Pregnant rabbits

We do not recommend or condone intentional breeding of rabbits (or any animal, really) unless you know what you are doing and are responsibly breeding them for a utilitarian purpose like showing or for meat. Because this is a wiki dedicated to house rabbit care, we believe all house rabbits should be spayed and neutered and not given the opportunity to make more babies. There are plenty of rabbits available for adoption in local shelters and rabbit rescues, and we do not need any more people irresponsibly producing more rabbits just to abandon and dump them in a shelter or other sources. See Breeding for more details.

However, in the event of an accidental pregnancy because you placed two intact rabbits together of the opposite sex out of ignorance or on accident, we will provide the following helpful information to deal with it.

Detecting a Pregnancy
The links below contain more information about how to detect a rabbit pregnancy.


 * Pet Rabbits, How to Care for Pregnant and Baby Rabbits

The following pages are from rabbit breeding sites. Please do not take this referral as condoning rabbit breeding for the common house rabbit owner. We provide these links purely for information.
 * Raising-Rabbits.com, 5 Clues to the Pregnant Rabbit
 * Rabbit Breeding for Beginners, Gestation and Birth > Telling if She's Pregnant
 * ARBA, Charlcie Gill, The Art of Palpation

Discovering a Pregnancy
If you have discovered that one of your intact female rabbits has become pregnant, please consider giving the bun an emergency spay to terminate the pregnancy. A pregnancy detected after 2.5 weeks is probably too far along for an emergency spay without harming the mother, but talk to your local rabbit-savvy veterinarian to get a professional opinion. There are enough unwanted pet rabbits in shelters all over the world, and there is no need to bring more into life without the firm knowledge there will be loving permanent homes for every single one of them until the end of their natural lifespan.

Taking Care of a Pregnant Rabbit and Her Litter
See the following links for more information. Also check out Baby Domestic Rabbits.
 * Dana Krempels, Ph.D., Surprise Litter of Babies! What to do now?
 * House Rabbit Society, Sandi Koi, Domestic Baby Bunnies and Their Mom
 * ArticleSnatch.com, Josey Ramosse, Tips For The Care Of Pregnant Rabbits And Their Litter
 * House Rabbit Society of Singapore, Jinny Tan, Pregnancy & Rabbits
 * MediRabbit, Offspring feeding time