← Health section Care at home High risk Affects kits
Kits dying in the nest
a doe abandoning her kits
This is not one disease but the result of several causes: cold or heat, too little milk, stress and an inexperienced doe. Does normally nurse only once or twice a day, usually at night or early morning, so not seeing her in the nest does not mean she has abandoned the kits. A doe may eat kits that have already died — that is usually a result, not the cause.
When to call a vet
Care at home
Start with care at home and keep watching. If it gets worse, see a vet.
Call a vet if the doe looks ill, her teats are hard or hot, she stops eating, or kits keep dying one after another
Symptoms
- Kits that are cold or scattered outside the nest
- Sunken bellies, wrinkled skin and constant squeaking — signs of hunger
- The doe builds no nest, pulls no fur, or gives birth on the wire
- Bitten, injured or missing kits
- Several kits dying one after another in the first week
What to do
- 1 Warm chilled kits gradually in your hands or next to a cloth-wrapped bottle of warm water — never beside a stove or fire
- 2 Check whether the kits are fed: full kits have round bellies and smooth skin
- 3 If the doe is not nursing, gently hold her once or twice a day so the kits can feed
- 4 If possible, foster the kits to another doe with kits of a similar age — hand-rearing is very difficult
- Call a vet if the doe looks ill, her teats are hard or hot, she stops eating, or kits keep dying one after another
When it strikes
Most losses come in the first days of life — on cold winter nights when kits get chilled, and in summer heat, which also cuts the doe's milk; young first-litter does lose kits most often.
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Prevention
- Put in a clean nest box with dry hay or straw a few days before kindling
- Keep the doe in a quiet place, protected from dogs, cats and rats
- Always give pregnant and nursing does clean water and good, nourishing feed
- Check the nest briefly every day, count the kits and remove any dead ones
- Protect the nest from overheating in summer and from cold in winter
- Do not keep for breeding a doe that loses litter after litter despite good conditions
Causes
- Inexperience in a first-time mother
- Stress from noise, dogs, cats, rats, strangers or opening the nest too often
- No nest box or a poor one, or a cold or overheated nest — newborn kits cannot keep themselves warm
- Too little milk from lack of water, poor feeding or mastitis
- A doe that is too young or sick, or more kits than teats