Greenwich Rabbit Rescue

                                            

                                                             

                              MALE RABBIT

                              female
photos taken at the rescue

 HELP THE BUNNIES, 

          

SPONSOR A CASTRATION? £50

                                                              

DIARRHEA

Diarrhea is when the stools are watery and very loose. This will very quickly cause your rabbit to become dehydrated, and lethargic. It must be treated urgently as death will follow if it continues for longer than 24- 48 hours. The causes can be bacteria, virus or a dietary change or use of antibiotics.Please seek out your vet.

MY RABBITS EATING HIS POO. This is normal behaviour they are called caccotrophs and they look like a bunch of poo grapes. These poos contain proteins and vitamins which are absorbed on there second trip through the intestines. It the diet your feeding is high in carbohydrate and low in fibre then you will see  more of these. More fiber and less protine will make things better. These types of poo are very likely to get stuck to the fur of your rabbits bottom and then he will be very prone to fly strike.

 CONJUNCTIVITIS

This is the same as you can get and will cause redness and a white discharge from the eyes. It can be spread to both eyes. Treatment is often easy and your vet will give you antibiotic eye drops for it.This a bad case the hairhas come out and its very crusty. This needs to be dealt with. Another cause of the eye looking like this is when the tooth roots brow up to wards the tear ducts.

 

all photos taken at the rescue

PASTEURELLA [ SNUFFLES]

This is like a cold in humans but in rabbits in contagious and uncurable.You need to have swabs taken by the vet to see what bacteria it is for the right treatment. The symptoms are sneezing discharge from the nose and wet sticky fore legs were they are trying to wipe their nose.Because your rabbit immune system will be weakened it can lead to many other heath related matters. Not all rabbits that have it show symptoms but may be carriers. The rabbit will need long courses of antibiotics and nursing. A tiny amount of vicks vapour rum under the nose may help with breathing and drops for the eyes. Sometimes if they are very bad they will not eat so this will have to be done by hand.Fluids are important and can be given by mouth if they wont drink. Pasteurrella can be passed by contact with another rabbit or by you on your clothes if you have touched the nose. Also sneezing when rabbits are housed close together, hutches water bottles and bowels.

 

                                                                                       

BLOAT

Bloat is when the stomach fills up with gas. The symptoms are the tummy looks like a blown up foot ball and the rabbit will not eat and will not want to move. They may grinding their teeth because of the pain. quite often they will not pass anything. The vast majority of rabbits will die its so hard to treat. You can help by making them move around give pineapple juice and food liquidized by mouth. Your vet should give a gut stimulant AND PAIN RELIEF IS VITAL. Bad diet or stress can be the cause.

---

                                                             e                                                                               

                      

                                                         

Coccidiosis is a commonly-seen cause of diarrhea, especially in the young animal. The organism responsible is a protozoan parasite, Eimeria steidae. Other forms of the Eimeria species can also cause disease.

There are two distinct forms of coccidiosis; liver and intestinal. Liver coccidiosis is usually affects the young to yearling animal, and is manifested largely on a non-clinical level, save for possible lack of gain, and perhaps a slight persistent diarrhea.

The intestinal form is more common, especially in those animals on high carbohydrate, low fiber diets. Signs are seen anywhere from three weeks of age through adulthood as populations of Eimeria become high enough to cause problems for GI tract.

Some signs of intestinal coccidiosis are: severe diarrhea with a sudden onset; persistent non-responsive diarrhea which is not alleviated by increasing fiber levels in the diet; or a positive fecal flotation test for coccidiosis.

Eimeria is a small protozoan parasite which colonizes the crypts of the intestinal wall. As higher numbers accumulate, damage may be done to the wall of the gut, and a diarrhea with an extremely distinctive odor is released.

Once smelt, never forgotten; a fecal flotation test should be performed immediately to differentiate coccidiosis from other causes. A positive result means it is time to treat the herd and step up one's disinfection program.

Coccida are parasites, and as such, shed eggs which are infective after 24 hours out of the body, which is why a disinfection program is essential. Daily removal of all fecal material from the cage wires, resting boards, and floors will aid greatly in reducing the occurrence of coccidial enteritis.

Liver coccidiosis is not usually a great cause of diarrhea, but is a significant cause of unthrifty appearance and lack of gain due to liver damage.

The damage done to the liver and bile duct can appear as small, pencil-point white areas on the liver; in some very severe cases, larger areas of the liver may be discolored.

These livers are not safe for human consumption and must be discarded, which is a complaint often heard from the processor as well.

Treatment of coccidiosis of either type may be accomplished by a common method.  This is the use of a sulfa drug such as sulfadimethoxine, sulfaquinoxaline, or sulfamethazine as directed by the veterinarian.

This drug class is one of the small number approved for rabbits; however, dosage should be determined by the veterinarian and caution must be taken to observe the prescribed withdrawal period before using the animals for meat of any kind.

Once treated, the animals generally recover without major recurrence. Outlook after treatment is promising, and unless the animal experienced severe and prolonged dehydration, recovery is swift and uneventful. Keeping dietary fiber levels high is helpful in encouraging recovery.

From SB in america

                                                            

A second common diarrheal complex is what was formerly called mucoid enteritis, named that for the clear jellylike stools which appear as the disease progresses. As time and research have shown, mucoid enteritis was not entirely accurate as a name, so the title mucoid enteropathy was adopted to take in the many ramifications involved.

Mucoid enteropathy, or ME for short, affects usually young fryers on a high carbohydrate, low fiber diet, although there have been cases when a different diet composition was used. The initial signs appear as a slight listlessness and lack of appetite, combined with an insatiable thirst. The affected animal will commonly sit hunched, with its head high and front feet in the water crock. With automatic watering systems, the animal will again sit hunched directly beneath the valve and hold the head high. As this continues, grinding of the molar teeth will begin and a very liquid diarrhea will erupt.

After a period of 12-48 hours at this stage, the young animal will be extremely weak and begin discharging a clear, jellylike substance that may even be formed into stoollike pellets. The definitive diagnostic method for mucoid by the average rabbit breeder is to pick the animal up and shake it gently. If ME is present, this movement will produce a sound like a half-full Thermos bottle.

Dehydration in ME is a killer; animals provided with sufficient subcutaneous or IV fluids have a better chance to recover. Feeding straight fiber sources to encourage gut peristalsis recovery has been proven to be of value. If palpated, some animals will have a distended and doughy to hard cecum. For the commercial breeder, these animals are usually counted as a dead loss, as recovery is possible, but hardly worth the effort to them; the growth rate afterward is severely depressed. Affected animals are usually culled.

Preventive measures have varied over the years; from copper in the feed to a very high fiber level. A high incidence of ME is normally diet related; the precise cause is not yet known.

A finding linked to the impaction of the cecum is a pleural effusion, or fluid accumulation in the lungs. Animals with this phenomenon might recover in time also; but this result is doubtful.

Outlook is poor, few animals recover from this disease, and of those that do, virtually none do as well as they might.

It does seem to vary in incidence between geographical areas; perhaps this is something which might be intriguing to study.

Persistence, patience, and lots of good clean oat or grass hay seem to be the best and most available remedy and preventive at this point in time.

From SB in America

                                                                

CANDIDIASIS
This is a yeast infection on the skin, like thrush in humans. Mostly affecting the chin and the dew lap. If they become wet and stay damp this will bring it on. The treatment is given by your vet.
 

MANGE
 Rabbits don't often get this and the cause is a mite that burrows into the hair follicles.If your vet thinks your rabbit has this they will take a scrapping of skin and put it under a microscope.
It can be present but there may be no symptom, if your rabbit is unwell at all they can take advantage of this and mulitply and cause infection. The symptoms are a moist dermatitis and small pustuals. The treatment is the same for hay mites but they may also need a bath with medication.


EAR MITES.

Not that common and i think a myth that lop eared rabbits alwayes get it as ive never had a case of it in a lop in 20 yrs. The mites live in the ear and cause irrtation and there is a build up of crusty ear wax. To start with you may just notice your rabbit scratching his ears a lot, but its very viable when the crusty wax developes. Please check your buns ears weekly. If left it can cause a great deal of damage to the ear and a lot of pain for the rabbit. The treatment is again Ivamectin injections by the vet. If there is a lot of wax your rabbit will have to put under for this to be removed as its painfull. Other rabbits near by should be treated also. There hutches should be treated with flea sray.

                                                      

The signs for this is the center of the eye becomes cloudy and white. When its complete the rabbit will be blind in that eye. No treatment will be given. Rabbits can manage very well being blind in one eye. If both are affected them i would make sure they have a partner so when they go completely blind there friend will be a help to them.

POTASSIUM DEFICIENCY
Other wise known as floppy bunny. This affects young rabbits about 8 to14 weeks old. The signs are you  will find them collapsed and unable to get up. I have had this problem in the past and it seems to be passed on by the parents both being carriers of the problem, as when one parent is swopped it dosen't recur. Its caused by a lack of potassium in the body. The best treatment is tomato puree and the rabbit will usualy take this by mouth readily. If within a few hours they are not back on there feet then they will need  treatment from the vet . High doses of corticosteroids, will be given. Many times it will not acure again.

RETROBULBAR ABCCESS
You cannot fail to see this as the eye starts to bulge out of the head. Causes can bea tear duct infection ,tooth root infection or even a hay seed that has worked its way behind the eye. The treatment would be a very long course of antibiotics or the eye may have to be removed. Glaucoma is very similar but the eye ball itself swells weres it stays the same size in abccess.

SLUDGY BLADDER

This is easy to spot if your rabbit wees on concret or news paper, the urine is thick white and has cyrstals. Sometimes so thick it looks like pus. The rabbit may have urine scalds on the back feet be off his food and depressed. Its main cause is diet and too much calcium  and protein. Be careful that your not feeding to much calcium in their diet such as broccoli,watercress, kale, dandelions,parsley, and spinach and high protien feed.
 To cure this means changing the diet adding more hay, wild plants and greens, and little or no dry food. Plenty of water.

NAILS


The nails of your rabbit should be checked often as if they do not wear down they can get very over grown.This rabbits nails are so bad one has turned the other way.Walking on nails like these must be very uncomfortable to say the least . Please if you cannot do them your self get someone else to help or go to the vet. The rule of thumb for nails is just cut them back to the hair line then you can be sure not to cut into the quick.Don't forget rabbits have two dew claws like dogs that are above the foot. These if left will turn back and grow into the leg. You will need small animal clippers for the job, there are only about £5.00