Pregnant Rabbit or False Pregnancy? (And a Polite Rant)

by Concerned Bunny Mama

Hi, my rabbit is a year old the dad is only about 6 months or less. They did mate and I thought she was definitely pregnant. She made a beautiful nest about a week ago she also pulled fur and lined the nest.


She has had the nest for like 7 days. The thing is she normally doesn't go in the nest or bother with it but still a week later she is making haystache and going in it; is she pregnant? Or is it a long false pregnancy?

Before there are any rude comments I was told both bunnies were females but they are not and I do have them in in separate cages - always have they just used to have time out of the cage together. Now they come out separately.

Karen Sez

What? Rude comments??? Not on this website. On Raising-Rabbits the rude comments get deleted before anyone ever sees them. And thankfully, these are getting fewer. (Not that the incidence of rudeness on the world wide web is dropping, because if it were, this poster wouldn't feel the need to duck and cover just in case.)

In a fair society, people are free to make choices. Those choices include whether or not to keep rabbits, AND whether or not to breed them. It is OKAY to breed rabbits! Your choice, completely.

From one decision comes others, for example, what to do with the kits once they are weaned. Responsible people make their decisions carefully, and can also refuse to be browbeaten into conforming to misguided animal-rights agendas.

Raising-Rabbits is all about animal welfare (not animal rights, whose avowed goal is to eliminate human usage and enjoyment of animals entirely, both food and pets).

Which is why we're here to assist ALL rabbit owners, the experienced and the novice, those who can tell male from female, and those who have relied on someone who ends up arriving at erroneous conclusions. (This happens a LOT, lol!)

It's okay to discover an oopsie pregnancy or litter! Now that you know you have a female AND a male, you can now begin to make informed choices, lol. Kudos to this poster who is doing just that.

Yikes, now that that rant is behind me (guess I won't apologize; I made the choice to rant, I hope fairly politely), here is how things look to me relative to these two rabbits:

I'm guessing pregnant, but I of course can't be sure from way over here. It is normal for does to make their nest and then ignore it until the kindling is imminent. Haystaches almost always mean a true pregnancy, but that said, I HAVE seen a doe with a haystache who had never been with a buck EVER. She was young and doing a false pregnancy. On day 18 she forgot why she was trying to build a nest, and ate the straw and hay.

The best thing to do, when uncertain, is to assume a pregnancy and leave the nest in the cage until day 35 or so. If by then the doe has not produced any babies, it is 99.9% safe to assume she was not pregnant.

Good luck with everything going forward!

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