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Understanding Baby Rabbits
Baby rabbits are born with their eyes shut and completely furless. Mother rabbits feed their babies once a day, maybe twice, for about 5-10 minutes. Most of the time, the mother rabbit will wait until the first night to feed the babies. Usually mealtime is between midnight and 5am. The nourishing milk sustains the babies for 24 hours.
People assume that this behaviour is due to the mother not wanting to leading predators to the nest.
Breeders usually check the kits the following day because the mother will be away from the nest. If she isn’t they give her treats to distract her. They look to see of their bellies are round, if they are that means they have been fed. Mother bunnies will take excellent care of her babies, but rarely she may abandon or ignore them, this could be because the baby is sick, or terminal and there is nothing she can do.
Father bunnies are gentle with their offspring. The only reason to separate him away is because the mother can become pregnant again within hours of kindling. The male should be housed where he can see the babies, and be able to nuzzle his mate through a physical barrier. Separating him may be stressful, because he will have a very strong bond with his mate and the babies.
If you get the male neutered, he can still have viable fertile sperm for up to 3 weeks after the operation, and that is why it is important to keep him separated from her for a minimum of 3 weeks.
Female rabbits can be speyed a few weeks after the babies are weaned. That way the little family can be together and care for each other.
Kittens start producing their own caecotrophs at about 3 weeks old. That’s when they can start nibbling on solid food, hay and grass. They also start exploring outside the nest. They will play, run around, sniff new smells and you may even see baby-binkies. They should be happy to try any new foods that are offered.By about 5-6 weeks of age, the babies should be fully weaned and on dry foods like hay and pellets. Both parents should be kept nearby, and have time with the babies. The larger babies can be removed into a neighbouring pen, and the smaller ones left with the mother for a few days. Gradually remove the kits as they get bigger to limit the mothers stress. That way, when they are rehomed, they are used to being by themselves. It’s very stressful for the parents and kits if they are taken straight from the mother and rehomed.
Early Life Experiences
A rabbit’s behaviour is largely influenced by its first few weeks of life. Breeders suggest that rabbits must be ‘socialised’ with humans during this time, objects and routines should be set. Rabbits at an early age who are well ‘socialised’ have proven to be more comfortable and able to cope with new situations later in life more confidently.
It is a good idea to introduce young rabbits to other animals to ‘socialise’ them. Never leave young rabbits with cats or dogs, even if they are familiar with each other.
Once the rabbit has found a new home, the new owners should continue to introduce it to new sights, sounds, smells, objects and animals. It should always have a place to rest and have ‘rabbit alone time’.
New situations for young rabbits should always be relaxed and pleasant, which will give the rabbit time to investigate.
The New Owner
It is up to the new owner to set new routines and uphold them. Once your rabbit learns that you care and love it just like it’s parents did, it will accept you as its new family. Your rabbit will bond with you better if you are like a mother bunny. Feed it once a day, pat it, play with it and care for it by introducing it to new sensations.
Once you realise how important you are to your rabbit, your understanding of how they learn will change.
Understanding a Rabbit Family Unit
Scientists have studied how the family unit effects kittens, they had four groups of kittens:
- Group 1: family unit, with 5 kits, a doe and a buck
- Group 2: 5 kits with a doe
- Group 3: 5 kits with a buck
- Group 4: 5 kits without parents
They concluded that a family unit of rabbits, with the doe (mother) and buck (father) present, the kittens learn much more and are more comfortable with learning new things.
They noticed that the even though the doe leaves the tiny kits alone during the day in the nest, the buck nuzzles them and grooms them, he licks their bottoms to keep them clean, he makes sure that they don’t have digestion issues, and if they do, which is rare, he rolls them over and makes them move around to get their guts to start moving again. He spends a lot of time with them, he makes sure they are safe, warm and remain in the nest.
Compared to Group 2, the kits are left alone in the nest all day to fend for themselves. They can move out of the nest and are sometimes not found until it’s too late. When the doe returns, the kit may have died due to the severe temperature change. If the kit is too sick, she will leave it there, because she cannot revive it. Scientists noticed that she will nuzzle the kit and try her best to get it back in the nest if there is a chance of it surviving. On the flip side, if there is an internal issue with a kit that it won’t survive, it is the doe who will push the kit’s body from the nest.
Group 3 had human interaction with feeding, but the kits were left in the nest with the buck. This made highly sociable kittens, because they get the human contact and the education from the buck. Due to the kits being fed formula, their guts functioned differently compared to rich doe’s milk, so the buck was continually rolling them over to keep their guts working. Even though this was unnecessary, the buck knew they weren’t fed with natural milk.
Group 4 had no parental contact. This meant the kittens had 100% human contact from day one. These kittens, even though grew to be highly sociable, they had gut problems due to being fed formula. They had a lower amount of gut acidity than required due to the formula. Once they started eating solid food, the acidity level settled.
Knowing all of this, it shows that baby rabbits have a better upbringing if they have a tight family unit with a doe and buck. They learn particular things from their mother, and other things from their father.
Learning: Where it starts
Rabbits are smart, and like a human baby, learn through play and experience. That means they learn pretty fast if they want to. You, as the trainer have to remain methodical, logical, and keep the learning fun. But we are not going to talk about training rabbits, that’s in another article, here we are gong to talk about how they learn.
Like any good father, the buck will keep the babies in line and teach them right from wrong, all before their first month of life. This sets the foundations of how the babies will learn for the rest of their lives.
If the kits don’t have their father to teach them, which is now 99% of domestic rabbit cases (because breeders don’t bond the rabbits together first), they rely on their mother to teach them life skills. However, mothers teach their babies different skills to what the buck would teach. They teach the things like how to be careful and not get hurt, clean themselves, use the litter box, grooming, what to eat, how to play, what to look out for and how to be calm.
You can tell if your rabbit didn’t spend much time with its mother, because it will struggle being litter trained and be messy (but they can be taught). A rabbit who has spent a lot of time with their mother will be able to bond with other rabbits and be generally happier.
Rabbits who grew up with a lot of siblings, learn to share, take turns and are very observant.
Heredity
People who study rabbit behaviour have discovered that rabbits are passed essential learnings from grandparents, and even further back. So if a grandparent experienced, for example, something traumatic, that fear and stress response is passed to children and grandchildren etc. Like typical genetics, some kits will display that fear, and others won’t, but it can appear a few generations further down the line. That means some rabbit behaviours are hereditary and not learned. The people studying the heredity behaviour traits are now working on isolating these down so they can separate species-specific and learned behaviours.
Species-specific behaviours are those that only that species does (like rabbits flick their tails, or purr using their teeth). Learned behaviours are those that are learned either through heredity (macro-learning) or self-learned (micro-learning).
How They Tick
Rabbits are resource driven. They love having resources and if they miss out on a resource they get jealous or confused.
What is a resource?
Domestic rabbits have a relatively small world. They have their pen, tunnels, food, bowls, water, blankets, beds, toys, litter box and people. All of these are resources. Rabbits hold each one of these things with importance and if something is wrong or missing, they will let you know.
A rabbit’s belongings are important to a rabbit.
When you train a rabbit, they say that you should give it a treat to let the rabbit know that it achieved the result you wanted. From the rabbit’s perspective you are magical because you have the resource of life. You are the ruler of the food and your bun will do whatever it takes for you to share it. Food is a resource. Food is good.
Resources aren’t always physical items, it can also be a pat, cuddle or snuggle. Rabbits see this as you grooming them, and that means you are the mystical caregiver of love. If you spend more time patting or cuddling one rabbit than another, the one missing out will get jealous. That rabbit will show that by running away from you, flicking its tail and staring at you from a distance.
Rabbits wear their heart on their sleeve.
Putting it all together
Rabbits learn how to learn when they are babies. Their interactions with other rabbits teach them the rabbity-traits they have for the rest of their lives. Once they move to their adoptive home, their human needs to teach them all the skills they need to live a happy adult bunny life, within the rules of the household. Kind of like a father rabbit where he teaches them the rules of rabbit society, the human has to take on that role with creating routines, providing love, care and resources.