Is 7 weeks too soon to rehome kittens still nursing from their mom?

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! This is the pet peeve of all veterinarians I know. In general, I recommend taking the advice of people who have advanced degrees in animal health and medicine. Breeders have no required certifications or education, and often no actual evidence for their recommendations. In this specific case, I will say that for PUPPIES, I prefer 8 weeks of age. However kittens seem to be able to wean, transition to kibbles, and potty train earlier than dogs. Six weeks with their first vaccine and deworming on board is a perfectly safe and reasonable time to get kittens into their new homes! Best wishes to you, the kittens, and their new families!

Kittens best stay with their mommy until they are 12 weeks old. Their mother will teach them what is good to eat and what not, how to hunt, and what to hunt safely, how to groom themselves properly, how to use a litter box, what animal is dangerous to them, how to carefully negotiate this world. The kittens will also need their mother still for psychological comfort, even suckling after being weaned is comfort when something was scary. Staying together with their siblings will teach kittens social skills, they get to play-hunt, play-fight, and have fun with other kittens, it keeps them fit, helps them to develop coordination and muscles. So if you can find homes for them before they are 12 weeks old, tell the new owners that they will get well socialised fit kittens that have no problems, rather than kittens who will cry because they miss mommy and the siblings, do have accidents, and show behavior such as cloth sucking, etc.

At 6 weeks they are old enough to be weaned. You can started with dry kitten food mixed with a little water and canned food to entice them. If they eat well, then you can decrease the amount of canned food and water until they are eating dry food. The mom will also help by letting them nurse less and less. Once they are eating a good meal 3-4 times a day, they do no need any milk from mom and go to a new home.

At 6 weeks of age, kittens are able to eat on their own however if they have relied on their mother mostly for food up until this point I would recommend offering the kittens along with mom food and slowly wean them away. If though you can be certain that they will eat solely on their own now without any issues then yes it would be just fine

Hello there, Kittens are typically weaned at 8 weeks of age. Kittens that are weaned later in life may chronically suckle on objects through their lifetime. Sometimes this can become an obsessive behavior, lead to ingestions of non-food objects, or can cause injury to another pet. In the wild, most kittens would be quite independent from their mother already. Chronic suckling can only happen in captivity when they are kept together longer than they normally would be- being kept together means there is no natural end to the suckling. I'd recommend keeping them strictly separated for a few weeks to months to try to stop this behavior. They will likely become anxious and vocal at first, but it will be for their benefit in the long run. I hope this is helpful. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

Hello, thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. As long as the mom will let them nurse she will make milk. I would not call it abnormal but it is not really good for them to nurse after 8 weeks of age. They actually become lactose intolerant after that time and even though they seem OK it could cause them issues in the long run. The mother usually stops the kittens from nursing around 8 weeks of age because they will get teeth and start biting the nipples making her uncomfortable. They must not be doing that since she is still allowing them to do it. The mom continuing to make milk also puts a strain on her body nutritionally and she may get underweight and unthrifty. It is best to separate the mom from the kittens until the milk dries up and then have mom spayed. Hope this helps. Best wishes.

While eight weeks is best, it's fine to have Cayde come to your home at seven weeks since you will be at home. That will be great in helping her adjust to her new home, and at seven weeks of age, she will be fully weaned from her mother.