The baby bunnies are four weeks old. This morning the kits said goodbye to their nest box. They probably didn’t need it this long, but since they slept cuddled in it every night and since Ellie was so small, I kept it in for all four weeks. Every evening I would put the bunnies in a carrier and then empty the nest box and clean it. Between Lexi and her kits all using it as a litter pan, it needed a good cleaning every night. But now they should start using the litter pan and find another place to cuddle for the night.
Penelope looked lethargic. She was not hopping around. When I picked her up she was quite limp. When I put her down, she could not stand. My tummy was doing stress flip flops. I did not want to lost another kit. I tried to feed her some fox milk, but she seemed too weak to swallow. Years ago our vet taught us how to us the IV for our bunnies when they stopped eating. It always seemed that our bunnies got sick on the weekends when the vet was closed. The IV actually saved one of our bunnies during Hurricane Ian in September when the Brynn stopped eating and the vet was closed for two weeks after the storm. We didn’t know if it would work for such a little kit. For the adult bunnies we let it drip for one line on the IV. for Penelope we let it drip for just five seconds. We could see it filling her so we pulled the needle right out. I held her for about 10 minutes and then tried the fox milk again. This time she gobbled up four syringes full of fox milk. Then she sat on my chest and did not move. I sat on the couch with her as she just lay there with her eyes closed. She didn’t move when I picked her up and her whole body seemed floppy. So I just sat there holding her and worrying about her. After about an hour she sat up and started cleaning herself. She had fox milk on her face and paws and so she diligently cleaned herself. Then she started hopping up to the shoulder and down to my lap and all over. That was a great thing to see. We decided that the kits might not be getting enough nourishment so we gave them all some fox milk and they all gobbled it up. We are going to supplement their feedings with fox milk every day now just to make sure they are getting enough milk. Now that they have fur on their bellies it is impossible to see the white milk line or really see the rounded belly they get after eating. They are all eating hay and some oats and even attempting to eat some pellets from Lexi’s bowl, so they are filling out, but maybe they are not getting enough milk. Penelope might have been dehydrated and the IV and fox milk helped.