Thursday, February 9, 2012
i put a male with my two female mini rex's 30 days ago. One of them feels really pregnant but has not yet made a nest, and the other doesnt feel pregnant at all, yet she made a perfect nest today. What's going on!? The father is a netherland dwarf, so how many babies will they have?How can I tell if my mini rex rabbit is pregnant or just having a false pregnancy?Well, a lot of rabbits nest anyway, regardless of pregnancy or there even being a male rabbit there at all!
When I was living at home with my parents we used to always have 2 rabbits at a time to keep each other company. Fluffy, used to nest all of the time and Sophie never nested. Just those 2 and no males around, both girls. When Sophie died, Fluffy continued to nest but so did the next rabbit we got, Willow. Again, never a male around so no chance of pregnancy. Buttercup and Schnitzel never made nests and they were both together, in fact we had Buttercup and Daisy (lol) with Willow and only Willow nested.
We used to have a big garden for them to run around in and the funny thing was that although Sophie never nested, she dug the hold for the nest and kept guard whilst Fluffy ran back and forth with fur, grass and straw! None of the others ever did this.
They were all females, the only male rabbit we ever had was the first we had (my dad always kept rabbits growing up, but it was the first that we had once I was born and the first they had in that house).
Don't worry about this kind of behaviour, she may be pregnant or she may just be nesting as it is in her nature to do so, like some of my rabbits.
My advice is though, if you do not know what you are doing, then be very careful as once the bunnies are born, one false move and the mother will eat her babies.
Don't let the male near the females if they are pregnant. Keep them seperate from now on.
Rabbits can have anything from 1-6 bunnies in one litter. It increases with ever litter they have and can be quite dangerous for them if you yourself are inexperienced.
Remember to keep notes on changes in behaviour with each rabbit, take good care of their health as they can go downhill very quickly and it can cost a fortune in vets fees! If they start looking a little unwell, give them some Vitamin C drops in water and that should perk them up a bit. Obviously if it doesn't there is something else, possible more serious, wrong with them.Take note of their ages too and colourings.
On a very serious note, my friend had a rabbit which had a phantom pregnancy, which can happen with any rabbit but if the other is pregant and she is not, it can be more common. Needless to say, rabbits die from phantom pregnancies.
If you love your pets, don't breed them. You could be doing more harm than you know if you don;t know exactly what you are doing! Plus, you need to be very careful housing them afterwards if you are keeping them and you need to be aware of the sexes of the rabbits too from a young age in order top seperate them and give them away if that's what you plan to do.
It is illegal to sell rabbits without a licence and without knowing more about the background. Do you know what breeds your rabbits parents were? What litter were they? How many were there? What about their parents?
You need to know all of this background first or you will only be able to giev them away NOT sell them.
Also, check for any abnormalities within the litters of the parents and parents parents. A rabbit I bought from a reputable pet dealer, was suffering from a brain tumour and died at 1 year old. There was nothing we could do for him. These are the kinds of things you need to check for. They come from inbreeding and for this reason are mainly seen in pure breds.
Pure breds are weaker than mixed breeds so you need to think about this when breeding too.How can I tell if my mini rex rabbit is pregnant or just having a false pregnancy?if she starts pulling her hair out and putting it in the nest, babies are about to come.31 days gestationHow can I tell if my mini rex rabbit is pregnant or just having a false pregnancy?If they got freaky !
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