Hi, Brian from Australia here. Decided to come here to see if I could get some advice I probably won't be able to get on an Aussie forum. Bit of a sad story coming up, but I want to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Well, I found this little baby hare, about 10cm long and very light, soaked and shivering in the middle of a bare patch on our front lawn. Now, I know hare mothers leave the babies to fend for themselves in the day, but this little guy was wobbly and thin, seemed a little dehydrated, and he was smack in the middle of the zone my cat patrols (and she's killed a half-grown baby rabbit before, so this little guy wouldn't have stood a chance if she spotted him).
Not considering hares to be even half as "noxious animal" as rabbits (and I
like rabbits and won't do a thing to the ones near our property, though the guy at the bottom of the valley shoots them regularly), we decided to try and help the little fellow. We scooped him up (and he actively climbed onto my hand, so maybe he was cold on the ground? I don't know) and put him in a box, at first with a clean towel to help dry him off, then later with a clean synthetic fleecy jumper for him to snuggle down into, as well as a woolly sock to put him in (something my mother used to do with birds). It was at this point that we both, me and my mother, went looking around the 'net for info on raising a hare.
Now, a bit of background here: We've cared for natives before. We've raised two kangaroos, a whole bunch of native finches, and we've nursed a brain-damaged parrot back to the point where he could fly once more (he became incredibly affectionate in the process and we eventually sent him to live with other rehabilitated birds). So we're not inexperienced in general, we just don't have details on hares.
Anyway, the info I've been able to find seems very inconsistent. Most of it seems to be "best guess" stuff adapted from rabbit info. A lot of info seems different depending on where you get it from: One big feed in the night, versus four feeds. Heat them up, versus just keep them cosy and let their fur take care of it. They do need to be stimulated to move their bowels, versus they don't.
Well, we did the best with the info we could find, I hope.
The box was kept above the temperature of the rest of the house, around 21-27 degrees C according to the little temperature gauge we got from the pet store (and I really wondered about his temperature sensitivity - I mean, the mothers leave them out in all weather, and the temperature this time of year ranges from just above freezing some nights to 30+ degrees C, although for all I know that's the reason there aren't many hares around here). We bought a hot water bottle, but I was hesitant about using it because I felt it might heat the entire (lidded) box with no cool areas and give the poor little guy heatstroke. The box was kept in quiet places, first in the sunroom, then in my computer room (speakers turned
off).
I gave him a dose of di-vetilac baby animal formula under the advice of the local vet, one scoop of powder to 60ml water, doses being 3ml at a time (Feeding utensils were sterilised each time, water was boiled before mixing).
The next feeding attempt was three hours later, and my mother couldn't make him take it. Then I tried again three hours later and managed to get him to drink it all by holding the syringe tip in his mouth and letting small amounts out for him to swallow. I managed to get most of the three millilitres down his throat each feed, being careful not to let him breathe it. This was the standard progression for the next two feeds or so.
His skin would tent up as though he was dehydrated when we first found him, but that seemed to improve as feedings went on. He appeared to go between alert and moving to dozy and wobbly/floppy several times - I put the wobbliness down to the room being too hot (I know it makes
me drowsy) and turned the heater keeping it warm down to one bar. When moving, he liked to get out of the sock and huddle with one side against the cardboard.
Towards the end of the three hour feeds I noticed he was grinding his little teeth and hunching a little (which I interpreted as gastric distress), so as well as trying to stimulate him to move his bowels in the usual way (stroking a damp cotton bud around the ano-genital area) I spent a little time very gently rubbing his tummy, which produced an almost immediate relaxation and cessation to the tooth-grinding. At the next feeding session, he'd perked up and had produced quite a few little dingleberries (and peed rather heavily on my hand when I held him), so we felt that we knew things were moving down below. It was around this time that I also noticed that one of his little eyes didn't want to close, and sometimes appeared weepy. His other eye was fine, and he seemed to favour it for looking at things.
He was very thin, too - I know hares are rangy, but babies should always be chubby, yes? We could feel his little hipbones, and the line between his ribcage and tummy was very sharp, with the tummy being sunken. I didn't want to risk the shock that overfeeding might produce, though, so I kept with the three-hourly feeds until I did some maths and decided that since the advice on the net called for four of those 3ml doses every day, and said advice seemed to have a consensus on spacing the doses out to every three or four hours, that a better schedule was needed.
So the second day I had him I fed him every four hours starting at 8 AM (so 8 AM, 12, 4 PM 8 PM). The last feed at 8 PM was of a higher concentration (one scoop to 40ml water, as advised under "Dilution B" on the back of the tin, as opposed to the earlier "Dilution A"), as I felt he really shouldn't be so thin, and probably needed the extra nourishment. Then I intended to just let him mostly rest through the night until 8 AM the next day. I was hoping I didn't stress him too much during the feedings - he didn't seem to like the little syringe we used, much, but wouldn't suckle from the rubber teat on the bottle we got him. I woke up and checked him a couple of times (about every three hours) for temperature stability - lowest it got was 21-22 degrees C, highest was 27 C just after the sun went down (It's summer here, so it stays up 'til about 9 PM).
Nevertheless, in the morning the little guy had passed away. My mother reckons we should have kept up the constant feeds with no overnight break and chanced the hot water bottle, and maybe we shouldn't have gone to the richer dilution. I don't know what to think - he seemed not to be in tip-top condition when we found him, but I was hoping we could help. Since there is a non-zero chance of this happening again, and we're probably the only people in our rural area (we're near Melbourne, if that means anything to anyone here) willing to give a little non-native like this a chance, has anyone got some advice, particularly on the subject of temperature, feed dosages, and how much and how to feed an undernourished animal (if, indeed, he was starving)? Feel free to ask for details I might have missed.
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