My rabbit gave birth and they all died

[Chikensoops]

So about 4 days ago, I saw a little pink thing poking out my rabbit’s cage. It was a newborn baby! But when I checked closer, the mom was eating the babies. I was really sad and got angry at my rabbit, but I was kind of confused. Rabbit usually give birth to 6 or 7, while now only 2. So then I just I left it, until the next day. Another one was born! And the mom wasn’t eating it. I quickly put them both in a big cage and was just watching them. It was night and I was sleepy, so I gonna go to bed, but then my dad called me and said that 4 more babies came out. So now there are 5 babies. So I got really excited and was just watching them until like 3 am. The next day I was just doing regular stuff and everything was fine, until I saw one of the babies was being attacked by the mom and was bleeding. I took them all out and realised 1 was missing. 4 left. 1 of them was hurt really badly, it’s liver was popping out of its skin. I took it to the doctor and the doctor fixed it up, and told me it’s fine, and separate them from their mom. So I did. But hours later, it died. Probably from blood loss. The doctor couldn’t do anything since it was still a baby and can’t take a syringe yet. 3 left. I fed them milk every 1.5 hours and I thought that it would be good enough, since the doctor said every 2 hours, but somehow, they were skinny. I kept doing this, but then suddenly one just, stopped moving. Its body was cold. Another one died. 2 left. Just yesterday, one of them was gasping for air and stretching a lot and I don’t know why, so I thought it was just hungry, so I fed it. But then the milk started to overflow and come out through its nose. That’s when I realised that it was actually choking on something. Ai couldn’t do anything. I tried to pump its chest to try to get it out, but it was too late. It died. 1 left. It died this morning for unknown reasons. I woke up and checked on it, dead. Well I hope that wasn’t too much for you. After all this, I decided to not get rabbits anymore. They are far too violent. I have already raised 3  generations of rabbits for 5 years now, and I have to say, they are killers. 

[RejZoR]

Hamsters and guinea pigs also do this. Usually it's recommended to give mama a lot of food and water. I don't think it's quite known why they do this, but supposedly plenty food and water should steer them away from doing that. The little ones depend on mama bunny entirely when so small so you can't really do much. You can't separate them because of this dependency and you can really only give her a lot of food and hope for the best.

[mariushm]

Moral of the story is you should do more research about what you own, especially if you say you raised rabbits for 5 years now. 

This is something you should have known. 

 

Literally one of the first results on Google :  https://www.rabbitcaretips.com/how-to-stop-a-rabbit-from-eating-her-babies/

 

It's a long article with plenty of tips, not gonna paste it here.  

All I'm gonna say is that this should have been the first thing to read after seeing the first baby rabbit being eaten. 

 

 

[Chikensoops]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

Moral of the story is you should do more research about what you own, especially if you say you raised rabbits for 5 years now. 

This is something you should have known. 

 

Literally one of the first results on Google :  https://www.rabbitcaretips.com/how-to-stop-a-rabbit-from-eating-her-babies/

 

It's a long article with plenty of tips, not gonna paste it here.  

All I'm gonna say is that this should have been the first thing to read after seeing the first baby rabbit being eaten. 

 

 

Actually I did read that, I didn’t have any hay available, but I did have some grass and pellets with alfalfa in them. I couldn’t tell if my rabbit was even pregnant since it was just very, very fat. I also couldn’t control who it mated with. I actually saw it mating with its own son, which I know could cause fatal incest mutations, but I was too late when I saw it.

[dalekphalm]

8 hours ago, Chikensoops said:

Actually I did read that, I didn’t have any hay available, but I did have some grass and pellets with alfalfa in them. I couldn’t tell if my rabbit was even pregnant since it was just very, very fat. I also couldn’t control who it mated with. I actually saw it mating with its own son, which I know could cause fatal incest mutations, but I was too late when I saw it.

Has your rabbit ever had a litter before, or is this her first?

 

You *can* control whether the rabbit mates or not. If this distresses you, and you can't take her doing it again, you need to get your rabbit spayed by a Vet.

[Monkey Dust]

8 hours ago, Benji said:

Going from the horrible story of cannibalistic rabbit mama to incestuous stories. Wow, this thread is really something.

Rabbit Game of Thrones. Even has a disappointing ending.

[Energycore]

8 hours ago, Benji said:

Going from the horrible story of cannibalistic rabbit mama

A lot of animals eat their children when they're scared / feel like they won't be able to raise the entire litter. Death is the most normal thing in the world.

 

It's not pretty, but that's life.

[Energycore]

Just now, Benji said:

Indeed. Thank God my cat didn't do that

Still not the kind of topic I'd want to see or even expected to see, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was educated to spay EVERY pet (every mammal that's bigger than or equal to a guinea pig at least).

 

The reason being a) They'll live milder, less stressful lives (this is the case with dogs and cats)

b) You don't want to add to the population of feral animals, and most people will end up doing that if their pets have a litter because I'm not gonna lie, unless you were planning it along, it's a mini moment of crisis for the family lol

[Chikensoops]

14 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Has your rabbit ever had a litter before, or is this her first?

This is her 3rd. First ones, 4 were born, everyone survived except one that died when a rat broke through the cage. Second ones, 5 were born, only 1 survived. The rest were also killed by a rat attack, and were also born prematurely.

[dalekphalm]

11 hours ago, Chikensoops said:

This is her 3rd. First ones, 4 were born, everyone survived except one that died when a rat broke through the cage. Second ones, 5 were born, only 1 survived. The rest were also killed by a rat attack, and were also born prematurely.

If she didn't try and eat the babies the first 2 times, then there's likely some kind of environmental factor this time that is seriously stressing her out. Lack of nutrition possibly. Perhaps she feels scared/unsafe in her habitat.

 

I would still massively recommend you spay/neuter her and any other remaining rabbits.

[12345678]

On 6/3/2021 at 6:41 PM, Energycore said:

A lot of animals eat their children when they're scared / feel like they won't be able to raise the entire litter. Death is the most normal thing in the world.

 

It's not pretty, but that's life.

some also do that to get rid of corpses

since they would decay