ETA: I have been getting a lot of people leaving comments asking what to do if they’ve found a baby rabbit in a particular situation. Instead of commenting here, you need to contact your closest wildlife rehab. Even if they aren’t close enough to take an injured or ill bunny, they can still advise you more quickly than I am usually able to, and the faster you can get advice the better chance your baby rabbit has. Please stop leaving comments here asking me for advice. You need to contact an active wildlife rehab, not me.
Last week’s article went into depth about what to do if you find a baby bird. Today I want to continue in that theme and discuss what to do if you’ve found a baby rabbit. They’re notoriously difficult to care for even in professional rehabilitation settings, and because their mothers often leave them alone for hours at a time, well-meaning people assume they’re abandoned and take them away. Unfortunately this is essentially kidnapping them, and their chances of survival are significantly lower than if they’d been left to their mother’s care.
Fast Facts about Baby Bunnies
Baby rabbits are altricial, meaning they’re born helpless. They have no fur and their eyes and ears are closed, and they’re completely dependent on their mother. Because she raises them alone and can’t take them with her, she must leave them alone while she goes to find food for herself. She hides them in a nest, and only comes back to visit them at dawn and dusk to briefly feed them, before leaving again.
The baby rabbits will remain in the nest anywhere from three to five weeks. During that time they grow their fur and become able to see and hear. Their scent glands haven’t yet fully developed, which means they don’t have a distinctive aroma that can attract predators. Part of why their mother keeps her distance is so that she doesn’t make the nest smell excessively “rabbity”.
Speaking of smell, it’s a myth that getting your own scent on a baby rabbit will cause the mother to abandon the nest. Because a baby rabbit’s instinct to stay in the nest is so strong, they will remain quiet even if a predator approaches. Close calls happen all the time, and if there are survivors to be found even after an attack the mother will often return to care for them.
If You Do Find a Baby Rabbit…
Okay, so let’s suppose you’re walking in your yard or across a field and you come across a nest of baby rabbits. What should you do?
Well, the quickest answer is “leave them alone”. Mama is likely nearby, and your presence is stressing out the babies–and possibly the mother, too. Wild rabbits have a low stress threshold, especially when young, and the more you mess with them the more detrimental it is to their health. Take a quick picture if you absolutely must, and then head on your way.
If you’re able to observe the nest from a safe place, such as from inside your home, keep an eye out at dusk or dawn. You might just get to see the mother make a quick visit to her young. If you’ve gone several days without seeing her, make a tic-tac-toe grid of string or flour around the nest and see if it ends up being disturbed; if so, she’s likely just being very sneaky about her visits. If a nest has been truly abandoned, apart from the lack of disturbance around the site, you may notice the babies are looking thinner or dehydrated. They may also be crying or otherwise obviously distressed.
If you find a single baby rabbit that is still very small all by itself, it may have gotten lost; see if you can relocate the rest of the babies and return it to the nest, and check their condition quickly before you go. Not every lone bunny is an orphan, though. Remember that they can be independent as early as three weeks of age. If the baby you find is fully furred with open eyes, can hop around on its own, and is at least the size of a baseball, it’s likely old enough to be on its own.
It is incredibly important that you NOT remove a baby rabbit from the nest unless you are absolutely certain it has been abandoned. Most baby rabbits that end up in rehab will die, even with the best professional care. Formula is not a good substitute for their mother’s milk, and they also need the antibodies they get from her while nursing. The stress from captivity also frequently leads to capture myopathy, in which the rabbit’s muscles are so flooded by lactic acid that they don’t receive enough oxygen and the tissues die. It’s a pretty horrible way to die, quite honestly, and even a baby rabbit that is simply picked up and handled before being put back in the nest can suffer from it.
In the event the baby or entire nest truly has been abandoned, or if one of the bunnies is injured or ill, call your closest wildlife rehabilitation facility. Do not try to care for the rabbits on your own; as mentioned, they have very specific dietary needs, and they are incredibly fragile.
And like I said last week, part of the reason rabbits and other prey animals have so many young at once, and often multiple litters/broods each year, is because most of them won’t survive to adulthood. They instead go to feed a wide variety of predators, scavengers, detritivores, and decomposers in their ecosystem. It may be sad to think of cute little baby bunnies dying, but consider also that cute little baby foxes and hawks and owls will starve to death without enough food, and nothing in nature truly goes to waste either way. Sometimes the right choice is to walk away, and allow nature to unfold as it will.
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My cat caught this baby rabbit. I was able to take the rabbit away from my cat before he heard it. I now have the I now have the rabbit wrapped in my house coat and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it from what I’ve read it’s rather hopeless to try to save it
Thank you for doing your best for this little bunny! You need to get it to a professional wildlife rehab ASAP; that’s the only chance it has. Also, if your cat is allowed to free roam outside it’s just going to keep attacking native wildlife, so it’s best to keep it indoors, in a catio, or leash-train it for supervised outdoor time.
Thanks for this write up. It really helped.
I found a baby bunny in my yard today & it seemed to be looking to get back to the nest. I knew where the nest was. So I watched the bunny for a while and it was blind and couldn’t quite find the nest. It’s really hot today so i was worried about the baby being in the sun too long. I put on some gloves and gently picked & placed the bunny back in the nest (there were 5 or so other babies in the nest) but, I was so guilt ridden if I had actually done harm. I’m usually a leave them be person. This article made me feel a little better. Thanks!
Thank you for your compassion, and for doing the right thing!
Yes, same happened to me. i was mowing my lawn and unknowingly mowed right over a nest. Luckily none of the bunnies were hit by the blade. One bunny jumped out of the nest and wiggled around with eyes shut for a few mins. I used a lacrosse stick to put it back in the nest and covered. The next day, i did some fertilizing and quietly walked by the next. When i came back around, one of the bunnies had hopped out, so i must have scared it. She/he stayed near my house in some grass for a few hours. Finally i decided to put gloves on and put it back in the nest. Hopefully not too stressed, but I agree this article made me feel much better.
Thanks for doing the right thing! It can be really unnerving when we worry that we might have harmed our local wildlife, but in this case it sounds like your local bunnies were okay.
A little bunny got inside our house. It came in through an open back door. He is currently huddled in my office under my desk. He’s about palm sized. I have 3 cats and they haven’t touched him, they are just curious and pacing around my office door. Do I just catch him and send him outside? Do I use gloves to handle him? I don’t want him to die of fright before I get up the courage to attempt to catch him. I’m freaked out.
Just catch him as quickly as you can and go put him somewhere sheltered outside, under bushes or another quiet place. The longer he’s inside the more stressed he’ll become.
I’ve watched a baby rabbit around our condo lately. He has peeked in the front door, explored a safe area I created for birds under a laurel hedge with pine needles for bedding, and once in a connecting little garden where he was under a huerchera plant. I want to buy a straw box w holes for a hiding spot and place it just for bunny. Does that sound like a good idea?
Just let him nest in natural spots. He’ll be fine.
There’s a baby bunny that keeps approaching my students and me (presumably from its nest under some trees). We’ve tried our best to keep our distance, but we keep finding it in the middle of one of the busy roads by the high school. Is there anything we can do to help keep it out of the road?
There’s really not a lot you can do about it without potentially harassing the rabbit to the point of stress illness. best to just let it learn that roads are not safe places to be, and hope that it wises up quickly.
We have a nest of baby bunnies outside our house. They don’t have fur and are smaller than my palm. My dog went in and took two out of the nest. One was fine but another had a tiny bit of blood on him/her. I put them back in the nest and covered it with the moms fur (I put gloves on). I don’t know if that was enough or if the mom wont come back. What do i do next?
Hi there! As mentioned at the beginning of the article, please contact your local wildlife rehab, especially if there is any chance the rabbits were injured.
I found a baby rabbit that survived an attack from something… what do I do? It is in a crate I have right now. I just need to figure it out because it’s thin
As mentioned in the beginning of the article, you need to ask a wildlife rehab, not me. If there if not one in your immediate area, find whichever is closest and give them a call or email.