When Are Kittens Ready To Leave The Mother

The first few weeks.

When are kittens ready to leave the mother. Your furry friend had a litter of kittens and now those cuties are ready to find forever homes of their own. Weaning the process of transitioning from mother s milk to cat food doesn t happen overnight. 8 weeks the organization cats international recommends keeping kittens with their fellow litter mates and mothers until about 8 weeks in age. You might worry how mom will handle losing her kittens after all the time they ve spent together.

However a kitten is typically ready to leave his mother at about 8 to 12 weeks of age. Kittens aren t fully weaned until 10 to 12 weeks old. The time varies from one kitten to another since several factors come to play. Because kittens are still nursing from mom up to 8 weeks old and they are not 100 reliable for the litter pan.

This is because they will need to stay with their mother to feed on her nutritious milk as well as stay with their siblings to learn valuable social skills. The weaning process usually continues for about another month until the kittens are fully weaned between eight and 10 weeks of age. First of all there is no set age on when the separation should be done. But that s not so.

When can kittens leave their mother. In many cases kittens begin eating strictly solid foods at around 8 weeks and then may be ready to leave their mothers for good. The liquid kitten food should gradually get thicker until it is a watered down canned kitten food or a moistened kitten kibble. When kittens are born they can t even crawl and have to wriggle on their bellies towards their mommy s.

Twelve to thirteen weeks of age is the time that is almost universally considered to be the optimum earliest time to remove kittens from their queen and by this age the kittens should be ready to go out into the world and begin the next stage of their learning development. During this time the kittens will still occasionally nurse on their mother but they will also start to eat liquid kitten food. Kittens are generally ready to leave their mother and start eating regular food at about eight weeks of age. Kittens develop quickly so it s easy to think that because they re eating drinking and using the litter box on their own it must be time for them to leave the nest.

Also kittens need important social time with mom and siblings to be physically and mentally ready to leave.