kiki had a couple days together before I got over to pick Cookie up. A week later, a vet checkup visit revealed a pair of surprises when Cookie was turned on his back...and just 3 weeks later, Kiki gave birth to 4 little kits. We lost one 2 days later.
Like you, we had no idea Kiki was pregnant. She was on the floor playing with us the night before - like her normal self. And here I am, 3 1/2 years later with Cookie (who just turned 4 yesterday) and Cissy, his daughter, and Lil Bit, his son. The kids will be 4 in December (yes, Cookie was a very young daddy!). Dezi has another son, Fattie.
We sure learned a lot and fast! Thank heaven for the internet! (and yes, like you, we found those "other" sites as well.
Enjoy the babies! You will be safe keeping them together for the first couple months. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to sex them accurately until the males "drop" the family jewels. Things just look too darned much alike in that area when they are so young. Good luck!
By the way - do you know of any low cost spay/neuter places that do rabbits in that area? My niece has a friend who wants to have her bunny spayed and Allison asked me if I knew of any. None of my rescue friends have any contacts up in that area, so I came up blank. Let me know if you do know of someplace.
Keep the pictures coming! And Congratulations to Poppy and Lancelot....or will it be Guinevere now?
I most definitely will keep the photos coming! Having the baby bunnies has been such an awesome experience, and I doubt anything could be cuter than a pile of week old rabbits. I am so tempted to adopt the whole kit and kaboodle :)
DeleteFrom reading your suprise-baby-bunnies story, I am realizing how often these things must happen, especially since the gender is so hard to determine straight away. For this reason, we gave the babies unisex "nicknames" to use until we figure them out...or the names may stick :) I am just glad that the bunnies were born into a family of animal lovers, it makes me so sad to think of all the unwanted and abused rabbits out there in the world.
As for low cost neuter/spay places, I am putting some feelers out about that as well. If any place turns up, I will let you know. All of my connections for rabbits were in California.
As for Lancelot...I actually proposed she become Guinevere, but at least as of now, everyone still uses the same old name. My mom suggested "Lancey", but any change will take a while to get used to :)