Feeding young rabbits during and after pregnancy should be especially nutritious and filled with useful components, since they are important for both the baby and the mother. During gestation, a lot of energy is spent on the formation of embryos, as well as on the production of milk. After the rounding, the animal also spends a lot of energy, so it is necessary to restore the spent supply by adding vitamins and minerals to the food. Only a balanced diet will allow the farmer to get healthy and strong animals.
Food for the rabbit after okrolya
The future of the cubs and the mother herself depends on feeding the females after childbirth, so her diet should be varied, including all the necessary trace elements necessary for recovery after childbirth and lactation. The more small rabbits born, the more the female will spend energy on milk production.
It contains a lot of protein produced from protein, and the latter is contained in high-quality feed. It is necessary to add as much greens, vegetables and fruits as possible, hay makers and bran with mineral additives to the diet. It is necessary to give a little salt, chalk, flour and fish oil. In addition, the menu for female rabbits differs depending on the season.
Important! In no case should you overfeed your mother, because this leads to obesity and a decrease in metabolism, as well as to a decrease in the quality of milk.
Seasonal feed
A rabbit is an absolutely not whimsical food animal. It feeds on almost all plant foods. However, the choice of food will directly depend on the time of year, because the warm season is rich in green food, which eared like so much, and in winter the farmer is obliged to switch to dry food, which is prepared in the summer and early autumn.
In spring and summer, mom should be fed young herbs. She eats root vegetables and herbs, stalks of grain plants with great pleasure. The basis of its menu should include: alfalfa and oats, meadow grass and cabbage, clover and other herbs. Vegetables and vegetable tops, such as corn and even green peas, can fill the body with proteins and carbohydrates. Do not forget about the supplements, which will be discussed a little later.
In autumn and winter, it becomes difficult to find greens, so farmers switch to boiled potatoes, hay, silage, nettle and wormwood. Be sure to feed the mom in the cold with root vegetables, which must be prepared in advance. To normalize digestion, bran is added to the food, and the amount of minerals is also increased.
It is useful to add peas and oats to the diet in winter - they will replenish strength and increase lactation, which is vital for posterity. Taking care of your mother, you can raise strong babies.
Important! When self-feed preparation is required is necessary make a daily intake of minerals and vitamins.
Concentrates
Regardless of the time of year, the animal needs as many resources as possible to make up for the lost power, and this can only be done with the addition of concentrated mixtures. Even in the summertime it is impossible to do without them.
After the birth of rabbits and during their feeding, the mother’s diet is filled with feed up to almost 80–90%. Each breeder independently decides to purchase such feed; some independently make it from grated oats, bran and vegetable crushed. You can make a mixture of bran and oilcake.
Important! Rabbits are told about satiety by their tummies, they should be rounded. If they are flat, it is worth changing the diet of the rabbit, as it produces little milk.
Vitamins
If in the warm season the rabbit could get the missing substances through greens and fruits, then in the cold it becomes difficult, and then vitamins can not be dispensed with. You need to be very careful about this choice. The female’s wet face is the first sign of vitamin deficiency that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Everyone is well aware of fish oil, rich in vitamins A and E, be sure to include rabbits in the diet.
It is also recommended to use Chiktonik - It contains a number of water and fat-soluble vitamins, amino acids and beneficial additives. If you notice a decrease in appetite, impaired growth, the appearance of bald spots - without hesitation, give this animal to your animal. After the first intake, you will immediately see the changes: the mom's appetite will improve and milk will increase, and accordingly, the rabbits will become more active and well-fed.
This vitamin complex can be easily purchased at any veterinary pharmacy. It is sold in a hermetically sealed bottle, which lasts a long time. It is not served in its pure form, but mixed with water: two milliliters of the drug is needed per liter of water. Then the water is given to the female, and on the seventh day small rabbits can also drink such water.
Did you know? When a rabbit is happy, it can make unusual sounds. So, when you are stroking or hugging a bunny, he can purr like a cat.
The diet of the nursing rabbit after okrolya
To form the daily diet of the mother you need to be very careful. You can not reduce the feed given throughout lactation.
- In the early days, 350-700 g of feed per day will be enough for a young mother. In the first ten days, 350 g will be enough for her, in the next ten, the portion is increased to 440 g.
- Twentieth and thirtieth days - 550 g.
- Then the portion increases to 700 g.
The approximate daily diet is as follows:- Fresh herbs and hay - up to 300 g.
- Sunflower meal - 50-60 g.
- Sunflower meal - 30 g (it can be changed to wheat bran).
- Feed yeast - not more than 5 g.
- Compound feed will be enough 80 g.
- For the formation of strong bones, it is necessary to give 7 g of meat and bone meal.
- Chalk - up to 3 g.
- Enriches the body with vitamins A and E fish oil - 4 g.
- Do not forget about ordinary table salt, it needs 2.5 g.
In winter
In the cold, the greens die off, and the farmer needs to find an alternative for the same amount of nutrients. Therefore, the basis of the diet should be hay, potatoes, oilcake, wormwood, as well as legumes, which are rich in protein. The daily diet should contain:
- 200 g of potatoes
- 40 g bran
- 30 g of cake
- 70 g of grain.
Each farmer can independently prepare a mash, which is fed to rabbits in the winter. Approximate product ratio:- 12% bran
- 10% corn
- 10% alfalfa flour,
- 2% mineral supplements.
Important! Take care of the presence of water - it should always be present, and clean. After the rounding, thirst increases, which can cause aggressive behavior of the female, and this can lead to negative consequences, she will begin to eat her children.
In summer
When fresh grass appears, rabbits will definitely not starve. However, an unbalanced diet and irregular food are considered the most important trouble in rabbit breeding. If the diet is not followed, the female begins to quickly gain weight and grows fat. Moreover, feeding a huge amount of untested greens can lead to intestinal disease and animal death.
And if rabbits, on the contrary, are underfed, believing that they are too hot and not hungry - this leads to weight loss. In a nursing rabbit, a small amount of mineral substances in the body becomes the reason for the inability to endure and give birth to offspring.
Summer diet is more diverse than winter. Indeed, in the summer, nature is rich in root crops, forbs, grains and more. The basis without fail are alfalfa, oats, meadow grass, clover, and necessarily cabbage, carrots, corn.
Juicy fresh fruits, vegetables, such as zucchini, cucumbers, watermelons, melons can improve lactation and provide a supply of fluid in the body. They will quickly fill up the moisture supply, even if the rabbit does not want to drink from her drinker. Milk production can be increased quickly and simply by adding parsley and dill to the animal’s menu.
Hornies are indiscriminate eaters, but nevertheless it is necessary to completely exclude such feeds from their menu:
- wild herbs
- branches of wild trees,
- beetroot
- dirty and rotten vegetables with an unpleasant odor.
How to feed a rabbit to increase lactation
The animal’s milk is white, odorless, and has a creamy appearance. The consistency of milk depends on the duration of lactation and the period of feeding. On average, the composition of milk is as follows:
- 15% fat
- 13% protein
- 2.5% ash
- 0.64% calcium
- 0.44% phosphorus.
You can see if there is enough milk for rabbits, according to their condition:- babies should be well developed;
- their hairline is elongated, has no wrinkles, uniform and smooth;
- behave in a nest in a balanced manner.
Pay attention to the behavior of pussies. If the kids are active and active, eat well - they do not need to be touched and worried about their health. But if some kid hid in a corner, his eyes are cloudy and he doesn’t take food - isolate him from the others and immediately take him to a specialist for examination.
Important! The rabbit sweats through its paws, so an excessively warm room can cause him heat stroke, which capable of cause death. Protect the animal from direct sunlight.
To have milk, you need to give:
- Grass that promotes lactation: elecampane, parsley, dill, dandelion, clover, nettle, sedge.
- Vegetables and fruits: carrots, cabbage, apple, melon.
- Alfalfa, barley and oat mushrooms.
- The fruits of mountain ash.
- A large amount of plain clean water.
- Hercules flakes in small quantities.
- Sometimes they turn to medicines - for example, inject oxytocin.
It happens that a female has enough milk, but she simply does not feed her children because of stress. Therefore, provide her with a quiet environment, do not come again and do not let strangers.Milk calculation
There are a huge number of formulas with which you can calculate milk yield. However, the simplest and most common is the following:
M = (Weight2 - Weight1) x 2
In it:
- M - milk rabbit;
- Weight1 - the weight of newborn rabbits;
- Weight2 - weight of rabbits at 21 days;
- 2 - the coefficient of translation of weight gain of babies in milk of the mother.
Did you know? The largest rabbit in the world is Amy from the English city of Worcester. Its dimensions are simply impressive: the weight reaches 19 kg, and the length is 1.2 meters. The largest brood of her was 32 cubs.
In a living example, it will look like this: for example, in a litter of a female 10 rabbits were born, which she feeds up to 20 days. A typical baby mass is 52 g (respectively, 10 babies = 520 g). After 20 days, it will reach 340 g (10 individuals = 3400 g). Substitute the data in the formula and get:
M = (3400 - 520) x 2 = 5760 g
Such a volume of milk was developed by a rabbit. Accordingly, in twenty days it should start from 2000 and reach a maximum of 6400 g. To calculate the daily production and return of milk, the result should be divided into 20 days. It turns out:
5760: 20 = 288 g
Young and inexperienced females have a lower milk content than adult individuals, as they are still in the growth stage. During physiological maturity, lactation in the second and third periods is highest, since the mammary gland is maximally developed by that time.
Possible problems
Sometimes a completely healthy rabbit has problems. She has lost milk, or she just does not feed her offspring and even stops eating herself. All these factors can occur for several reasons: the female had a hormonal malfunction, she received stress in connection with the first birth and so on. It is worth considering the causes and solutions to these problems.
Hormonal imbalance
When such a violation occurs, the female has a biochemical failure and she goes into a hunting state. In this state, the beast can give birth and throw rabbits near the nest, and sometimes even begins to trample them. In this case, it is necessary to immediately separate the female from the offspring and transplant it for several hours to the male for mating. After that, her hormones stabilize and she begins to take care of her newborn babies.
Did you know? Rabbits can snore in their sleep like people.
Stressful situation
Childbirth causes stress in the animal. At first, you should not bother the mother at all, it is not recommended to remove the rabbits, as well as to clean in the cage. Provide the rabbit with a state of rest, and in a few hours her condition will return to normal. You can understand her violent behavior, because in this way she is worried about her children - during this period, show understanding and caution to her. As soon as the rabbits begin to grow up, her aggression will disappear.
First birth
The rabbits who gave birth for the first time do not know what motherhood is - accordingly, this instinct does not appear immediately. To solve this problem, you need to take mommy to a warm and comfortable place, then lay her on her back and put the babies on her nipples.
There are times when a female bites cubs, but all this happens because of her inexperience. She can accidentally bite or scratch a baby rabbit during childbirth, helping him to be born. The next time this will not happen again.
After childbirth, you need to find out if there is milk - for this you need to press the nipple with your finger. The appearance of a drop suggests that everything is fine and do not worry. If there is no milk, contact your veterinarian. You can try to independently adjust the lactation process, for this the rabbit is given the medicine Oxytocin.
However, if milk does not arrive in two days, the cubs are placed under another female. They are laid in the middle of the nest and covered with the down of this second female so that she does not smell someone else's smell and takes the kids for her own.
So, feeding the female requires a lot of attention from the farmer. A caring owner, who wants to get a healthy and numerous offspring, must first of all monitor the nutrition of the rabbit. She is able to bring not one offspring, but much more. Therefore, it is necessary not only to preserve the resource that it has, but also to fill it again.
