This is Celtus. He’s the dad of the two babies I’m going to tell you about:
Athena is a Holland Lop doe that was bred to Celtus. She had two babies, and produced lots of milk for her newborns. Way too much, in fact. The two kits were so overfed that they could not turn themselves over! Overfed kits are at risk for problems, including splay legs and growing larger as adults. How can we help them?
overfed newborn baby rabbit kits
The solution was simple–foster more kits to Athena so the two babies can’t get all the milk. Luckily, Kasey had a litter just a few days older, so two of Kasey’s babies moved in with Athena. After just one day sharing mama with two of Kasey’s kits, the babies are doing much better. They can even turn themselves over now. But you can see that Athena’s five-day old black kits are as big as Kasey’s kits, who are three days older.
Baby Holland Lops. The torts are about a week old and the blacks are three days younger.
You can really tell the difference that three days makes in these young bunnies. Kasey’s babies look much more alert, although all four babies have their eyes open. Kasey’s tortoiseshell’s are 16 days old and Athena’s black kits are 13 days old.
These sweet young lop rabbits are growing fast!
These babies are now 2 weeks, 5 days old. They are in their cutest stage and are very healthy. Their ears aren’t quite long enough to flop, but they are starting to eat solid food now.
Just under three weeks old, and triple cute
Now three weeks and five days old, these two are definitely looking like bunnies!
Look at the fat cheeks on these bunnies!
Here they are at about five weeks. Unfortunately, their cage neighbor bit both of their noses. One is a buck and one is a doe. I think that both might be larger; the buck is 14 oz. and the doe is 1.01 lbs. already. The size might partly be due to the early overfeeding.
Lop eared black baby rabbits at five weeks
Boy, have they grown since last week! The noses on these babies are healing very nicely. They look to both be large rabbits. They will be six weeks old in two days. The bunny on the left has an interesting curl to his ears. Holland lop rabbits’ ears start to lop at about this stage, from four to six weeks old, though it can take much longer.
Six weeks old now!
At seven weeks, the bites on their noses have healed, but left white scars. I think that their potential show careers are over before they began. But they can still make nice pets!
At weaning age now.
