Your doe has her litter.... Four beautiful fat babies! You check them daily and they get rounder and fatter and grow like weeds. At two weeks old, they open their eyes and after that they begin to nibble some hay and come out of the nest box. Sometime after three weeks, you notice that one of the babies just isn't growing as well as the others. In fact, as the days go by, you can see that it is actually losing weight, growing smaller, in fact "fading away" before your eyes even though it is eating and drinking with the rest of the litter. Of course, it is the best one of the litter... the one you had the highest hopes for. It's always the best one.... :(
About two years ago we had several cases of this "fader baby syndrome". We were perplexed as to what was going on. I researched everything I could, but very little has been written about this condition, although many breeders have experienced it.
Some of the possible causes I came across were:
** parasite infestation
** dietary issues related to brand of feed (protein/fiber levels, additives, vitamins)
** genetics (some lines are pre-disposed to genetic weakness... so especially your line-bred animals (especially the ones which exhibit the line's best (recessive) qualities), would show signs of weakness)
** enteritis
Our vet insisted it was a parasite problem. So, we wormed religiously. We also treated affected babies with Ivomec, on the presumption that the condition could be related to the protozoal infection, E.Cuniculi. There wasn't a worm to be seen in the whole herd.... but we still lost a "fader" baby.
We changed feed. Twice. The rabbits never knew what was going to be on the menu from day to day. But we still lost another "fader" baby. We do linebreed our herd, but in keeping records we looked back and found that even our "outcrosses" to other lines occasionally resulted in a "fader". We really didn't think it was enteritis, because we didn't see any signs of diarrhea, potty belly, or lose any other babies to those symptoms. The affected babies kept eating and drinking right up until time of death.
Finally I was able to talk to Dr. Chris Hayhow (president of the ARBA and veterinarian) on one occasion and asked him what he thought about the problem. Without hesitation he had a one-word answer: "Enteritis".
But, I insisted, we didn't see the signs of enteritis. He said that diarrhea was not always a present symptom of enteritis. Outwardly, the bunny looks normal... On the inside, the intestines are in turmoil. This is always a case of babies switching from nursing on Mom to eating pelleted feeds, he said, and coincided with the practice of "free-feeding" litters instead of controlling their intake of prepared feed. Well, he had me there. In fact we did always free-feed our litters, believing that the growing babies needed more pellets as Mom bunny began to refuse to nurse them. Although we also gave them hay each day, it just wasn't enough to counteract the effects of the new diet, and some of the babies would develop "quiet enteritis" and die.
So we came home with a new plan... Beginning immediately, we would control the pelleted feed ration to our litters, and instead "free-feed" them on good quality grass hay, providing a diet very high in fiber with low-protein nutrition. Our litters now have good clean hay in front them twice a day, plenty of clean water, and are fed pellets only once in the evening.
And here's the good news..... Since implementing that plan, NOT ONE little baby has been lost to "fader syndrome", which I also now refer to as "quiet enteritis". And they're ALL growing like weeds. :) Thank you, Dr. Hayhow!
Note: I use this practice and haven't had wasters and faders since. They get pellets at night. Come morning, feeders are emptied and the cage is stuffed with hay. HC