How To Tell How Old A Baby Rabbit Is? Ultimate Animal Facts!

Rabbits are cute little mammals.

Rabbits are social and affectionate pets. The furry little baby bunnies have been domesticated and there are said to be about 305 breeds of the domestic rabbit.

Small animals like the cottontail bunnies have a widespread distribution and can be found all across Central America, North America as well as South America. The average lifespan of a cottontail rabbit is about two years but its longevity mostly depends on its location.

The wild rabbits, on the other hand, can live up to nine years in the wild. The calculation between age in adult rabbit years and human years is quite different.

In rabbit age, four months is equal to about 12 years human age, six months is 16 years and one year is about 21 years.

Out of every 16 days, rabbits are receptive for about 14 days. The duration of pregnancy in female rabbits lasts about 33 days.

A few days or the day before giving birth, the female rabbit, (doe) pulls her own fur from its body to prepare a nest. The baby rabbits are blind, naked without any fur, and are completely deaf at birth.

Their eyes remain shut until they are about 10 days old.

Newborn baby rabbits are extremely fragile and should not be handled by anybody except the mother until they are three weeks of age. When they are three weeks old, you can pick the young rabbit up easily and start interacting with them.

The age of the baby rabbits can be determined by observing the different life stages. Once the physical characteristics are noted, it is an easy task to figure out a rabbit's age.

There are a lot of different breeds of rabbits that can be safely kept as pets. However, keeping a rabbit as a pet requires special care.

Pet owners should be fully aware and make the arrangements accordingly. If you are caring for a baby rabbit or a younger rabbit, a soft nest area needs to be provided.

The baby rabbits can be fed kitten milk replacer that can be easily purchased from pet stores. Rabbits drink goat milk too.

The baby rabbit's feeding can be done using an oral syringe. For a young bunny's diet, fresh hay should be available at all times along with plenty of pellets, fresh greens, and warm water which they can drink from sipper bottles or a special bunny's water bowl.

Rabbit lovers also like reading articles like Flemish giant rabbit lifespan and rabbit bite.

How To Tell How Old A Wild Baby Rabbit Is

Wild rabbits or bunny rabbits are fairly easy to spot if you live near grasslands and meadows. Wild rabbits usually inhabit deserts, wetlands, tundra as well as forests and woods.

Their homes are constructed by tunneling into the ground. Though these rabbits do not cause major harm to human beings, having them in your yard can be a bit of a problem for your plants.

Owing to their varied diet, baby bunnies can feed on a wide number of plants and destroy them in your backyard. The female rabbit doe reaches sexual maturity between the age of three and eight months.

Their gestation period is short and lasts for about 28-32 days. Short gestation periods usually mean a larger litter and longer gestation periods usually lead to a small litter.

After giving birth to newborn kittens, the doe is capable of being pregnant soon after. A female bunny can deliver as high as 60 kittens in a single year.

Wild female rabbits are also known as does and are usually pregnant for a period of four to five weeks. Each litter can consist of 15 babies known as kittens.

Though the average number of kittens in each litter is about five. The newly born kittens are completely furless and do not have the ability to even open their eyes.

There is no one way to exactly determine the correct age of a baby rabbit. However, observing their behavior as well as certain physical characteristics can give us a fair idea about their age.

If a kitten is newly born, it will have its eyes closed and be completely furless. Once it is more than three days old, the eyes remain shut but some light-colored fur on its skin can be observed.

How to tell if baby rabbits are orphaned?

As is true for all mammals, baby bunnies should remain with the mother rabbits for an adequate amount of time in order to get proper nutrition and care. If they do not spend enough time in their parent's care, the young rabbit may not live for very long.

However, at times, there might be many reasons why the nest has been left by the mother. The adolescent rabbits' nest is usually shallow made using fur, grass and placed near trees or bushes on the ground. That is why, if you have a big yard in your house, you might want to double-check your yard before mowing it.

If you spot a pack of young adult, or baby rabbits, also known as kittens, around your backyard that do not have their eyes open and their nests seem to be abandoned, chances are that they have been orphaned.

To check whether the mother rabbits have left them or not, it is important to check and observe through a method that does not cause any inconvenience to the kittens. To do this, you can dust some flour around the nest where the kittens are laying.

If you observe some footprints the next day, it means that the mother is around and the kittens should not be disturbed.

However, if there are no footprints, and the kittens appear to be weak, you can take them to a wildlife rehabilitator. You can also lay down some strings in a tic-tac-toe pattern.

If the strings are out of shape during the course of the next 24 hours, you would know that the mother is still around.

There may also be certain instances, where you see very young rabbits around your yard thinking that they might be abandoned.

However, if they are completely covered with fur and have a length of more than 4 in (10.16), they are okay to be left alone to fend for themselves and do not require the assistance of humans to look after them.

If you do find kittens around your house, be sure to not touch them unless you are absolutely sure that they require human intervention.

Sometimes, baby rabbits found in the nest on the ground can be healthy and well enough to look after themselves.

How do you work out the age of a wild baby rabbit?

The best way to determine a baby rabbit's exact age is to observe its behavior. If the baby bunny does not live inside the nest anymore, it must be a minimum of 15-20 days old.

The wild rabbits usually become self-sufficient and can be spotted hopping all around in the wild once they are three weeks old. If by any chance you see a baby wild rabbit, you should contact the concerned services immediately.

Wild rabbits should not be handled by people and should be left alone unless the wild rabbit is injured and needs special care. You cannot domesticate a wild rabbit.

As per the guidelines of most states in the United States, it is illegal to keep them as pets. Another reason why you shouldn't be handling these rabbits is that they can carry and transmit a large number of diseases.

Tularemia is one such disease that is contagious and can cause symptoms like fever, loss of appetite, and even chills.

How to tell how old a cottontail rabbit is?

To find out the age of a cottontail rabbit, it is important to know about its different life stages. Once you can identify the current life stage of the cottontail rabbit, it will be an easy task to determine its age.

At the newborn rabbits' stage, the newborn rabbits will have their eyes shut whereas when they are about three to five weeks old, they are fully covered with fur. The young bunnies are dependent on drinking milk from the mother rabbit for their nutrition and dietary needs.

When the young bunny is a little older, it starts nibbling on grasses. When older, they consume a wide variety of grasses like grass hay, leafy greens, fruits as well as vegetables.

How to tell the age of a baby cottontail rabbit?

Cottontail rabbits have a very short lifespan. The average lifespan of these adult rabbits is about 15 months. Only a quarter of them lives up to the age of two years. Once they are about five days old, they have a length of about 3 in (7.62 cm). Their ears also start coming away from their small bodies.

After about 10 days, the baby rabbit's eyes can open and they weigh between 1.4-1.9 oz (40-54 g). Apart from feeding on their mother's milk, the baby rabbits also start consuming very small portions of dried grass.

At an age of three weeks, the baby rabbits start to resemble fully grown rabbits. The bunnies also have a diet that consists of seeds, fruits, grasses as well as vegetables.

After six weeks, when they are more than a month old, their ears stand upright, their bodies are completely covered with fur and they have a bodyweight of more than 5.2 oz (147.4 g).

The baby rabbits become old enough to fend for themselves in the wild. They also have a length of 7 in (18 cm).

When the cottontails turn into adults, they are fully capable of looking after themselves. The adult bunny has a length between 15-20 in (38.1-51 cm) long. Cottontail rabbits, like other wild rabbits, do not make for good pets.

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