How Much Baby Rabbits Are Born When the Female Gives Birth
Chapter 8: The rabbit
Unit of measurement 66: Convenance and feeding rabbits
Unit of measurement 67: Health issues of rabbits
Unit 66: Breeding and feeding rabbits
Rabbits are easy to house, cheap to feed and produce a very good quality meat.
One male rabbit (buck) and two females (does) given care and good feeding, volition produce more than 50 rabbits a year. This ways you can sell or swallow almost i rabbit every calendar week of the year.
Learning objectives
After studying this unit you should know:
1 Breeding rabbits.
2 Care of young rabbits.
3 Housing (hutches) for rabbits.
iv Feed and water for rabbits.
5 Uses of rabbits.
Breeding rabbits
The female rabbit (doe) does not come into estrus (heat) equally practise other animals. The doe will accept the male (buck) at whatever time of the yr.
Does are mature and can breed at 5 to half-dozen months of age and can go on to have young for 4 years.
The length of pregnancy in the rabbit is 31 days and the doe tin can produce from 1 to 12 young each time she gives birth. She tin go pregnant once again inside a few days of giving nascence. Nonetheless information technology is non good practice to allow the doe to become pregnant straight after giving nativity. Information technology is better to mate the doe when her young (litter) are 4 weeks erstwhile so that they are eight weeks onetime when the next litter is born. In this way i doe can produce 6 litters a twelvemonth.
Two weeks after mating yous can feel the young through the side of the doe's belly.
Male person rabbit (buck)
Traditionally people go along all their rabbits together. However it is advisable to keep the buck separate from the does and do non go on bucks together as they will fight. The doe must be taken to the buck for mating and then returned to her identify. A buck tin can be used until he is 7 years old. If you have large numbers of rabbits together use one cadet with every 15 does.
Giving nativity and care of the young rabbit
The doe needs a nest in which to give nascency. She will line the nest with her fur. Do non check the immature until the day after birth and do non touch on them with your hand. Use a stick to gently touch them when checking and remove whatsoever that are dead. They are blind until the eyes open at ten days of age.
Get out the immature rabbits with the mother. They can be killed for meat from iii months of age.
Sexing rabbits (knowing the sex)
Knowing what sex the young rabbits are is of import because y'all may want to keep the does and sell or kill the bucks. To sex young animals you look at the area beneath the anus. In old bucks the scrotum tin can clearly be seen.
Sexing rabbits (knowing the sex)
Feeding rabbits
You tin can buy gear up-mixed rabbit feed (pellets) fabricated from grain, plants, minerals and vitamins. Notwithstanding this may exist expensive or not available. Rabbits can be fed the following:
· Vegetables such equally carrots, carbohydrate beet, manger beet, parsnip, swede, turnip, potato and other root vegetables· Green leaves
· Grains such as oats, wheat, barley and maize
· Dry staff of life
· The waste skins or tops of vegetables from the kitchen
· Dry out sunflower heads (the rabbit will swallow the seed)
· Young branches from trees such equally acacia
· Bran mash (bran is produced from the milling of wheat or rice)
Feeding during the dry out season
Every bit with other animals you must think about what to feed rabbits during the dry out flavour. The following tin provide for dry out season feeding:
· Hay, preferably from green leafy plants. Bind the plants into bundles and hang them to dry out in the wind but avert putting them in the straight dominicus. This type of hay is preferable to that fabricated from lord's day-dried grasses (see Unit 23).· Carrots, beetroot, turnips and other root vegetables can be kept for a long time in dry sand in a bin, barrel or wooden box. Adapt the vegetables in layers separated by dry sand and comprehend the summit with a layer of straw. Another way to continue root vegetables is to place the vegetables in layers with harbinger between them. The whole pile is covered with straw and and then globe. Exit a small hole at the top for ventilation
Feeding during the dry season
Eating the droppings (faeces)
Rabbits produce both hard and soft droppings. It is natural for the rabbit to swallow the soft droppings it produces because they contain nutrients and water. When the soft droppings pass through the gut for a second time the nutrients and water can be captivated (taken into the body). The debris produced then will exist difficult.
Water for rabbits
A supply of drinking water is necessary at all times. A suitable water drinker tin be made from any plastic bottle. Make ane or 2 holes in the bottom of the cleaned bottle, fill it with water and screw on the top. Identify this in a shallow container. This could exist used for water for chickens too.
Water for rabbits
Housing rabbits
A small wooden house (hutch) will exist sufficient for a buck. You lot can brand hutches to contain more than than one rabbit. The hutch must be clean, dry out and well ventilated.
Recall that rabbits can be difficult to keep in runs (fenced areas) as they will couch downwards and under a fence and escape. They can be kept in enclosed areas if the fencing material is partly cached to stop them burrowing under information technology.
Housing rabbits
Nesting box
This is nix more than a cardboard or wooden box or fifty-fifty a basket. It is open up simply at the top so the mother cannot take the young out of the nest. The nest box should be lined with hay. By the time they are 3 weeks old the young will come out of the nest themselves.
Nesting box
Uses of rabbits
Rabbit meat contains piffling fatty. It is white in color and is very nutritious every bit it contains a lot of poly peptide. Like a craven, one rabbit volition provide enough meat for a family meal.
Some breeds of rabbit accept long hair which is nerveless and spun to give wool for vesture. Rabbit skins tin be dried and treated to give good pelts (skins with fur) to be used in clothing and other uses.
Rabbit debris brand excellent fertiliser. They contain more nutrients for plants than droppings from other animals and are useful fertiliser for growing vegetables.
Unit 67: Health problems of rabbits
It is meliorate to preclude illness in rabbits rather than to take to cure affliction. Good feeding and clean housing volition guarantee affliction free rabbits.
It is easy to recognise a sick rabbit as:
· the heart volition be boring
· the coat is rough
· there will be diarrhoea
· information technology sits in a comer grinding its teeth
Taking the body temperature volition show if the rabbit is sick. The normal temperature of a rabbit is 39.3° C.
Learning objectives
After studying this unit you lot should know:
1 How to handle rabbits.
2 Ear problems in rabbits.
3 Problems with the teeth and toes in rabbits.
4 Problems caused by parasites.
Handling rabbits
To choice up a rabbit put one hand around the bottom of the ears to control the animal and hold the loose peel on the back of the neck. Utilise the other hand to take the whole weight of the rabbit.
Treatment rabbits
Ear mange (ear herpes)
This is a very common disease of the ear. It is caused by mites, pocket-size parasites which burrow into the skin of the ear culvert (within ear).
The rabbit shakes its caput from side to side and rubs its ears confronting the muzzle and walls. A yellowish white crust (thick layer) covers the ear culvert.
The easiest way to treat this infection is to put a few drops of oil (olive, sesame or sunflower) inside the ear and massage it. Repeat this every solar day until the condition improves. If you lot accept any powder for ticks and mites you can mix a lilliputian with the oil and use information technology (run across R24 Annex 1). See your veterinarian officeholder if the disease continues.
Cages and houses should be kept clean. Wash your hands when you treat a rabbit and earlier you bear on other animals.
Overgrown nails and teeth
The rabbit's nails grow continuously and can sometimes become overgrown. They can exist clipped back using nail clippers or pliers. Do not cut too shut to the foot.
Rabbits have four front teeth in the upper jaw and ii in the lower jaw. The teeth grow continuously but every bit the animal eats they are worn downwardly. Sometimes the lower and upper teeth do non meet when the rima oris is shut. The teeth in this case do not wear downwardly. You volition need to cut them with a wire cutter or a pair of pliers.
Overgrown nails and teeth
Bug caused past parasites
Rabbits suffer from fleas which suck the blood and carry disease. Fleas lay their eggs in the cracks and holes in the walls of the housing. Rabbits can be treated with a dusting pulverization (see R 15 Annex one) confronting fleas and the housing should also exist thoroughly cleaned and dusted.
Coccidia (very modest parasites) in the liver and gut can exist a problem peculiarly in animals under four months old. They cause diarrhoea which may comprise blood and animals lose weight and are pot-bellied. Coccidia can kill many rabbits.
The parasites alive in the droppings and then hutches and cages should always be kept clean. One teaspoon (5 ml) of iodine in 5 litres of drinking water can be used to assist prevent this disease. It should be given to the female rabbit earlier her young are built-in.
Rabbits can also suffer from diarrhoea, constipation, abscesses, mastitis and eye infections. Your veterinary officer can propose y'all about these problems in your rabbits.
How Much Baby Rabbits Are Born When the Female Gives Birth
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