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Mother Bunnies Why nature's nurturers don't always act as we would expect
Lifestyles of the wild herbivore...
First of all, let's get one thing straight. A mother rabbit is an herbivore. A mother cat is obviously a carnivore. Therefore a mother cat, if left to her own devices, would typically go out on a hunt for prey, capture and consume her prey, and then come back to her kittens with her belly full of meat, content to lie about with them for the rest of the day, allowing them to nurse at will. If her kill was a substantial one, she may have hidden the remainder of it nearby only to go out for a quick bite the next day, again returning to snooze with her kittens for great lengths of time. A mother rabbit however lives much lower on the food chain. Her food source (grass, leaves, etc.) is not so calorie dense. Therefore she must spend a much larger amount of her time eating. And eating and eating. When she is ready to give birth, the wild mother rabbit digs a burrow in the ground, lines it with dried grasses and bits of her own fur, and then deposits her tiny hairless young therein. She then exits the burrow, refills the entrance hole with dirt and hops off to spend the day munching. She will likely only visit them 2 or three times in the course of 24 hours to nurse them, nursing them but briefly at each visit. Now, transfer all this behavior to a pet bunny living in a human household. Even though the mother bunny probably has all the bunny chow she can eat readily available and close to her nest box of babies, her instinctual wiring remains virtually the same as her wild cousin -- eat, eat, eat, and feed the babies sparingly.
Good Mothers and.... Not So Good Mothers When pondering the absence of Mother Bunny from the nest, however, the second thing to bear in mind is that not all mother bunnies are created equal. While some immediately take to the experience with great passion and diligence, others will act as if they have just been burdened with a heap of large squeaking fleas! All they want to do is stay as far away from them as possible. This is especially true with "first time moms". (I still remember the perpetually perturbed look that one of our female's had when forced to remain in the same cage as her babies!) Still, disposition is not the only factor determining whether a mother will stay with her nest. A mother bunny must be in good health and in safe, comfortable surroundings in order to accept the idea that nurturing her baby bunnies to further growth is a good idea. If the mother is undernourished or dehydrated, for example, it is simply part of her natural instinct to forego feeding her babies. This allows her to survive and later produce more offspring, whom she will be then strong enough to nurse all the way to the age of weaning (8-10 weeks). While this may sound like a harsh strategy, it is in reality is more merciful than the alternative which it prevents. If abandoned by the mother, the babies will typically die within three days. After initial attempts to attract her attention and gain a feeding, they grow quiet and eventually spend more and more time sleeping as their metabolism slows further and further, finally stopping bodily functions altogether. If, however, a weak and dehydrated mother did not abandon the nest and instead continued to nurse the babies, she might become so malnourished that she was simply unable to create milk for them. She might even die herself. In either event, the babies would not yet be old enough to survive on their own. However, they would be strong and alert enough to experience a much longer and no doubt more agonizing death from starvation and dehydration. One final note on the newborn rabbit's responsive metabolism: in the natural setting where the mother leaves her young walled up in her burrow while she forages for food, the slowing of the baby rabbit's metabolism allows it to survive more easily on fewer feedings in times of scarcity. When the mother does not get enough food or water (as during a prolonged drought), she may not be able to nurse her offspring as often. But because of the babies' slowed metabolism, it may be possible for the litter to survive despite the less than ideal circumstances. Conversely, we have observed that when a mother bunny is constantly supplied with limitless fresh water, rabbit chow, and fresh vegetables, she will soon begin nursing her babies even more frequently than usual -- resulting in babes who are quite fat and roly-poly, with sleek, luxuriant fur. (Very cute!) Possibly a wild rabbit would do the same, allowing her and her young to take advantage of abundance just as they conversely adapt to scarcity. The bottom line therefore -- keep your mother bunny well provisioned! (Note that such fat, sleek babies will also result when the female has a very small litter.)
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