Fostering Off

With so many does having babies, I've been taking great pains to foster off singleton animals, or moving around babies that were born to huge litters.

My preference is to not foster together the same breeds, just because it's easier to keep track of a holland baby in the midst of a litter of woolies, than two black tort holland kits from different litters. I shoot for minimal involvement.


However, today I had a wooly doe produce 1 REW baby. I popped it in with another litter of woolies, one of which looks to be a REW as well. I liberally marked it's ears with a sharpie and I'll have to recheck it every few days to make sure the color stays. I've also heard of folks using nail polish, but I didn't have any of that on hand.

Thankfully, 90% of my does are EXCELLENT foster mothers. I even recently moved a wooly baby from it's 6 siblings and put it in with another doe who only had 4. All these babies are bouncing around out of the nestbox, but since the wooly baby was the smallest of 7, it was being nudged out of the way at feeding time and getting dangerously thin.

Amazingly, the foster mom accepted it without a second glance! I guess she figured at this point, what was one more mouth to feed?

-Kristen
Keep's Rabbitry