Kitten development - when to do what?!

So I know quite a few of us have kittens around the same ages so I was wondering what stages they're all up to and when you have done or are planning to do things like beginning the weaning on to food and introducing a litter tray?

Also how are all the kittens doing, gaining weight well?

Daisy's kittens are 3 weeks old today and doing really well, they're all between 360- 380g little chubsters. They've all started to really play in the last few days and today for the first time 2 of them will follow the laser light toy which makes for lots of giggling as they're still a little uncoordinated lol.

I'm planning on waiting another week before introducing some meat mixed with KMR, but was thinking of introducing a litter box this week and maybe some KMR on a saucer to get them used to the idea of lapping? They've all had top ups of KMR from oral syringe when weight gain slowed around the 10 day mark so they know the smell and taste, does this sound about right?

Alley Cat Allies has a great week-by-week progression chart for basic kitten development stages: http://www.alleycat.org/page.aspx?pid=956
Kitten rescue (http://www.kitten-rescue.com) also goes through development stages - just if you're looking for benchmarks.

I know when Sybil's kittens were young we started offering watered down wet food at about 4 weeks. One took to it immediately, one took another 2 weeks before he would even try.

Those links were very helpful thank you, another question I have Is so far we've all been washing our hands AND using an antibacterial hand sanitizer before handling the kittens is it ok now to just be washing hands instead? I don't want to risk them catching any bugs as I'd read they are very susceptible when small but I can't remember where I read it or how long it said to the extra precautions for lol

Mum2Daisy said:

Those links were very helpful thank you, another question I have Is so far we've all been washing our hands AND using an antibacterial hand sanitizer before handling the kittens is it ok now to just be washing hands instead? I don't want to risk them catching any bugs as I'd read they are very susceptible when small but I can't remember where I read it or how long it said to the extra precautions for lol

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Washing is absolutely sufficient.  Hand sanitizer is actually usually not really recommended because the risk (though small) is that they or the queen might somehow ingest it through licking the hand and it could make them sick.   The shelter I work with explicitly tells everyone NOT to use hand sanitizer and that it is actually better to do nothing than to do that.

Oh! :-( we'll stop using it now then,hopefully hasn't done any harm, they all seem fine, would any problems show immediately or later down the line?

I'm sure you have not done any harm! It is unlikely anyway but just an extra precaution to take in not using it.  If something bad had happened you'd probably know quickly.

Please do not stress about it- really did not mean to alarm you, just to let you know it was really not necessary! 

Ok thanks, they're all doing well and nearing 400g so I'm fairly confident they're all healthy but we'll definitely stop using the hand sanitiser

So after catching Ickle Pickle in Daisy's food bowl today the decision was made to start them on some food today, I mushed down some of the kitten meat and mixed it with KMR and it really went well here's a little video

[VIDEO][/VIDEO]