Nest box management

The way does prepare their nest boxes for an incoming litter makes me laugh at times. In the photo above is a nest box that's been worked over while the doe is waiting out the last few days before babies come. We put a layer of wood chips and a nice bed of grass hay in the box but most does, like the one above, have to do their own nest-building.

Some does are a nervous wreck until they get the box in their cage. Then they build a nest immediately, burrowing into the hay and sometimes even pulling some fur. The burrow into the hay confirms that the doe is indeed bred. Sometimes they burrow in and then, a day later, tear it apart. You never know what pregnancy hormones do to the brain.

We had a doe once who, when the box was delivered to her cage, promptly tore the bedding to shreds. She threw out every bit of hay and wood chips. If we put more in, she tossed that, too. But the morning she was due, she pulled copious amounts of fur and then delivered immediately. See what I mean about hormones and brain activity?

So I don't pay much attention to the pre-birth nest. But the post-birth nest box interests me a lot. Here's the kind of nest I love to see when I check on the new mama and babies:

What I like to see is a nice fluffy pillow of fur with new babies nicely tucked in underneath. I've tried to duplicate that with newly-pulled fur but I can't do it. When a mama had healthy babies in the box and she's going to take good care of them, I see a nice fluffy nest.


Here's a nest after a doe lost her babies.

Instead of being light and fluffy, this nest is tromped down. Only rarely are there living babies in a nest like this, although I've sometimes found newborns alive in the fur. What usually happens is that the doe will, within 24 hours, build a nice fluffy nest like the first one pictured if there are living babies in the nest. If no babies survived, the nest is more like a shelled-out hollow of flat fur and grass.