rabbits. my girlfriend has two rabbits, male and female. they had 3 babies last month. i died, 2 lived. she immediately put the male and female mama and poppa in separate cages at our apartment. then last night, momma starts getting all nervous in her cafe and biting her chest hair off, a sure sign she is preparing a nest, but who and how did she get preggers again? there was no copulation with papa since the last litter. so how? and this: the new litter was 3 kids again, two survived, but a third, the momma began eating its back leg – EATING – and it was indeed strange. what makes a rabbit eat its own young? of course, the bunny died in the middle of the night, and I think he she was too weak to make it anyway, maybe momma knew it wouldn’t make it? anybody with rabbits know what this means? and most important, how did the she momma get pregnant again if there was no copy? can a second pregnancy happen a month later?
Method 1: Boy rabbit puts his tally waker into girl rabbit’s forest and then they move around for a couple of minutes.
Result: baby bunnies after a while
Method 2: Formosa gets drunk and lonely one night and seeks comfort in rabbit cage
Result: Little bunnies believing an epidemic has broken out and keep saying " the end is nigh"
:mrgreen:
The same thing happened with my hamsters, had one litter, I didn’t remove the father then because I read somewhere he helps. 2 weeks later, yet another litter, but they did not survive, I guess the mother couldn’t look after 2 litters at once.
Rabbits breed like, well, rabbits. And I guess they can get pregnant straight away like hamsters. How do you know they didn’t “you know” ? The only way to stop them is to put them in seperate cages.
Thanks, everyone. I think I understand what happened now. After the first litter was born, the couple threw them out of the cage, so for one day we took care of them ourselves. Then I read on the Internet some stuff about best to give them back to Mom, so we did, but in that one day, I guess Poppa got it on again with Momma, and that must have been the day it happened. We were so surprised when suddenly last weekend, Momma starts pulling all her hair out, building a nest, and I am wondering why: suddenly, in the middle night, a kind of Christmas birth, three more bunnies, but mum ate one of them. Now everyone is doing okay but I am thinking of putting them ALL in separate cages in order to keep order in the household. Rabbits! Cute, but … trouble. It was not my idea to raise rabbits but now that we’ve got 'em, it’s interesting. i just wish they could talk. They never talk.
You need to keep the babies with the mother until they are old enough (I don’t know how old this is, you’ll have to look it up) But you do need to put the father in a seperate cage by himself. When the babies are old enough, take out any boys and put them with the dad. Hopefully the dad will accept him. Sexing pre-prubesent hamsters is tricky but possible, rabbits probably are too.
All this is from my experience with hamsters. But rabbits are just big hamsters.
You said: “she immediately put the male and female mama and poppa in separate cages”
Why? Because she (your girlfriend) saw baby rabbits…which means she moved the male after the babies were born. Which means the male and female were together after the babies were born.
Just because you didn’t see them breeding, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
You asked “what makes a rabbit eat its own young?”
Stress…like living in an apartment in Taiwan.
Rabbits can be spayed, or neutered, and are healthier after this.
Does anyone have any experience of making rabbit hutches? Or bird houses, for that matter. I know nothing about woodwork. Perhaps you’d like to share your skills.
? The only way to stop them is to put them in seperate cages.