The 'Runt'

[Tammy22]

Hi Everyone,

i was just thinking about runts in a litter, after seeing a few pics of runts.

I have never noticed any 'runt' in any of my Roborovski litters, although there has always been a smaller one in every litter, they just never looked like the runts i have seen in Syrian litters.

To me they look as if they have not yet fully developed, they dont just look smaller than all of the rest of the litter, they actually look as if they are younger than the others in the litter.

I have recently started to breed rabbits (expecting a litter in a few weeks!!) and have read that you should mate a rabbit once, then again in 12 hours and apparently this increases the size of the litter because the act of mating releases eggs and twice as many eggs are released so twice are fertilised (apparently ) so i was thinking that maybe something similar happens with Syrians, maybe the runt is actually slightly younger than the rest of the litter??

Sorry, i think i am just mumbling , but does any of this make any sense to anyone? and is it at all possible?

The fact that most of the runts catch up to the rest of their siblings, seem to support my idea.

Tammy x

ps. is there always a runt in a Syrian litter?

[souffle]

There is not always a runt Tammy in Syrians though that is not to say there is not usually one born which does not survive as we don't see babies for a while after they are born but I would support your idea in that in many rodents there is delayed implantation where the fertilised eggs do not always start to develop straight away so that is a possibility that some started later to grow. Obviously once the mother starts to give birth then all the pups are delivered so if some have started later they may well appear younger. Another factor I think must be the position of the baby in the uterus. Some may be more compressed and some are likely in a better position for the placenta to provide nutrition to the growing baby. With large litter I imagine this is important and also the cords probably get compressed and allow less blood to reach some pups than others. If you are born small and less developed in a large litter you probably don't get so much milk as the bigger ones so it is only when you can eat solids that you can really start to grow and they do usually end up the same size as the others. That's my thoughts anyway

[sarahh]

Hi Tammy we had a runt in our litter and she has caught up lovely and is doing really well you can't even see now at nearly 4 weeks that she was ever the runt. You may not even get a runt of the litter I think it just depends on how they develop and the size of the litter. I think runts of litters are cute anyway. Another run we have once went onto live till he was 2+ years and was healthy and happy.

I hope this helps

Sarah x