baby cottontails

[moswen]

Now you all should know I'm a story teller and I'm telling you how I got these babies so that I don't get a lot of "you should have left them alone"s (I know that lol!)

My grandpa pulled up his green bean plants the thursday b4 the 4th, and discovered a nest of baby cottontails. We were leaving them alone and going back to check on them every so often but I stumbled upon the barn cat eating one of them! (They were pretty easy to find out in the open and wiggling around to get away from the heat) It was awful, so of course I shooed the cat away and retrieved the remaining 5. They had their eyes closed but b4 the next day they began opening them, so I'm guessing them to be close to 3 weeks old, and on thursday I'll have had them for 2 weeks.

I'm giving them a homemade formula of sweetened condensed milk, karo syrup, heavy whipping cream, and an egg yolk twice a day but I just bumped it up it to 3 bc they're feeling a little bony. I'm also keeping them stocked with fresh clover, mustard collard turnip and dandelion greens, cabbage, I bought some carrots with the greens still attatched to the top and put the whole thing in there, and some raddishes with the greens still on top but they usually save those greens till last and shun the raddish completely. They also won't eat strawberries, black berries, or raspberries.

I have rigged a drip of water from an old mustard bottle and have a heat lamp on them as well. Now here are my questions (finally!):

When do I give them away? Should I feed them anything else, and should I release them? I really would rather find them homes, but I've read they will turn wild when they mature. The Internet has 12 web pages on how to raise these bunnies but every one is different, release them at 3 weeks or 5-6 weeks, I'm not supposed to feed them commercial sweetened products or karo syrup (but I am and I found this recipe online!) And I'm only supposed to feed them twice a day and then every three hours, and only 10% of hand raised cotton tails make it bc of over feeding or aspirating or not getting the intestinal bacteria they get from their mother's milk and another website will tell you they get it from eating her feces...... And then they can absolutely thrive and be dead in a day... I think my babies are making it so far bc I got some fur from my cousin's rabbit box and it had bunny poo in it so they ate that and got the bacteria maybe...?

Anyone have any experience?

 

[Nay]

Hi Rebekah, Kudos to you for keeping them alive. Pretty delicate critters those bunnys, eaten by everyone, hard to raise. That's why they make so many!!!
I can only say I have home grown a few dozen and most of the time release them when they can nibble a carrot alone. They are probably much younger alone in the wild, but we enjoy them so much I probably keep them for selfish reasons.They resort to their wild ways pretty quickly.
I would never adopt out a wild bunny. There are many pet rabbits available for pets everywhere, and these bunnys should be released back out wild where they came from. It's true some may not make it, but I think that it's their right to be free. My opinion only.
Good Luck and enjoy them while you have them.
Na

 

[Isa]

I can't help you since I do not know nothing about these beautiful bunnies. I just wanted to tell you that is a very nice thing you are doing for them! Do you have any pics? I would love to see them

 

[JenniferinFL]

That's almost the same recipe I used to use for raising baby wild bunnies back in the day.. But, I used to feed mine every 4 hours during the day.
We released ours when they went 'wild'. One day they still are interested in you, then all of a sudden your the scary bad guy. If you can throw together a temporary outdoor enclosure to get them accustomed to foraging for a couple weeks, that would be great. We left food out for ours for a month or so to make sure they'd figured it out once they were released.
Unfortunately, rabbits are kind of like opossums. At the bottom of the food chain and EVERYTHING eats them. We never had wild rabbits in our yard before though, and years later there are still a couple in our backyard that we spot now and then. I don't know whether it's original ones or the offspring of those, but, either way we have wild rabbits when we didn't before.

 

[moswen]

Oh my goodness that's exactly what happened to mine yesterday and I'm not joking! They started attacking me with their front feet and flipping around every time I came near their box.... I definitely can't rehome them like this! They're crazy little ninjas and two of them wouldn't eat their formula at all... Time to be released I say! Thanks everyone for your help!