How Long Does It Take a Rabbit to Have Babies

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Chapter 8: The rabbit

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Unit 66: Breeding and feeding rabbits
Unit 67: Health problems of rabbits

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Unit of measurement 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 twelvemonth. This means you can sell or swallow almost one rabbit every week of the year.

Learning objectives

After studying this unit you should know:

1 Breeding rabbits.
two Care of young rabbits.
three Housing (hutches) for rabbits.
iv Feed and water for rabbits.
5 Uses of rabbits.

Convenance rabbits

The female person rabbit (doe) does not come up into heat (oestrus) every bit do other animals. The doe will accept the male (cadet) at any time of the twelvemonth.

Does are mature and can breed at 5 to half-dozen months of age and can continue to have immature for 4 years.

The length of pregnancy in the rabbit is 31 days and the doe can produce from 1 to 12 young each fourth dimension she gives birth. She can go pregnant again within a few days of giving birth. However information technology is not practiced practice to permit the doe to go pregnant direct after giving nascency. It is better to mate the doe when her young (litter) are 4 weeks former so that they are 8 weeks old when the next litter is built-in. In this way 1 doe can produce 6 litters a year.

Two weeks afterwards mating you lot can feel the young through the side of the doe'due south belly.

Male rabbit (buck)

Traditionally people keep all their rabbits together. However information technology is advisable to keep the cadet separate from the does and exercise not proceed bucks together as they will fight. The doe must be taken to the cadet for mating and so returned to her place. A buck tin exist used until he is seven years old. If you have large numbers of rabbits together utilize one cadet with every 15 does.

Giving birth and care of the young rabbit

The doe needs a nest in which to give birth. She will line the nest with her fur. Do not check the young until the day afterwards birth and do non bear on them with your manus. Use a stick to gently touch on them when checking and remove any that are dead. They are blind until the eyes open up at 10 days of age.

Leave the young rabbits with the female parent. They can be killed for meat from 3 months of age.

Sexing rabbits (knowing the sex)

Knowing what sex activity the young rabbits are is of import because you may want to keep the does and sell or impale the bucks. To sexual practice young animals you look at the area beneath the anus. In old bucks the scrotum can clearly be seen.

Sexing rabbits (knowing the sex)

Feeding rabbits

You can buy set up-mixed rabbit feed (pellets) made from grain, plants, minerals and vitamins. However this may be expensive or not available. Rabbits can exist fed the following:

· Vegetables such as carrots, sugar beet, manger beet, parsnip, swede, turnip, potato and other root vegetables

· Green leaves

· Grains such as oats, wheat, barley and maize

· Dry breadstuff

· The waste skins or tops of vegetables from the kitchen

· Dry sunflower heads (the rabbit will eat the seed)

· Young branches from trees such every bit acacia

· Bran mash (bran is produced from the milling of wheat or rice)

Feeding during the dry season

As with other animals you lot must recall about what to feed rabbits during the dry flavor. The following can provide for dry out season feeding:

· Hay, preferably from light-green leafy plants. Bind the plants into bundles and hang them to dry in the wind but avoid putting them in the direct sun. This type of hay is preferable to that made from sunday-stale grasses (see Unit of measurement 23).

· Carrots, beetroot, turnips and other root vegetables can be kept for a long time in dry sand in a bin, butt or wooden box. Conform the vegetables in layers separated past dry out sand and cover the pinnacle with a layer of harbinger. Some other way to go on root vegetables is to identify the vegetables in layers with straw between them. The whole pile is covered with straw and then earth. Leave a small hole at the top for ventilation

Feeding during the dry out season

Eating the droppings (faeces)

Rabbits produce both hard and soft debris. It is natural for the rabbit to eat the soft droppings it produces because they contain nutrients and water. When the soft debris pass through the gut for a second fourth dimension the nutrients and water tin can exist absorbed (taken into the body). The droppings produced so will be hard.

Water for rabbits

A supply of drinking water is necessary at all times. A suitable water drinker can be made from any plastic bottle. Brand one or two holes in the bottom of the cleaned bottle, fill it with water and screw on the top. Place this in a shallow container. This could be used for water for chickens too.

H2o for rabbits

Housing rabbits

A small wooden house (hutch) will be sufficient for a cadet. You can make hutches to incorporate more than one rabbit. The hutch must be clean, dry and well ventilated.

Remember that rabbits tin be difficult to keep in runs (fenced areas) equally they volition burrow downwardly and under a fence and escape. They can exist kept in enclosed areas if the fencing material is partly cached to stop them burrowing under it.

Housing rabbits

Nesting box

This is nada more than than a paper-thin or wooden box or even a basket. Information technology is open only at the elevation so the mother cannot accept the immature out of the nest. The nest box should be lined with hay. Past the time they are 3 weeks old the young will come out of the nest themselves.

Nesting box

Uses of rabbits

Rabbit meat contains little fat. It is white in colour and is very nutritious every bit it contains a lot of protein. Like a chicken, 1 rabbit will provide enough meat for a family meal.

Some breeds of rabbit have long hair which is collected and spun to give wool for wearable. Rabbit skins can be stale and treated to give expert pelts (skins with fur) to be used in clothing and other uses.

Rabbit droppings make excellent fertiliser. They incorporate more nutrients for plants than droppings from other animals and are useful fertiliser for growing vegetables.

Unit 67: Health bug of rabbits

It is amend to prevent illness in rabbits rather than to have to cure disease. Good feeding and clean housing will guarantee disease free rabbits.

It is easy to recognise a ill rabbit as:

· the eye will be dull
· the glaze is crude
· at that place will be diarrhoea
· it sits in a comer grinding its teeth

Taking the body temperature volition show if the rabbit is ill. The normal temperature of a rabbit is 39.3° C.

Learning objectives

After studying this unit you should know:

1 How to handle rabbits.
ii Ear problems in rabbits.
3 Problems with the teeth and toes in rabbits.
iv Problems caused by parasites.

Handling rabbits

To choice up a rabbit put one manus effectually the bottom of the ears to control the animate being and hold the loose skin on the back of the neck. Utilize the other hand to take the whole weight of the rabbit.

Handling rabbits

Ear mange (ear canker)

This is a very common disease of the ear. It is caused by mites, small parasites which burrow into the skin of the ear culvert (inside ear).

The rabbit shakes its caput from side to side and rubs its ears against the cage and walls. A yellow white crust (thick layer) covers the ear culvert.

The easiest manner 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 24-hour interval until the status improves. If you lot have any powder for ticks and mites you tin can mix a little with the oil and use it (see R24 Annex i). Meet your veterinary officer if the illness continues.

Cages and houses should be kept clean. Wash your hands when y'all care for a rabbit and earlier you touch other animals.

Overgrown nails and teeth

The rabbit's nails grow continuously and tin sometimes become overgrown. They can be clipped back using nail clippers or pliers. Do non cut as well close to the pes.

Rabbits take 4 front teeth in the upper jaw and two in the lower jaw. The teeth abound continuously merely as the animate being eats they are worn down. Sometimes the lower and upper teeth practice not meet when the mouth is close. The teeth in this case practise non article of clothing down. Yous will need to cut them with a wire cutter or a pair of pliers.

Overgrown nails and teeth

Problems caused past parasites

Rabbits suffer from fleas which suck the blood and carry illness. Fleas lay their eggs in the cracks and holes in the walls of the housing. Rabbits can be treated with a dusting powder (run across R 15 Annex 1) against fleas and the housing should also be thoroughly cleaned and dusted.

Coccidia (very small-scale parasites) in the liver and gut tin exist a problem especially in animals under iv months erstwhile. They cause diarrhoea which may contain blood and animals lose weight and are pot-bellied. Coccidia can kill many rabbits.

The parasites live in the droppings so hutches and cages should ever exist kept clean. One teaspoon (5 ml) of iodine in five litres of drinking water can be used to help foreclose this illness. It should be given to the female person rabbit earlier her young are built-in.

Rabbits can also suffer from diarrhoea, constipation, abscesses, mastitis and heart infections. Your veterinarian officeholder can advise you nigh these problems in your rabbits.

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Source: https://www.fao.org/3/t0690e/t0690e0a.htm