Blog Entry 8- Oh Baby
Sometimes you can’t avoid the inevitable. Rabbits are going to have babies, and that’s just the way things are. That’s why at the shelter we take in babies and moms. Baby rabbits come in a lot, most of the time without their mom. Sometimes they come in when they’re old enough to survive on their own and other times they still need their mother. If a mom comes in with baby rabbits, it takes longer to get the mother adopted because she needs to raise her young for several months. There is the option of sending them to rescue or getting them into foster care but sometimes that’s just not possible. Baby rabbits are really cute at any age, and they aren’t as afraid of humans as adult rabbits. We usually don’t promote adopting baby rabbits until they get older because their personalities aren’t fully developed yet and are less predictable in what temperament problems they will develop as they get older. Usually people want to adopt babies which is a mistake to underestimate the older rabbits.
The most famous case that I can recall was when six babies came into the shelter with two adult females. At first, everything seemed normal, but the babies seemed a bit anxious and so did one of the females. She had pretty big swollen mammary glands (breasts) and nipples, so Daisy and I put that female in with the six babies and something I have never seen before and probably will never see again occurred. Usually baby rabbits only feed from their mother at dusk and dawn but since these babies had not had their mother’s milk for a long time, they began feeding from her the moment she went into the cage. The babies started suckling from their mom’s breasts. We named the mom Demeter after the goddess of the harvest. There were three boys and three girls. We named the three boys Peridot, Fergus, and Eskimo. The girls were named Merida, Persephone, and Ella. The babies grew rapidly over the coming weeks and eventually the mom and babies were rescued together by Santa Barbara Buns, a rescue for rabbits and other small animals. Fergus was probably my favorite out of the baby bunch, because he was pretty outgoing with humans and he had a cute little personality that always made him stand out from the rest.
Although they went off to rescue, I’ll never forget them. They taught me what baby rabbits and mother rabbits are like together. I learned a lot about them and their behavior. Demeter was a good mom who allowed others humans to interact with her babies without being aggressive. It’s important to know about mothers and babies for the rare occasion we get both of them in the shelter at the same time and how to take care of them properly.
