Baby Diet
The main food for babies both in rabbits and in all animals in the world (mammals), is the milk of their moms and we are no different, so until the 2 months that's what we eat, the good milk that our mother gives us twice a day, in the morning and at night.
The milk is so good that it has everything we need to grow strong and health, beyond from that it´s through him that we find out what we can or can not eat, and how our organism learns to digest certain nutrients, I explain, who has been mom know if eat something spicy that spicy goes to the milk and the milk will be spicy and then your baby maybe won´t like it very much, so does ours milk, all the herbs, vegetables and fruits we eat pass into our milk and so on to our babies, preparing the body to learn how process it when grow up.
Around 2 monthsWe started to come out of the nest and eat what mommy leaves us, it can be herbs, hay, greens, actually, mom is who knows and if she lets us eat we ate, but we also only ate one little bit, is how our body starts to learn to process these foods, then after a while we start to eat more and more variety until around 4 or 5 months we have already eaten everything and we are already run all over the place.
But and when we aren't with our mom anymore?
In that case,up to 2 months (preferably) we have to drink powdered milk, from what is sold in pharmacy the one made for bunnies or animals, or if not, we can drink goat's milk, we don´t eat too much, in fact we ate very little at first 5ml and that's it, if we are weaklings, we will not be able to suck on thebottle, so sometimes a syringe or a dropper helps, you have to be very careful for the milk don't go for the nose or lungs!
And how to know if we are taking the whole milk or not?
The best it´s before at each feeding observe our tummy, it will be small and wrinkled like in this picture:
After drinking the milk and for you to have the certainty that the bunnies really eated and are well fed see again their bellies, they must be rounded and filled as in this image:
When you are handling the babies you have to pay attention so you don't have your hands cold, babies are very small and have difficulty in maintaining they body temperature, so it is important to have your hands very warm, moreover, while you are giving the milk babies have to have their tummy face down.
Such as if we were with our mum we would eat every 12h , if you see that we are very weaklings we can eat an extra dose in the middle of these 12h.
After 45 days, we can start eating pap (if you want see here how to make baby food) intrue it's just to make the transition from liquids for solids, we keep two meals a day and add hay at description for them to go biting and eating.
With this we are already archive 2/3 months, now we should eat junior pellets (attention that the junior pellets maintains the same rules as the pellets for adults, be homogeneous and boring, see here if you want), the amount must always be the one indicated on the packaging for baby bunnies, they are still very little ones to eat just one table spoon or a cup of coffee, these measurements are only for adults bunnies and who are already on a complete diet, timothy hay must be always available and if you want you can add a complementary hay,since keep it simple, with no fruits, vegetables or herbs mixture (if you want to see the types of hay and the hay rules see here), as they are tiny and need calcium to streng then bones and help to grow strong and healthy it is very important that they eat alfalfa (you already know what I'm going to say ,don´t you?Here all about Alfalfa), but they can't eat too much or they will get problems, so a handfulThree times per week it's ok. Why? Because that way you can control what your bunny eat from alfalfa, when eat and gives your bunny the body time to process calcium and don´t overload the kidneys and bladder.
There are those whodefend that bunnies should only eat Alfalfa up to 6 months, but as I said up there, when we are with our mom, at 2 months we started to get out of ourburrow and when we come outside, we eat some herbs, so if you want around 2/3 months you can with a lot of Careful and very calmly start giving some herbs and greens to your bunnies, don't forget that the introduction must be done very carefully, calm, a very small bit of each new food, always wait 1 or 2 days to see if there is any reaction, do not mix until you have tried everything and see if none of them hurt your bunny tummy and always start with the most basic ones, like chamomile, dandelion, plantain, mallows, coriander, arugula, watercress, sage, raspberry leaves,etc.
But attention!Vegetables and fruit is only fafter 6 months! And why? Because they are very rich in sugars and our body don´t process the sugar very well, so the later we eat it better and always just a little bit like treat.
