Farm Fresh: Rabbit kits sadness and survival

Our two rabbit does kindled on the 30th and 31st of January. Since she has twice previously failed to make a nest in her nest box we put Scarlett in a guinea pig cage in the garage.  The idea was that it would be slightly warmer and that if Scarlett failed to make a nest I might still be able to save some of the kits. Scarlett did a much better job this time and made a nice warm nest in a corner of the guinea pig cage. Alice (pictured above) is a stellar doe and kindled in her usual nest box without any fuss.  I counted about 7 babies in her nest, hard to tell because they were very energetic when I peeked under their fur blanket.  And they looked roly poly and fat from her feeding them in the night.  When I went to check on Scarlett's 5 kits that first morning I could see that they had not been fed.   I spent some time thinking about my options. Finally, I decided to take 3 of Scarlett's kits out and put them in with Alice's litter.  I had to put some vanilla on Alice's nose so that she would not reject the ones that did not smell like her own.  The vanilla wears off after a day or two and by then all the babies smell the same. Here they are all snuggled together in their nest. The little black face in the upper left corner is one of Scarlett's kits.

  I decided to try to "force" nurse the remaining 2 of Scarlett's kits on her belly.  That means I held her while she was laid her on back and placed the 2 kits on her belly to nurse. They were eager to eat and Scarlett let them.  For two days that worked well.  Then on the fourth day, Thursday morning as I went about my morning chores, I was devastated to see that Scarlett lay dead in her cage with blood all over the floor and a large bloody blob between her legs.  Sometimes a kit gets stuck or reabsorbed and then the doe gets an infection and dies.   I think that is what happened to Scarlett. That means that her remaining 2 kits are orphans.  I decided not to add them to the 10 kits that Alice is already working hard to feed each night. We tried to give them rabbit formula, but it was messy and they did not seem to want to eat much of it (it has a low success rate anyway).  Finally, I hit upon the idea of having Alice "force" nurse them during her off hours (middle of the day since they feed their babies at night).  That worked well yesterday. I am giving Alice oats to help her have produce plenty of milk and also carrots for a treat.  She is a gem.  I am so glad that nothing happened to her.
Here are the 3 remaining kits from Alice's first litter (all bucks). They are about 3 months old now.

 Very curious fellows.