How is the pregnancy of rabbits
One of the most important questions among those involved in rabbits is: how is the pregnancy of rabbits going? The fact is that on how successful it will be, it will depend on whether the livestock of the farm will increase and how healthy the offspring will be. It is also important to know how you can determine if a rabbit is pregnant, how long the pregnancy lasts, how to give birth and what should be the care of a rabbit after birth.
Pregnancy in rabbits
In order to properly run a house with rabbits, it is important to know the answers to all these questions, only in this case it will make sense to talk about the advisability of a business on rabbits.
Definition of pregnancy
The first thing to look out for are signs that indicate that the rabbit is pregnant. If the mating ended in failure, the answer to the question of why the rabbit does not become pregnant is important. In order to recognize this, you need to try again to plant the rabbit to the male inseminator a week after mating. If she moves away from him, becomes aggressive, then with a high degree of probability it can be argued that the mating was successful and the animal managed to become pregnant.
There is such a thing as a false pregnancy in rabbits, when indirect signs indicate the presence of pregnancy (false), which in fact does not exist. The opposite situation also happens when the female allows herself to be covered while pregnant. In this case, there is a possibility of developing a double pregnancy, which is possible due to the unusual structure of the internal genital organs of rabbits.
There is another method by which you can analyze the direct signs of pregnancy and answer the question of how to find out if a rabbit is pregnant. This method is recommended when at least 14 days have passed since mating. It is necessary to place the rabbit on a flat surface, gently feel her belly and examine it. If pregnancy has come, then you can grope for an enlarged uterine cavity, as well as balls in which future rabbits develop - this will be an obvious symptom and sign of pregnancy. It is important to carry out all manipulations very carefully so as not to harm and not provoke a miscarriage.
It is recommended to study the photo and video lessons on how to determine the pregnancy of a rabbit by means of examination with palpation, then, when carrying out the procedure on your own, it will not be difficult to understand whether the eared offspring will bring.
Usually, the embryos are located symmetrically on the left and right and are determined at this time with a diameter of about 2-3 cm. In shape, these formations can be both round and oval, with external probing, you can feel their soft structure.
How is pregnancy in rabbits
Depending on belonging to a particular breed (meat, decorative, and so on), the duration of bearing rabbits can vary up or down. However, the average gestation period in rabbits is normally between 29 and 37 days.
Most often, prolonged pregnancy occurs in primiparous females. The length of gestation will also vary depending on how many rabbits are in the female's womb. If there are more of them than usual, then most likely they will be born a little earlier. Moreover, the size and weight of newborn pussies will be larger than with normal birth.
In order for the birth to be successful, it is forbidden to expose rabbits to stress during pregnancy. This includes even minimal human intervention: it is recommended not to take the female in your arms, to enter the enclosure less, and so on. This is due to the fact that rabbits belong to the category of fearful animals, and fearfulness in a pregnant female rabbit increases several times. If the rabbit experiences stress, this can provoke not only a miscarriage or premature birth, but even the death of the animal. So if the mom-to-be looks scared, the cause must be identified and eliminated.
To create the most comfortable conditions for the female, you can purchase special cells - queen cells. How are they different from normal cells?
- The walls in them are made of a denser material, which guarantees good sound insulation during the entire stay of the rabbit.
- The entrance to the rabbit's dwelling is only one and rather narrow, it resembles burrows that the eared ones dig in their natural habitat.
It is necessary to properly prepare for the appearance of newborn rabbits. To do this, it is necessary to add flooring in the form of hay to the rabbit house, and also prepare additional boxes where the rabbit can keep her babies.
How is childbirth in rabbits
Usually okrol takes place at night, its duration on average ranges from 15 minutes to one hour. It depends on how numerous the litter is and whether the female has given birth before. If childbirth has been delayed for a longer period, this is a reason to worry and call a veterinarian at home.
After the birth, on average, up to 9 rabbits are born, although there are cases of the birth of only one rabbit or a whole horde.
After all the rabbits have left the mother's womb, the afterbirth should come out, which must be left to the woman in labor to be eaten. Its chemical composition includes many vitamins and minerals that the female needs so much.
After eating the afterbirth, the rabbit takes care of her babies: she licks each one and carefully transfers it to the newly made nest, which she herself made the day before from the litter and her own fluff from the abdomen.
This is a description of the standard rounding move, if it is not complicated by anything.
Possible problems after okrol
A deviation from the norm is the situation when the rabbit did not make a nest and did not drag the rabbits there. Then the farmer needs to immediately pull it out of the mother liquor and make the nest on his own. In this case, you will need rabbit fluff - you should pluck it yourself from the female's abdomen. You will also have to make a nest for rabbits yourself. After everything is ready, you can return the female to the baby's cage. In this case, all manipulations must be carried out strictly with gloves.
If after that the maternal instinct does not manifest itself, you can try the second option. Sometimes the mating carried out at such a moment awakens maternal instincts in the rabbit - she begins to take care of the pussies again and feeds them with milk. Even if this feeding is not constant, you can add the rabbits to her for feeding several times a day, then take them back to the cage, while providing them with sufficient warmth with heating pads.
If none of the above options work, you can distribute the babies to other lactating females.However, you need to choose those females who have a calm disposition and good behavior. This is important as there is a chance that babies will be bitten. It is recommended to put them on the first feeding and check how successful the replanting was, observing how the foster mother behaves. It is believed that she will finally accept them when the smell of the biological mother disappears completely.
Why does the rabbit eat her cubs
Everyone has probably heard of cannibalism among rabbits. Among the most common reasons for this behavior are the following:
- physiological pathologies;
- insufficient nutrition of the female or a sharp transition from one type of food to another;
- lack of water throughout the rabbit's pregnancy;
- long and difficult labor process;
- false pregnancy in rabbits the day before;
- nipple injuries.
Nipple injuries cause considerable discomfort to the female. On examination, you can find bloody marks, scratches and even teeth marks, to the touch, the skin around it becomes hard and loses its elasticity.
Most often, nipple injuries are inflicted on rabbits, eagerly trying to get enough breast milk as quickly as possible. However, there is another reason: the milk appeared too early, even before the birth of the rabbits. By the time of birth, the breast is filled with milk, the nipples become rough and when feeding the offspring, the female experiences incredible pain.
How is the postpartum period
After the female has reproduced all the rabbits, it is necessary to dispose of those babies who were born dead, and also to analyze the condition of all living ones. If there are weak individuals in the litter, then they should be closely monitored. Usually, a week after birth, they have to be relocated to a separate cage, where a person is already engaged in nursing them. Or they are placed next to another nursing rabbit. The fact is that there is natural selection: the rabbit can get rid of weak cubs on her own by eating them.
If a decision is made to add the rabbits to another female, it is worth choosing the most calm one so that she accepts other people's cubs and does not treat them aggressively. If there are no other nursing mothers among rabbits, you should not try to replace mother's milk with cow's or goat's milk: its composition does not allow it to become a full-fledged substitute for the diet. There is only one option left - this is artificial feeding of babies with the help of infant formula, which women buy for their children.
To prepare the formula for feeding, you will need water at room temperature and dry infant formula for the little ones. Food must be prepared according to the instructions on the package, after which it is advisable to feed it to babies. For feeding, you will need a bottle with a nipple: so the rabbit will just need to drink its contents. In the first 2 weeks, you will have to deal with feeding the cubs twice a day, after which they begin to gradually accustom him to adult food. At one time, a small rabbit drinks on average about 40 ml of the mixture.
When you can remove the cubs from the mother
If a rabbit responsibly feeds her cubs and takes good care of them, sooner or later the question will arise when the cubs should be removed from her and when she will be ready for the next round.
If the rabbits do not have deviations in physical development, it is not worth jigging before one month: there is no point in this. Usually, by this time, the rabbit stops feeding them milk, and the animals are ready to switch to an adult diet. By this time, the weight of one month-old calf is about 700 g.
As for the rearing of broiler rabbits (raised for meat), the deposition from the mother is carried out later: not earlier than two months. Moreover, their average weight is 1.5 kg.After weaning broiler chicks from their mother, it is necessary to carefully sort by sex and weight and, based on the results obtained, to settle the animals in cages.
As for the answer to the question when the female will be ready for the next mating, the figure may vary. It is worth starting from the fact that about 4-6 births per calendar year is considered the norm, it is extremely undesirable to exceed this figure, otherwise it will negatively affect both the health of the rabbit and the quality of the offspring.