to keep, or not to keep?

well first, do you want a bunny or not? sure they are cute and cuddly, but think about the overall picture and the responsibilities you will have with owning a rabbit. cleaning the cage, food, water, hay, bedding, etc etc etc.

if you decide to keep, it's a long-term commitment. also, a LOT of affection will have to be kept up on your part to keep the baby WILD cottontail, "domesticated".

in our case, we weren't exactly planning on keeping any of them, but as i cared for them so carefully over a few weeks with feeding them formula, etc, i became attached. i'll be honest, it's hard not to get attached when you are babying tiny bunnies! as an animal lover my whole life, i knew i couldn't just release them all.

of course, taking in 4 bunnies to keep was also too much!!! so, i was able to find homes for 2 of them, and we still had 2 at our house. one, i became VERY attached to one of them, and soon decided to name him benedict. he's absolutely precious, loves being held and scratched, and sits on my shoulder for hours just hanging out watching tv with me at night. i knew we would be keeping him.

he's such a sweetie. and he never goes to the bathroom while on me! well, so far at least! i love him :) so this left us with one more bunny. this last one was turning a bit wild. he didn't mind being held at first, but that soon changed and he would fear me much more than benedict, constantly chew on the bars of their cage, and didn't enjoy being held anymore. i talked with my husband on what he thought we should do since his natural instincts seemed to be kicking in much more. we decided that we didn't want to put any extra stress on him, and we tested how he would do released back outside. he took to it nicely, investigated around, wasn't scared, so we determined this to be best for him. in the end with everything, that was my goal. to give them what i thought would be best. he was clearly getting stressed out in the cage (where benedict was not), and i think he just needed to be back outdoors. so, after about a month of owning him, he was ready to go back out. i'm sure he will stick around our yard though because we have a nice vegetable garden that i'm betting he will love to munch on hahaha...

so, out of all the other blogs who say to just release them, i'm here to tell you that you CAN keep them, but, please determine whether it would be best for the bunny. in our case, benedict is quite happy indoors, being held, and in a cage. our other remaining bunny, was not. it only seemed to stress him out more, and he probably felt trapped in a cage. so, monitor your bunny to see what would be best.

another thing to consider whether to keep or not: is there a rabbit veterinarian by you? you will need to spay/neuter your bunny. their natural instincts and hormones will kick in at a certain point, and since we're not there yet, i can't exactly say what will happen, but i know a boy rabbit will start spraying, and i can only assume, their instincts to find a mate will become very strong. so, we're planning on neutering benedict when that time comes. it will be best for everyone. keeps him calmer, and way less mess for us! 

also, is it illegal to own a wild rabbit in your state? be sure to check that out. where we live, they weren't on the list of "exotic" animals not allowed to be kept, so we're all good there, but be sure to check your own state. 

i'm very happy benedict came into our lives. he's very sweet, and i hope he lives for a very long time! i'm estimating his birthday to be april 30th, so he is really only currently about 6 weeks old. 

if i remember, i'll keep this blog updated as time goes on with more experiences so i can share them with others. and feel free to comment! it might help remind me to make a new blog post :)

i hope this helps you! 

feeding baby cottontails

from looking at them, and pictures online, i estimated they were about 2.5 weeks old.

basically, for reference, i pretty strictly followed this website for all the feeding info: http://rabbit.org/faq-orphaned-baby-bunnies/

we headed to petco, got some powdered KMR, then headed to walmart to pick up the acidophilus. we ground up the acidophilus pill into a powder, but i think you can buy them in capsules and just break open the capsule. 

let me also say that everything i read said how fragile baby bunnies are. they apparently can die like *THAT*, so i was uber paranoid with my care. i didn't want to screw anything up! we have a scale in our kitchen for measuring food, so i used that to measure all the bunnies before each feeding.

i followed the directions on the can for mixing the KMR with warm water, and added a pinch of the acidophilus powder to the liquid KMR mixture. i then used a pipette to feed the KMR to the babies. i started off with just two feedings per day, as advised by the above website, but they weren't really gaining very much, just sort of stable or moving up very, very little (and we're talking like 1 gram here), so i upped it to 3 feedings per day and that really helped out a ton. at each feeding, i started out with 6oz. of KMR per bunny, per feeding, but then after like 5 days, i moved it up to 9oz. per bunny/feeding. i started off slow with the feedings because almost everything i read said the #1 cause of death is overfeeding. they can die easily because of bloat.

basically the key to all things baby bunnies is TAKE. IT. SLOW. they are so fragile, and 90% of the time the babies will die. so yeah, i was freaked out because i didn't want to kill them! they can die just even from getting too scared! 

so i kept weighing them and feeding them the KMR mixture for about a week or two, then decided they were old enough to start on pellets.

now with the pellets, i didn't want to just go to the pet store and pick up a bag of rabbit food. i wanted to make sure it was healthy and nutritious for them, while keeping all the crap/junk out of it. once again, i did my research, and found this food to be great:

manna pro select series pro formula feed for rabbits. we got it from our local tractor supply company, and it came in 25lb. and 50lb. bags. the best part? high quality feed for only $9 for a 25lb. bag! and $16 for the 50lb. bag. they took to it right away, so i was thrilled. i just put a weighted bowl into their cage and filled it up with these pellets. here is the description with ingredients and all that so if you don't have a tractor supply company near you, you can find a feed with similar ingredients:

Manna Pro® Select Series™ PRO Formula Rabbit Food is a complete feed for all classes of rabbits. A well-known and trusted brand among rabbit breeders. Contains 16% protein.

Ingredients:
Dehydrated alfalfa meal, wheat middlings, soybean hulls, soybean meal, feeding oatmeal, cane molasses, vegetable oil, brewers dried yeast, saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation solubles, dl-methionine, calcium carbonate, monocalcium phosphate, dicalcium phosphate, salt, ferrous carbonate, ferrous sulfate, copper sulfate, manganous oxide, manganese sulfate, zinc oxide, zinc sulfate, cobalt carbonate, calcium iodate, sodium selenite, vitamin A supplement, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin supplement, niacin supplement, choline chloride, calcium pantothenate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement.

Guaranteed Analysis:
Crude Protein (min.) 16.00 %, Crude Fat (min.) 2.50 %, Crude Fiber (min.) 16.00 %, Crude Fiber (max.) 21.00 %, Calcium (min.) 0.75 %, Calcium (max.) 1.25 %, Phosphorus (min.) 0.50 %, Salt (min.) 0.25 %, Salt (max.) 0.75 %, Vitamin A (min.) 3,000 IU/lb.

you want to have the protein be at least at 16%, and since rabbit breeders and people who put their rabbits into shows fed their bunnies this food, i figured it was good/safe for me! plus, the price was unbeatable. 

i also wanted to make sure they could drink from a water bottle since it is a foreign object to them. after showing them a few times, they caught on, and that was that! they were now on pellets and a water bottle. MUCH easier on me! haha...i weighed them two more times after this change and their weight was no longer ever a worry. they were gaining weight like champs :) 

the next post is about deciding to keep or release back into the wild.

to keep, or not to keep?

whoopsies...you found some baby bunnies. now what?

i'm going to tell you what every other website has probably told you to do already: let them be. more than likely their mom is still attending to them. the mother will leave the babies during the day, and come back at night to feed them, so she is probably still around.

what you can do to check and make sure though, is to take some string, and make an X over where you found the babies. cover them back up with grass, or whatever was over them to begin with, and make the X with some string on top. the next day, if the string is moved, mom came back at night to take care of her babies. if the string is not moved, she might have abandoned them. you could wait one more night to see, but in our case, the bunnies were getting skinny, and we knew we had to act fast.

the 4 babies were found in our garden while my husband was weeding. we were getting ready to start up our garden again after the winter and luckily, he saw these little babies before raking them!

we did the X trick, but by the next day when it hadn't moved, and we checked on the babies to see how they were doing, they were getting really skinny. we knew we had to bring them in and get some food into them!

in the next blog post, i will talk about what i fed them after doing a ton of research:

feeding baby cottontails