What to feed a rabbit after birth
During the period of gestation, the female rabbits need specific care. Also, after the birth, in order for the rabbit to have milk, it is necessary to provide her with a sufficient balanced diet. Rabbits are animals that are not easy to breed because of their painfulness and finicky food. Before many breeders, the question often arises of how to feed the rabbit after birth.
How to feed a rabbit after birth
Case
It is best to mate in the morning during the summer. It is the female that is planted to the male, and not vice versa. First, the feeder and drinker should be removed from the cage. Immediately after the end of the process, you need to plant the female in a separate cage. If it did not work out to bring the pair together, then the female is placed next to the male again, and, preferably, to another one.
When mating is done, care must be taken to ensure that mating takes place. After 5 days, a control mating is carried out. If the female stopped letting the rabbit go, then the first mating was successful. Fulfillment is checked by probing the female's abdomen. In a pregnant rabbit, the back of the abdomen is denser.
The procedure is performed 10-12 days after mating. At this moment, the uterine horns are already enlarged and are gradually filled with fluid in which the embryos are located. On palpation, you can also feel the embryos, they are like grapes, elastic oval in shape.
Gestation period
A rabbit can give healthy offspring if she was provided with all the necessary nutrients for the entire period of gestation and was kept in comfortable conditions. It is necessary to calculate the diet in such a way that the microelements are enough not only for the mother's body, but also for the embryos for full development. In order to change feeding tactics in time, you need to know how to determine pregnancy in your rabbit.
The female reaches sexual maturity at 5-6 months, depending on the characteristics of the breed. The gestation period is about a month, the period for the most part depends on the number of offspring. Naturally, you should watch the animal very closely in order to understand how soon small rabbits will appear.
Often, without consulting a veterinarian, it is not possible to determine the presence of pregnancy. After fertilization, the rabbits become nervous, try to hide, and are often frightened. Bunnies even have miscarriages due to stress. After successful fertilization, the female will not admit the male and hide from him in another corner of the cage. Already at 1.5 weeks, you can feel embryos in the rabbit's tummy, at three weeks the movement of babies in the womb is clearly noticeable.
Diet during pregnancy
Feeding the expectant mother needs more nutritious food. It is necessary to introduce protein, and increase the amount of feed by 220 g. It is important that the rabbit has free access to clean water. About seven days before rounding, silage, greens and roughage are excluded from the diet.Instead, the amount of cereal concentrate mixtures is increased.
For the normal development of rabbits and maintaining the health of the rabbits, you must also enter:
- salt;
- eggshells fried in the oven and then crushed;
- omega3 fatty acids found in fish oil;
- a piece of chalk.
An important nuance in changing the diet is the age of the woman in labor. If this is a young rabbit, then her body will still be at the developmental stage, even with rabbits inside, so her diet will be strikingly different from that of an adult female. A young individual should be fed 20% more feed than an adult female. Often, a new pregnancy is combined with breastfeeding, in which case the feeding will also be different. At this time, the female needs to add 350 g of feed.
Protein is added 18 g for every 100 g of feed. How to feed a rabbit before birth:
- fortified supplements 20%;
- greens in the form of meadow grass 10%;
- dried herb 43%;
- grain mixture 45%.
Dry branches are introduced into the diet to improve the functioning of the digestive system. You should not overfeed the animal, otherwise it will cause obesity. Gaining weight leads to an increased risk of giving birth to rabbits with low survival rates.
Diet in the postpartum period
In order for the animal to keep good shape and easily withstand the period of feeding small cubs, you need to know how to feed the rabbit after the birth. The diet of a newly-minted mother is a guarantee of the health of her baby.
Experienced farmers say that you need to feed the rabbit after the rounding with more nutritious feed. Because her body must regenerate and still gain strength to feed offspring. Okrol time most often falls at night or early morning. Duration about 25 minutes. After giving birth, the rabbit must be drunk with clean water. The milk begins to arrive immediately after the rounding. For good lactation, the female needs to be given herbs, such as:
- alfalfa;
- vegetable tops;
- clover;
- spurge;
- vegetables.
The rabbit menu should contain fortified mash of various additives, dried grass, oats and bran. Almost the same is added to the feed as during gestation. It is also necessary to feed the rabbit after childbirth abundantly. When the rabbits are 2.5 weeks old, they are already starting to eat a little adult food, so milk powder is added to the mother's food. Average daily diet of a female weighing 5 kg in the postpartum period:
- the first day - 330 g of feed;
- up to 20 days - 440 g;
- up to 30 days - 560g;
- before weaning of rabbits from mother's milk - 700g.
How to improve lactation?
To improve lactation, you need to provide the rabbit with the necessary care. The meal plan will depend on the amount of milk. Very often in lambing rabbits, there is a lack of milk. This may be due to the age of the women in labor, the number of births, and an insufficiently balanced diet. The average milk production in a rabbit per day is 200 g.
To improve lactation, you need to stock up on barley, alfalfa, oats and corn. You can give herbs that stimulate milk production: fennel, elecampane, parsley. Such herbs should be strictly dosed, otherwise the esters in them can have a detrimental effect on the female and her offspring. It is also necessary to feed the females with silage and succulent root crops. It is not recommended to give rabbits milk to drink, this does not improve lactation, but digestive problems may appear.
Increasing lactation with drugs
Another way to increase lactation is medications. For example, the hormone oxytocin is used, which causes an increase in lactation through uterine contractions. After using it, milk appears within 24 hours.
The use of oxytocin does not guarantee lactation. If all else fails, you need to attach the rabbits to the nursing rabbits or feed them yourself from a pipette.It is very important to ensure that only those born are fed on the first day.
How to feed females during the cold season
In winter, it is much more expensive to feed the rabbits together with the offspring than in the summer. In summer, various herbs can be obtained without problems, but in winter you will have to be content with hay. Nevertheless, the rabbit's diet can be perfectly varied in the cold season. In winter, before giving birth, the diet should regularly include: hay, roots, boiled potatoes, cereals, bran, cake.
Specialty stores sell supplements that rabbits need to put in their food to restore balance. You can increase the amount of compound feed from cereals. When the rabbits are born in the rabbit's menu, it is necessary to introduce hay from forbs, high-quality silage. It is recommended to avoid legumes, as the female may have gastrointestinal problems.
Conclusion
Breeding rabbits is quite troublesome. However, their meat is valued for its high taste, and gourmets are not stopped by the complexity. In the breeding of any pets, living conditions and a balanced diet play an important role. Every farmer should know how to properly maintain and feed a lambing rabbit.
Before changing the composition of the diet, it is necessary to learn how to determine the fertility. The mating is usually carried out in the summer, in the morning. After the first fertilization, after five days, a second mating should be carried out. The first sign that the mating was successful will be that the female will not let the rabbit close to her.
Already on the 12th day, you can conduct an examination by palpation. The back of the abdomen will be firmer than usual. During this period, you can already grope for embryos. On average, the gestation period lasts about a month. Timing will vary depending on the breed of rabbits and the number of rabbits in the womb. Once pregnancy has been determined, feed the rabbits more food.
It is imperative to include vitamin complexes in the diet, as well as foods high in calcium and proteins. It is not recommended to feed the rabbits with legume tops as this can cause bloating. In addition to increased feeding during gestation, you should take care of a balanced diet after childbirth. During lactation, the body will spend much more strength and energy, so you need to increase the amount of feed again.
It is not recommended to give rabbits fresh milk to increase the amount of milk. From calcium-containing products, it is better to introduce sour milk or dry milk. In order for rabbits to have more milk, you can give them herbs, like fennel and parsley, but this should be done following a clear scheme, otherwise the enzymes contained in them can have a detrimental effect on the health of babies and mothers.