Abscesses In My Herd

Posted here awhile ago asking about my doe who had a swollen face. Well it turned into a giant abscess and eventually fell off and was super gross. She has been in quarantine ever since. Then disaster struck. The doe in the cage next to her developed 3-4 abscesses. She was bred before the first was noticed but she lost her litter. Then the doe who was on the other side of patient zero lost a litter but I looked her over for any signs of illness and she checked out clean. Then another doe of mine lost her litter of 8 after 2 days but she was a first time mother and pretty distanced from the other 3 hole cage so that may be unrelated. Now I'm lost and I don't have any idea what to do? I can't eat these rabbits or continue to breed them so they will most likely be culled. My real question is do I need to cull the whole herd? Could this be something they are all carrying now? Really lost and really PO'd about the whole thing. Any advice or guesses as to what's going on would be extremely helpful. Thanks.

Many would start culling hard for an illness because treating many things can lead to increased health issues and decreased med effectiveness over generations but I prefer not to assume that from one incident. Any healthy animal can develop a small infected injury into an abscess and then the excessive amount of bacteria present can overwhelm other healthy animals. I would treat for strep. I have seen strep infected neck abscesses spread in other animals including horses and guinea pigs and it could cause other problems. Penicillin injections are used in horses and safe in rabbits, generally given in the hindleg muscle, while guinea pigs usually have the abscesses surgically cut open and rinsed from the outside since they are more sensitive to antibiotics and can't handle things like penicillin. Broken abscesses are highly contagious. You might want to buy a box of latex or vinyl gloves to change between handling obviously ill rabbits. Especially when the abscesses break. After an abscess breaks rinse with a syringe, curve tip styles can apply more pressure into deeper holes but may have to be ordered online, and betadine or chlorhexadine solution. Initial infections may occur from pokes both inside and outside the mouth with very stemmy hay, wood chips, or any loose wires on the cage and mesh bottom feeders. I also had more than one colony rabbit swell up to golfball size from a bite wound on the hindquarters.

My herd gets abscesses with aggravating regularity. Have never found a way to prevent them so if the animal looks like its in pain I put it down but if it looks happy enough I let it work its course and then when it breaks and heals I either eat it then or if its a good breeder, I keep it.

I did NOT know I could give the big P to my bunnies so that is information to file under THANKS Akane!

My FW buck just got a sinus abscess and its now draining.

How long a withdraw on P. is it Akane?

I found these articles a while back and bookmarked it. The facebook page actually links to the second article and has a bit more information.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/christin ... 946411623/

Successful Eradication of Severe Abscesses in Rabbits with Long- Term Administration of Penicillin G Benzathine/Penicillin G Procaine

They used the stuff they administer to cattle. I was able to find it for $13 at tractor supply. It's a fairly large bottle and should last for a long time unless your treating a bunch of rabbits at once. The major drawback is treatment time.

I have only treated breeders with pen g so I don't know the withdrawal period from using them as meat. In cattle the discard time for milk is 10-30days depending on the type of pen g. The bottle probably says the period for large livestock meat animals.

There is this little drug calculator. The buttons for more info and such do not work but the calc still does. Just double check that the lb dosage is equal to about half the kg dosage or calculate it yourself from the given dosage range because I did find one that didn't agree. http://www.morfz.com/rx/drugcalc.html

akane":1yo9gve3 said:

I have only treated breeders with pen g so I don't know the withdrawal period from using them as meat. In cattle the discard time for milk is 10-30days depending on the type of pen g. The bottle probably says the period for large livestock meat animals.

There is this little drug calculator. The buttons for more info and such do not work but the calc still does. Just double check that the lb dosage is equal to about half the kg dosage or calculate it yourself from the given dosage range because I did find one that didn't agree. http://www.morfz.com/rx/drugcalc.html

Click to expand...

Once you have calculated the dosage, (for all your animals) write it down in a notebook or other item kept with your medications--it beats having to do the math when one is stressed!