Bunny Doe picking up her babies and throwing them??

[Higher Ground Rabbitry]

How sad! That's especially hard on the kids, and even more so when the bunnies are at their cutest. More good luck wishes on Caramel and Cashmere.

 

[Egg-cation House]

Cashmere and Caramel seem to notice that Corduroy isn't there, but Caramel has been doing well to eat today, and not a smell of pee/poo on him. We'll keep an eye on how things progress, but Caramel was already double the size of Corduroy, and definitely eating and drinking on his own.

 

[Zoomie]

@Egg-cation House, it occurs to me to ask... what breed are these rabbits? By chance they are not one of the mini breeds with the dwarfing gene, are they?

 

[Bunnylady]

@Egg-cation House, it occurs to me to ask... what breed are these rabbits? By chance they are not one of the mini breeds with the dwarfing gene, are they?

That wouldn't matter. Rabbits homozygous for the dwarfing gene die within 3 days, not at 3 weeks. Heterozygotes grow only slightly slower than those that missed the gene entirely; sometimes it isn't clear which is which until they are quite a bit older.

 

[Zoomie]

That wouldn't matter. Rabbits homozygous for the dwarfing gene die within 3 days, not at 3 weeks. Heterozygotes grow only slightly slower than those that missed the gene entirely; sometimes it isn't clear which is which until they are quite a bit older.

This is an anecdote, not scientific data, but a friend who I showed against also raised Mini Rex, and she claims she had one that lasted that long. In her case, she was also hand feeding. She claims it lived that long and then as she started trying to wean it, it lost weight and died. That's why I wondered. As people who had them, we talked about it, and usually, they were born very tiny and it was obvious. But I do agree that sometimes they were not.

 

[Bunnylady]

@Zoomie There are other reasons for a baby bunny not doing well besides the dwarfing gene. Unless your friend somehow had that bunny genetically tested, she can't be sure that it had two copies of the dwarfing gene (I'm not sure such a test exists, but the fact that the bunny lived as long as it did is a pretty strong indicator that it was not homozygous for the dwarfing gene).

One often overlooked cause for a bunny to fade away and die is the broken gene. One copy of the broken gene gives you a broken patterned rabbit, two copies creates a charlie - most people know that much about the broken gene. But the broken gene is also involved in the development of the rabbit's digestive system, and a rabbit with two copies of the broken gene has a very slow-running digestive system and has a hard time absorbing the nutrients from the food that it eats. Sometimes the digestive system just stops running entirely - a condition known as G.I stasis. Just how bad it is varies with the rabbit, but while some charlies live for several years, others don't survive long enough to crawl out of the nest box.

Any breed, and any color, can produce a 'runt.' A runt is one that just doesn't do well, and you never really know why, though a geneticist could probably work it out if they had enough examples to work with. I have given runts away as pets, with the understanding that there is something wrong with them, and they probably won't live very long. Most of them don't survive long enough to get to the pet-out stage.

 

[Zoomie]

@Bunnylady well that is certainly a possibility, as we did have the broken gene in our stock.

We always called those double dwarfs "peanuts" as they were just that tiny compared to their litter mates.

I remember being at a judge's rabbitry (he raised Silver Fox) and spotting a dead tiny new baby. He said, "I've give up *guessing* why they die" and simply discarded it. That was a lesson to me...