Does that Soil the Nestbox

Add a new pet peeve to my ever growing list.

A holland doe of mine decided to saturate- read again saturate her nestbox with feces and urine. She also ate all the fur out of the box, leaving her 5 day old babies soaked and disgusting.

Luckily, I found them before they all died. She killed her foster baby with that mess, and the next day one of her own passed away.

I took the babies and washed them off as best I could with a wet washcloth. Not that it did a whole lot of good, the broken looks disgustingly solid.

I then put them all in a little box, stuffed with hay and fur from the nest of another mother. When they were no longer chilled, I rubbed vanilla all over the nose of the other mother and popped the new babies in- despite the age and size difference. The next morning, the first of the holland babies had passed.

I don't like the situation they are in- the foster mother's baby is almost a week older. It's almost ready to pop those eyes open, while these babies aren't even a week old! However, my only other nursing doe who still has her nestbox has 6 babies on her plate. I don't know if I can try to sneak in these two to such a small, overworked mother. I may have to.

The biological mother is not getting her kids back. Once they soil the box, it seems like they've decided they are done taking care of the babies. She seems a bit sad they are gone, let's hope the milk build up encourages her to never do this again. I'm keeping an eye on her, by the way. We don't want any inflammation.

I guess the next thing to do is just rebreed her and go from there. I'll figure out who I can breed along with her so I have more foster options- I had my first misses in several months with this set of litters, wouldn't you know it?

-Kristen
Keep's Rabbitry