Eastern Cottontail Emergencies

If you experience an actual emergency with a wild cottontail or a cottontail nest, please don’t try to raise baby bunnies at home. They need an experienced, licensed wildlife rehabilitator to receive proper care. Cottontails are delicate, and they are difficult to rehabilitate. Their needs change daily, as does their diet and regimen of maintenance.

Many websites offer care advice, and much of the information given is entirely wrong.

For example, many sites instruct to feed baby bunnies KMR, a kitten milk replacer. Kitten milk is completely different in composition from cottontail milk and will cause a multitude of growth problems. Milk composition differs from species to species as well as throughout their development, which is why it is extremely important to provide animal’s a species and age-appropriate support by getting them to a professional.

You can find local wildlife rehabilitators quickly by using online search engines: Just type your state and the term “wildlife rehabilitation” in the search box. Calls to your state wildlife agencies, local veterinarians, animal shelters, and even 911 will often have successful results.

While searching for professional help, keep the bunny warm and in a dark and quiet location. Don’t give it any food or water. Warmth, dark and quiet are all the temporary help they need.

Check out our general emergency support page for information on how to get an animal to a rehabilitator in Pennsylvania.

The information provided below will help to determine if a cottontail infant is in need of assistance. Although these guidelines are helpful, it is important to always contact a rehabilitator prior to bringing an animal in for care.

Cottontail Bunnies – Identifying Emergencies

All visible injuries are an immediate emergency. Gardening accidents, a nest that has been stepped on, and pet attacks often result in injuries. If a single bunny has been injured, perhaps the remaining rabbits can be left in the nest. If the injury to one bunny has left blood in or near the nest, the entire nest is in danger of failing.

A mower accident will often wound or kill one or two babies, while the others are untouched. The blood from the injured bunnies will attract flies, and these will lay eggs which will hatch into maggots. This endangers the remaining babies.

Maggots and fly eggs may or may not accompany an open wound. This is a sure sign that the animal is in serious trouble. If left untreated, maggots will eat into wet tissue or openings in the skin, causing infection and literally “eat the animal alive.”

Any bunny that was in a dog’s or cat’s mouth should be treated with antibiotics. Dogs, and especially cats, carry bacteria in their mouths, including pasterellia. This bacterium is highly infectious to wild animals, especially young rabbits. Untreated, the animal can develop a systemic infection that attacks major organs.

There are times when nest disruption requires evacuation of all the bunnies. Flooding any time of year, and heavy snowfalls in the spring can be considered a natural disaster for a bunny nest. Construction of an area that removes all of the dirt and ground cover may mean that there is no place to rebuild the nest. These are emergencies. Each year, we also receive bunnies found in soil delivered by truck to a home for landscaping. These are cases where rehabbing the entire nest is a must.
If no emergency exists, every effort must be made to re-nest the bunnies so the mother can care for them. Cottontails are difficult to rehab, yet in nature, this is a hardy, prolific animal. A successfully re-nested litter of bunnies often flourishes.

Cottontail Bunnies – Independence

Cottontails are independent when they are five inches long, which for most is between 2-3 weeks of age. They might remain at or near the nest or wander far. Each individual is different.

At this age, they are still fragile and uncoordinated. They do not run fast and often fall when fleeing danger and so are easily captured by predators. However, their scent glands still have not developed, so they remain odor camouflaged. If they stay still in the right background, they blend in with their surroundings becoming visually camouflaged as well.

Blending in is how they survive, and they will continue to be still, even to the point of allowing a person to pick them up. This lack of escape response is often misidentified as a lack of independence, leading to “kidnapping”.

Cottontails of this age can be moved out of areas that are dangerous, such as outside of a fenced dog yard. If moved, they should be placed in a safe area with adequate first foods growing such as dandelion and clover. Putting a young rabbit under a low-hanging pine tree or in a strong smelling area will quickly mask any human scent on the bunny, thus returning its odor camouflage.

Cottontails, even the juveniles, stress very quickly with handling. When relocating an independent bunny, resist the urge to coddle, pet and nurture it. These actions can result in the rabbit experiencing a potentially fatal condition also known as capture myopathy. To relocate a rabbit, don’t carry it in your hands. Instead, place it into a cardboard box and keep the box closed until you are ready to release the bunny. Walk or drive directly to the location. Avoid unnatural sounds such as loud talking and playing the radio.

Cottontail Bunnies – Understanding Bunny Nests

A nesting bunny’s scent glands have not yet developed, and they do not put off an odor of their own. They will remain odorless for much of their juvenile development. The mother rabbit does have mature scent glands, however, and leaves a scent wherever she rests. Except for short visits to feed and tend to the kits, she stays away from the nest so her own odor does not linger.

We are often asked if a nest can be moved because of dangers such as those from dogs. The answer is: NO! Because the babies do not put off an odor, even the mother cannot find them if they have been moved.

Occasionally an adult rabbit will be found dead near a known nest. The dead adult might or might not be the actual mother. There are two ways that a nest can be tested to determine if the mother is still caring for the babies.

First is the string test. Place pieces of yarn or string across the top of the nest in a checkerboard pattern. Because the mother mostly visits at night, this should be done in the early evening. The next morning, check the nest to see if the yarn has been moved. If the nest was untouched, the babies have been orphaned.

Another test is to pick up one or two babies and look at their bellies. In their first week of life, a cottontail’s belly skin is very thin and partially transparent. If they’ve been recently fed, there will be a light-colored triangle in the center of the abdominal area. This is milk in the stomach, revealing that they have been recently fed.

Keep in mind that bunnies slowly digest the milk so this milk can be observed for up to twelve hours. A recheck twelve to twenty-four hours later will assure you that the mother is still returning and has fed the bunnies.