is this normal? Newborn bunny rabbits born with green scabs on butts and 2 later die and back ends c

[Princess122179]

Is the following "normal' when raising rabbits. The litter in question is my 5th (living) litter, so I'm no expert.

A doe gave birth a few days ago to her 3rd litter after what I considered was a long pregnancy...but I had no real way to know when the mating took.

She kindled 8 living kits and no dead ones.

we checked all the babies and offered them a chance to nurse (we always do this - right or wrong - we do...I like to see if they will nurse or be weak...etc.....) 2 odd things were noticed - Each of the babies were born with a Green Scab covering their pee and poop openings and 2 of the babies were weak and nursed poorly. I removed the green scabs manually - nothing looked raw or malformed under them

1.5 Day old - check and offered chance to nurse - could only locate 7 babies....found dead "deflated" baby in nest with brownish crusty dried stuff on its back end and back legs. and 1 baby still would not nurse. even when offered drops of mothers milk on lips, it would not try to suck but it was moving around and not very thin

next morning the weak baby was found dead in nest and it had the same brownish crusty dried stuff on its back end and back legs. The 6 living ;litter mates had the dried crusty brown stuff all over their bodies in random places but all seemed to act normal.

Does any of this mean anything? Is it normal? Are they signs of a problem with the entire litter?

 

[Kiki]

no idea...

Do you have any pictures?

 

[lohoff1024]

I don't know a lot about rabbits, but could it be that poop was blocking there ********, so they would not eat?

 

[lohoff1024]

I don't know a lot about rabbits, but could it be that poop was blocking there ********, so they would not eat?

By the way, I did not swear.

 

[Princess122179]

Did not take a pic of the green stuff - but it was removed before the first few hours of life happened.

There may be a picture of the 1st dead baby on my phone - I will look

The second dead baby had no pictures taken - was hiding it from the children....

I knew I should have taken pictures....lol

 

[junebuggena]

Not normal at all. No idea what is going on. Might be due to overfeeding and overwhelming their new digestive systems, with your forced nursing. You don't need to force the doe to nurse her kits. Does only visit the nest twice a day. You can tell if the kits are nursing well if their bellies are nice and full in the mid morning.

 

[Kiki]

Did not take a pic of the green stuff - but it was removed before the first few hours of life happened.

There may be a picture of the 1st dead baby on my phone - I will look

The second dead baby had no pictures taken - was hiding it from the children....

I knew I should have taken pictures....lol

I do not know anything about rabbits....
Im just wondering IF the green whatever should have been taken off?
and what the "stuff" looked like.

 

[Princess122179]

Good point on the force nursing. We have one doe who will nurse and one we didn't trust to nurse, so we got in the habit of forcing a nursing session as an we evaluated the babies. Like i said right or wrong, its what we been doing...worked 4 times so far...

The green stuff was present before they were mayb 3 hours old..
It was like a scab or a dried booger. And all 8 of them had it...and it was only on the "naughty bits" fur from nest was stuck in the dried green stuff. Never seen it on any of the other litters.
Read somewhere on another site that someone once had a dog give birth to a litter w green dried stuff on babies and it was a decomposing pup frombthe womb...wonder if thats relevant to this....