Dandelion greens and hay timothy and oat hay are extremely important for wild rabbits. You can add whole oats from a feed store, and some grated carrots. The greens must be fresh, rinsed, and replaced if not eaten in a few hours. You can place them in a cup of cold water with just the tops sticking out to keep them fresher.
For a domestic rabbit baby, see section under the Domestic heading. Wild cottontail and brush bunny rabbits should be released as soon as they are eating hay and greens and are approximately 5 inches in body length and run from you.
This varies with the area, so size is not easy to say. They will be small, but the longer you keep them, the more agitated and difficult to handle they will become and the less likely their chances for survival in the wild. Release ONLY at dusk or dawn. Make sure they get exercise daily. If they are ready, earlier, they will let you know. WARNING: Jackrabbits really NEED a skilled wildlife rehabber as they can run from you, throw themselves into walls to get away; many have died or severely injured themselves in captivity as they are so very wild.
This is vital. Noises and sounds easily frighten the jackrabbit and they are not able to be handled after 9 weeks. Often, sadly, we get reports of how a well-meaning person who tried to raise a wild rabbit, only to find it literally died of fright or got injured inside the cage. They are wild and belong with their own kind, out in the wild. Give them a carrier as their place of privacy line with thick towels with plenty of fresh hay and greens described above and water bowl.
Again, wild rabbits need a skilled wildlife rehabber; it is critical to their survival. Remember that both the domestic pet rabbit and wild bunny moms only feed their young usually once in the middle of the night. Check their tummies to see if they are round and the babies are warm in the morning—this means she is caring for them. In the rare situation that you have an orphaned domestic bunny, such as when a domestic rabbit mom is sick or refuses to care for her young, you will need to feed the babies.
Overfeeding is a leading cause of death in these youngsters which results in fatal intestinal disease. Some use pet nurser nipples on the end of a luer lock syringe, or a teat cannula on the end of a syringe. Feed only with the bunny sitting UPRIGHT, and point syringe down towards bottom or side of mouth, so if too much comes out, the baby does not aspirate! For those who are slow to learn nursing, SC fluids may be necessary to prevent electrolyte imbalance or dehydration check with a vet on this only!!
Domestic buns with closed eyes should be fed 2 x a day, and the number of feedings gradually decreased until they are weaned. If their eyes are still closed, you need to stimulate their bottoms with a warm moist towel after feedings to help them to pee. Bloat is commonly associated with too frequent feedings and too much at one time. Each bunny varies. If this is a smaller rabbit, he will consume much less. Do NOT overfeed! Contact an HRS contact, rabbit vet, to be sure. Use a cotton ball moistened with warm water and gently stroke the anal area until the bunny starts producing stool and urine and keep stroking until the bunny stops.
Provide a soft nest area in a box with clean towels, and cover the babies so it is dark until their eyes are open. Do NOT provide extra heat if the room temperature is at least 65 to 70 degrees F because excessive heat can be fatal.
If the room is cooler, then you may place a heating pad on a low setting under no more than HALF of the nest so the bunny can move to a cooler area if it gets too warm, and be sure there is no way the mother rabbit can get to or chew the electrical cord!
For domestic rabbits, if you have a healthy adult rabbit at home and you can collect cecotropes the soft, chain-like droppings that the rabbit usually eats then these can be mixed with the KMR to give the baby bunny normal bacteria for its intestinal tract. Only one cecotrope per day for days is needed. This is particularly important for rabbits under one week of age.
As soon as their eyes are open, you may introduce the bunnies to plain alfalfa pellets, hay, such as oat hay, timothy, alfalfa. Please refer to the handout Care of Rabbits for more information on diet for domestic, pet rabbits. You may reach care rabbit. Below is the email for wild rabbit questions: wildbunnyrehab gmail. See above for wild rabbits. For all rabbits, avoid ANY regular milk, puppy formulas, etc.
Avoid Esbilac. Feed only upright. Less is better than more! Overfeeding will cause bloat and pain and possible death. Please get to a rehabber. Wilson HRS educator and rehabber.
For questions not answered about wild rabbits above, email : wildbunnyrehab at gmail. A non-profit rabbit rescue and education organization. For us she is as we are a couple with no children. We accept that a few pets is all she wants for attention. She likes her nose rubbed. We have a mature dog that has a gentle nature as a herder. Not a pet if you have a noisy house with children. She is not a cuddle bunny. Get a domesticated rabbit if you want a cuddle bunny. She will always been skittish and on guard.
We accept her for her wild nature and nocturnal lifestyle. We let her come to us. Cottontails especially females are solitary in nature. She is part of the household and we enjoy her. I find it fascinating that in other countries it is illegal to take a rabbit from the wild not fully educated in this, so excuse me if I'm wrong. In New Zealand if you take a wild animal that is considered a pest from the wild you are not allowed to return it to the wild.
Anyway, I have a young wild rabbit, here NZ. The cats brought him home and he must have escaped. When i got him he had just left the nest. He was tiny, maybe 3 or 4 weeks old. Anyway I've had him for 3 weeks now. Never feed him milk as he was happy with grass. And he is just so unbelievably tame. He free ranges inside the house, and has a large cage outside.
He is toilet trained, not that i made much effort to teach him. He eats everything a tame rabbit would, loves cuddles. The only thing I would say that is different about him is he can get destructive when he wants attention. By far he is the nicest rabbit i have ever had, and I've had a few. My husband destroyed a lone infant cottontail nest.
I have been feeding her kitten formula and she is now grams and about one month of age. I have been supplementing her formula with parsley, carrot top greens, grass, and spinach. She will sometimes eat carrots and apples.
I had to give her probiotics I bought with a kitten rescue kit when she developed enteritis after three days in captivity. She has gained weight and is maturing. I started feeding her slowly with a 1 mL oral syringe and graduated to a 3 mL oral syringe when she started eating more at one feed.
Feed the baby very slowly because they will aspirate, and if probiotics are needed a probiotic gel works well. Just a ball-point pen tip worth of the probiotic gel once a day until diarrhea resolves. It is so kind and humane that you are caring for this orphan cottontail who had no mother to protect it, feed it, and teach it the ways of the wild.
It would certainly have become hawk or coyote bait within hours without your intervention. In this special circumstance, in which the cottontail was all alone, you saved him! It's been several years since you asked the question, so I hope the cottontail is still with you and has free run of your home.
They have such gentle spirits. I had a similar situation and had a cottontail sharing my home. He would come and go as he pleased through a bunny door, but most of the time he chose to stay inside. Such a treat! Cottontails are naturally quite skittish, but given complete freedom to retreat to one of his favorite hiding places whenever he felt the need, he happily co-existed with me and my domesticated rabbit.
He was sweet, gentle, and fascinating to observe. He didn't eat nearly as much as the domesticated rabbit -- he was so small.
And he actually learned to use a litter box -- he wasn't perfect about it, but was very good about only urinating in his box and on one towel I had set up for that purpose. Since you probably fed your cottontail by syringe he might have become accustomed to you holding him and petting him as he matured.
If he didn't, that's quite natural considering his heightened flight instinct. He still might eat small pieces of banana from your hand, investigate you if you sit quietly near him, and feel comfortable enough with you that he'll eat in your presence, groom himself, and even nap. The cottontail in my home was quite skittish so would run into hiding if I made sudden moves or twitched. And he usually scampered into hiding after any short period of socialization.
It seemed he only liked to socialize for a short while, then needed to retreat and snooze. Cottontails can establish relationships with domesticated rabbits, touch noses as a greeting, rest in their proximity, play and chase them, groom and be groomed, and learn domesticated rabbit behaviors. Not all will do all of these things, but they can socialize with, and trust domesticated rabbits. He didn't care for cilantro, italian parsley, raspberries, or apples.
He drank water from a small ceramic bowl. He used a litter box that had a bowl of kibble and a few krunch-around or papaya bits as treats to encourage him to visit the box. He also used a towel that had a bowl of water, and a plate of kibble so he could eat and go at the same time. Outdoors, he was more nervous and, after a few minutes, would usually bolt back indoors to safety. As with Saber's Eastern Cottontail above, our cottontail loved to snooze under our beds. It's not a good idea to take a wild animal into your house accept in very rare situations.
Baby cottontail rabbits are very hard to keep alive without their mother for a number of reasons. First, they have poor immune systems and the little immunity they do have comes from the mother's milk.
Without that they often die. Also-you can not buy rabbit formula at a local pet store. Rabbits' formula is very different from human, dog or cat formula. Rabbits are vegetarians and don't digest those formulas well. Also, a mother rabbit usually only nurses her babies for about 5 minutes per day. Therefore each baby probably only gets about a minute to nurse in a 24 hour period.
Therefore the mother rabbit's milk is extremely high in calories and fat. That is not the case with dog and cat formulas you will find at local pet stores. Rehabilitation of a baby cottontail is very hard but it is not impossible.
I actually found a baby cottontail when its eyes were still closed. It was likely only days old. It was lying alone on a hot sidewalk. It was probably dropped by a cat that removed it from its nest. The nest could not be found and the rabbit looked close to death so I brought it inside. I knew nothing about baby rabbits at the time but I read all I could.
I first hydrated the bunny with drops of pedialyte and an eye dropper. I then switched to puppy formula mixed with probiotics for rabbits. I kept the bunny in a covered aquarium with a heat lamp on one side. It's a very long story from there but that was two years ago and the cottontail is now a house pet. He eats rabbit food, hay and veggies like a domestic rabbit would. He lives inside my house in a huge 3 floor cage and is litter box trained!
He's skittish and doesn't like to be picked up. However, he lets me pet him and he will eat out of my hands. I made the decision not to release him to the wild because I felt he probably would not survive. I live in the woods with bobcats, fishers, fox and coyotes. The rabbit has learned to ring a bell when his food dish is empty. Obviously, that is not going to work well in the woods.
Wild rabbits harbor a range of dangerous diseases. As described by VCA Hospitals , there are two primary infectious diseases and viruses that are rarely seen in indoor pets — myxomatosis and viral hemorrhagic disease. The myxoma virus causes myxomatosis. The disease is most common in wild rabbits. When bringing one into your home, you must be careful to vaccinate all rabbits before coming into contact with each other.
Calder Vets describes viral hemorrhagic disease as a highly infectious, often fatal disease that mostly affected wild rabbits. However, it can also spread to other domestic pets, like dogs and cats. Viral hemorrhagic disease spreads by direct contact or through the droppings of an infected rabbit. Rabbits that live in the same hutch will almost certainly pick up the condition. If there are any health issues, all animals must be separated.
Wild baby rabbits in captivity need as much care as domesticated pets — if not more so. Instead, you will have to provide a suitable nest, ensure an appropriate temperature, and make kitten milk replacer that contains the nutrients the baby rabbit needs on a daily basis.
All of this takes time and effort. Wild baby rabbits require around the clock care for the first few weeks, so you have to ask yourself whether you have this time to spare domesticating the animal.
If you already own pet rabbits, you will need to keep them apart. Some of the main differences between both wild and domesticated rabbits are as follows:. Because of these strong mating instincts, wild bunnies will attempt to mate with the tame rabbit. Similarly, temperament issues are common between wild and domesticated animals.
Even though neither is likely to start a fight, their differences often cause misunderstandings. Wild rabbits are easily startled, which can lead to one of the animals becoming hurt in self-defense.
Wild rabbits will never trust humans in the way that pet bunnies do. Wild rabbits are programmed to be afraid of predators. That includes us, who they see as no different to a fox, snake, or bird. The reality is your relationship with your wild baby rabbit will never develop — you will simply be a caregiver to keep the bunny alive. Wild rabbits will grow distressed at the prospect of living in a hutch. Stressed animals cause damage to the cage as it attempts to chew through the wire or wood.
They may also harm themselves due to the psychological strain. Remember to release the bunny close to where you found it, as rabbits tend to stick to the same small area near to their nest throughout their lives. Bunnies are surprisingly fast and can run between miles per hour. You can do so by following these steps:. With all these steps, the most crucial thing is to minimize the amount of stress the rabbit is under.
Stress can be fatal, especially in young rabbits, so be careful to set the trap up properly to prevent injury. You should only keep a bunny in captivity if it has no chance of survival in the wild. If the animal can be rehabilitated, it should be returned to the wild when it is strong and healthy. Be careful of these behaviors. One of the most important first steps is to encourage the baby rabbit to get used to you.
Instead, maintain a cool, calm attitude at all times when you are around the rabbit. Ensure you have a secure space for it to hide in so that if can find safety from you.
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