How many weeks do rabbits get pregnant?
Every owner who wants to provide his family with healthy and dietary meat, rich in protein, always comes to the idea of breeding cute pets - rabbits. These fluffy animals have taken the lead among farmers. One of the key reasons for this is its special fertility. On average, in one year, a rabbit can produce offspring about 5 times, giving birth to up to 40 rabbits.
How long does pregnancy last in rabbits?
Quite impressive results, especially against the background of breeding other pets. It is quite natural that sooner or later rabbit breeders ask themselves the question: “How long does pregnancy in rabbits last? And how should it be conducted? " Today the answers to these questions will be covered in this article.
Rabbit maturity age
Breeding rabbits at home is not such an easy thing. The owner needs to ensure the implementation of a lot of conditions in order for the female to be able to have offspring and raise them healthy. Here, not only the conditions of keeping and the diet of fur-bearing animals will be important, but also close monitoring of the condition of the pregnant rabbit during the entire period of gestation. But what is the age of fertility of rabbits?
First, let's define the basic terminology. In the livestock environment, the period of gestation of rabbits is called fertility. This peculiar name for pregnancy is widely used in veterinary circles. It should be noted that rabbits are animals that reach puberty very early. They grow and mature by leaps and bounds. Individuals of large breeds are capable of breeding as early as the fifth or sixth month of life, and the decorative species of hares are completely capable of bearing fruit at the age of 3 months. The duration of pregnancy for both the first and the second is about the same, but more on that later.
Signs of future offspring in rabbits
It is not so easy for novice livestock breeders to recognize the fledgling of a rabbit for the first time in its initial stages. This is a big problem for them. This requires experience and observation, which are developed during the long months of caring for animals. The first call in favor of a female's pregnancy will be a change in her behavior after mating with a male. Of course, this will not happen immediately. The period required for the onset of symptoms is from a few days to 2 weeks.
What happens to the expectant mother? An unusual process begins to take place in her body: the birth of a new life. The countdown has started to the days of her free life, therefore, on a subconscious level, the rabbit wants to protect her babies from the influence of external factors and, just in case, limits her contacts with other animals. This instinct of self-preservation is expressed in the fact that throughout the entire period of pregnancy, the expectant mother becomes aggressive and irritable towards others.Pregnant rabbits are especially wary of contacts with males and simply do not allow them to approach themselves, they can push them away with their paws when trying to communicate.
Behavioral change is not yet a 100% guarantee of pregnancy. Sometimes it happens that the period of aggression lasts about 2.5 weeks, and then the female again allows the male to contact. This means that the first crawl was unsuccessful.
The most reliable sign of a future addition to the rabbit family will be a very strange at first glance behavior of the mother. Feeling the approaching birth, she prepares to care for her babies and tries to create the most comfortable conditions for the rabbits. To do this, she tears her own belly wool and makes a warm nest out of it. The safest option in determining pregnancy can be realized around the 3rd week after mating. Which one? At this time, experienced rabbit breeders can already calmly grope for small lumps in the belly of the rabbit. These are future cubs. You should be extremely careful during this procedure: the female can injure or bite, protecting herself and her offspring.
The timing of the fertility of the rabbit
Naturally, the cornerstone of breeding furry animals will be the question of how long a pregnant rabbit walks. Yes, really, how much? It is not in vain that he is interested in caring owners, because they also take responsibility for raising the rabbits and creating the most favorable conditions for them. Moreover, females do not walk pregnant for long, which means that you need to have time to prepare everything for the round-up.
How long is pregnancy in rabbits? It depends on a number of factors:
- rabbit breed;
- the number of fetuses developing in the womb;
- the health of the female.
The gestation period in rabbits can vary. Typically, pregnant females carry babies for 28 to 35 days. How long this period will last for a particular mother is difficult to guess. Moreover, births of an intermittent nature are often found, when the birth of rabbits occurred with a large interval: from 1 to 10 days.
The timing of when babies will be born is difficult to predict, but farmers have long noticed the dependence of the timing of pregnancy on how many babies have formed in the womb. The more there are, the faster the birth will take place. If a litter consists of 10 babies, then the pregnancy will not last long: about 28-29 days. After 31 days, a family of 9 rabbits is born. An okrol, consisting of 8 cubs, will occur in 32 days, from 7-6 - in 33. The maximum term of the rabbit is 5 or less cubs and give birth to them only on 34-35 days. Such a spread in days is associated with the peculiarity of the organism of females. The greater the number of fruits, the more difficult it is for the rabbit to bear them. Of course, not everyone is capable of giving birth to 10 babies at a time. Some breeds (for example, White Giants or Flanders) produce offspring of only 2 or 4 rabbits. This is a feature of their appearance.
General guidelines for the care of pregnant females
Pregnancy in rabbits is, of course, an important topic. But it is not enough to know the approximate time of birth of babies, you need to understand what kind of care a mother requires so that they are born healthy. It has already been said above that one of the first bells of the rabbit's interesting position is her aggressiveness. Throughout the entire time of carrying babies, her nervous system is very tense. But the most dangerous is the fact that partners may not tolerate such behavior and respond with the same coin, which, most likely, will harm the pregnancy or even put her life at risk. Where to put it in order to protect it from problems?
In the case of a particularly vivid manifestation of ill will, you can isolate the female from other rabbits. But this must be done with caution: take it by the withers, supporting it with the other hand from below and transplant it into a separate rabbitry.It is impossible to delay with such a decision: it is already forbidden to disturb the mother 5-7 days before the birth.
Do not forget about the correct diet of the expectant mother. A balanced diet of a female is a guarantee of the health of future rabbits, but you need to take care of it even before pregnancy in rabbits. This is due to the fact that a sharp change in the environment, food and all living conditions causes severe stress in females, which is fraught with involuntary miscarriages and a decrease in the viability of babies, therefore, veterinary science experts recommend initially feeding fur-bearing animals only high-quality products, avoiding feed with mold, sour silos, etc. Personal benefit depends on what food is given to pets.
It is important to include grain, chalk and some meat and bone meal in the fluffy menu in advance. It will not be superfluous to observe the female: her body itself will tell you what elements she lacks and she will lean on the missing ingredient. This is exactly what you should pay attention to, it is they who need to enrich the diet of the expectant mother.
Vitamins will not be superfluous for rabbits, because it is widely known that these animals do not have the strongest immunity, therefore they often get sick. This is very dangerous, since a cold individual can infect others, in which case there is a great risk of losing the entire livestock.
Rabbits go pregnant very often and their body constantly requires replenishment of useful microelements. Your veterinarian can advise which supplements to choose. Experienced rabbit breeders advise helping the expectant mother prepare for childbirth. To do this, 5 days before giving birth, hay and animal fluff are placed in the cage to the female. This gives her a sense of confidence for her offspring and smooths out the stress of the upcoming event.
An exciting day
When the mother's body is ready to free itself from the burden, within a few days she begins to noticeably get nervous. Veterinarians have noticed that most often okrol occurs at night or early in the morning. Depending on how large the babies are and what kind of births are, the female gives birth to each of her children from 10 minutes to 1 hour.
After successful resolution, the new mother can eat the film and stillborn rabbits. But rabbit breeders advise avoiding the latter, so that the rabbit does not get carried away and does not kill the successful offspring. As soon as the owner noticed a dead baby, he must immediately remove it from the female.
Having become a mother, the rabbit licks her children. After that, it is advisable to ventilate the room in which the birth took place, after transferring the family to a new cage for about half an hour.
Once all the procedures are completed, veterinarians advise not to disturb the female for several days and add protein-rich food to the diet. If the rabbit does not want to feed the offspring, they rub it with fluff from someone else's nest in order to interrupt the smell of a real mother and put the babies with another female.
Breeding rabbits, despite the prevailing stereotypes about their fertility, is a very serious process. But if you correctly approach its implementation, you can get a wonderful result in the form of a large amount of healthy and dietary meat for the whole family. Now you know how long a rabbit's pregnancy lasts by day, how okrol is done and how to react in any incomprehensible situations.