Why Do Rabbits Eat Their Babies? (2024)

As general rule rabbits do not eat their young. A Doe might eat her young if she is ill if she is fearful of predators. . Sometimes she is terrified of the experience of weaning and caring for them. Some kits that got eaten by a mother rabbit can happen accidentally. It can happen when she is eating the placenta after giving birth. It can happen when something is missing from her diet, try to satisfy her need. Bring alfalfa for her and occasionally supply alfalfa hay. This will help redistribute her deficiency in the diet.

Why Do Rabbits Eat Their Babies?

Why Do Rabbits Eat Their Babies. As we know that the mother is a sign of love and kindness. No one can love a child more than her mother. Can you believe that a mother eats her children? This can be seen in rabbits. Along with her cuteness, there is an interesting but quite painful fact. Why Do Rabbits Eat Their Babies?

Why Rabbits Eat Their Young Ones?

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Rabbit Cannibalism

Rabbit breeders have long noticed that rabbits eat their young ones at least once. Unfortunately, until now, no one is sure what exactly is the reason for this strange phenomenon. You should familiarize yourself with the term rabbit cannibalism. Mothers who eat their babies are referred to as a situation. There are some possible reasons that we are going to discuss this.

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Mother Afraid to Care and Wean Their Young Ones

The mother rabbit does not eat her young because she likes to eat. Sometimes she is terrified of the experience of weaning and caring for them. If it’s your pet rabbit and she did this once or twice, you should forgive her. But if she did this more than twice, it means she can’t be a good mother, so don’t breed her anymore, it doesn’t make sense.

There is no cause for this activity. It also has no cure. The main problem is that rabbits are not good parents like cats and dogs, who did their best to raise their children. But there is a category of rabbits that simply neglect their children after birth and leave them to die. It looks like a horror movie.

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Once they have the ability to do things, she will take care of her babies to the last point until she can do or allow herself to do it. Baby rabbits are cautioned to stay in their nest and not leave until they are ready because once they leave their hutch, the mother will not allow them or take them back to the box.

Spectral, When it is Their First Litter

Some kits who got eaten by a mother rabbit can happen accidentally. It can happen when she is eating the placenta after giving birth. But the chances of this accident are only for the first births.

The mother rabbit is stressed and frustrated when it is a noisy place, or any other animal or human interferes with her terror. Mother rabbit instinctively eats her babies in such a condition.

So you must provide a calm and quiet atmosphere where she can give birth to and raise her babies.

Make sure that there are no problems for the mother rabbit before giving birth. Provide her with cool, fresh water, you should add electrolytes and vitamins if it is hot. If you notice that she gives birth, cut her nails regularly because the nails can cut babies during labor, and this will give her a reason to eat the baby. She might get upset if her nest is not lined with enough fur, so provide extra fur.

Males Rabbits Kill Babies to Re-Breed

Male rabbits or father rabbits also kill the newborn baby to re-breed their mother. So don’t let it get close to the nest after hatching.

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Nutritional Deficiency

It can happen when something is missing from her diet, try to satisfy her need. Bring alfalfa for her and occasionally supply alfalfa hay. This will help redistribute her deficiency in the diet.

Sometimes the mother rabbit is confused if it is her first time. She thinks these baby rabbits are actually mice or something like that, so in order to get rid of them, she destroys them.

Positive Reasons

If wild rabbits show such a phenomenon, it can be understandable. As is well known, rabbits are at the bottom of the food chain. It means carnivores that include large animals and birds like lions, foxes, and eagles that feed on rabbits and always seek to hunt them.

Rabbits also have strong senses through which they avoid predators, but what if they fight or run away?

In such a case to hide all traces of presence, she eats her young.

It is a fact that rabbits give birth 12 times a year, so if she is pregnant and has small kits that are only a few days old, the only option is to eliminate the traces by eating their young and surviving to give birth. Light the difficulties.

If the small kits suffer some kind of disease and there is no chance of their recovery or survival, to get rid of the suffering, the breeders speculated that in this situation, the mother rabbit would eat them. It is another example of survival of the fittest.

Ways to Force Doe Not to Eat Her Babies.

You can keep her from eating her by doing a little preventative work. You have to make her feel safe in her nest. This can be done by providing her little nest hiding place to give birth to her babies in the dark. And provide them a place away from noise and traffic.

If you’ve done your best and so far after birth, she tried to eat her babies and then separate them from each other. You must keep them separate for at least 2 to 3 weeks. During this time, only allow access to the mother rabbit once or twice a day so that she can feed them. After feeding them, separate them again.

If, after trying both ways, the rabbit mother is still trying to eat her baby, then it’s time to focus on the rabbit’s mother. It’s more likely to happen if it’s her first time. So try to distract her. You can distract her by providing other different activities.

You can provide her with toys and entertaining things, the chewing stick can play a productive role in this perspective. She did this because she became stressed about giving birth the first time. The quickest you can eliminate her stress is that she will start caring for her children on her own.

Final Thoughts

If your rabbit is eating her children, it does not mean that it is evil; all this is due to stress. Distract her from overcoming stress. Make her feel safe.

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