it's after midnight, and am I in bed? Noooooo

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Iggysbabysitter

Iggysbabysitter

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Once again I'm up after midnight with Bertha. It's like having a baby again... I'm ready for bed, but as I bent down to gather her up to cage for the night, I see she has emptied her guts on my couch. Yipee :( Unformed and full-o-mucus. So here I am, rambling between shots of electrolite-in-a-bottle, and cage cleaning. I look forward to the day I can sleep through the night and not wake up rushing to see that she's still alive. She's perky enough, making me chase her when it's cage time, and demanding attention late at night as I work. But she is sooooo boney and skinny, and I can see the ridge of her backbone, feel every rib.
Well, she's finally settled down into my sweater in her cage. Time for bed I guess.


(Bertha is the "flemish giant" I bought about a week ago, that doesn't look big enough to be a flemish... she's so small she looks like the wild cotton tails that plague the area.)
 
Yesterday morning, I awoke at 3 a.m. with a torn up stomach. Couldn't go back to sleep, and on barely 3 hours of sleep, I was stuck going to work, extremely tired and groggy. Yesterday was one my longest days at work thus far, but I managed to sleep like a log last night.
 
It sounds to me as though Bertha is ill. "Emptied her guts, unformed and full-o-mucous" sounds like mucoid enteritis. This is not something I've had to deal with in my rabbitry, but I would say take away the pellets for the time being and feed grass hay and a small quantity of kitchen rolled oats (like Quaker Old-Fashioned/Large Flake). You could also give her plantain, raspberry, strawberry and blackberry leaves. These will help firm up the poops without constipating. She definitely needs fluids. If her gut is distended with gas, you may have to give her some infant gas drops.

http://www.threelittleladiesrabbitry.co ... eritis.php
http://www.cottontails-rescue.org.uk/gutstasis.asp

You need more help with this than I am qualified to give you. I suggest you make a new post in the Rabbit Care forum and title it something like "Enteritis? Need help!" Give us a recap of Bertha's background - age, breed, when you got her, how she looked when you got her (skinny?) etc. Did she come from the same place as the one that died? I'm thinking that perhaps you were sold some very unhealthy stock.
 
The stool sounds like mucoid enteritis, but the rest of the information does not, unless she has a very mild case. To be honest, if mucoid enteritis gets to this point the rabbit is usually beyond help. I think the advice is still the best, though. Give the rabbit all the good hay (not fescue or some other poor grass hay but something with alfalfa or clover in with the grass)she will eat. The other thing is to give her plenty of water with "vitamins and electrolytes" or some other vitamin supplement (like pediaxxx.... or whatever they call it) tea might be a good idea, anything to provide plenty of water and some minerals.
If she lives for a day or two she probably doesn't have mucoid enteritis and may need to be treated with some antibiotics or a wormer of some kind.
 
The disease is now known as Mucoid Enteropathy.
You must keep the rabbit hydrated, even if you
have to feed it water with a needless syringe.
Dehydration is a rabbit killer. I would give the rabbit
whatever it will eat, you want to keep it eating so the
hind-gut remains in operation. Oft times with this disease
the rabbits system Shuts Down. This will lead to certain death.
I do not envy you position at this time.
Grass-hay and any other fibrous feeds are a must.
Dennis, C.V.R.
 
I have managed to get the probiotics into her, but I have to wait to get the dri-tail from the pet store. And have the bowl of rolled oats in her cage. She looks forward to her syringe of homemade electrolites... The baby oval is handy, just in case. It looks like an afternoon of vegging on the couch, remote in one hand and bunny in the other. At this point my dogs are a little put out, they want the attention, and so the poodle has been trying to get some of Berthas fluids.
 
Well, you know... there is no need to babysit Bertha that way. She can rest in her cage just as easily.

Do you have hay for her? If not, I could give you a couple of flakes to help get her through this.
 
Her intestines are inflamed, that's why she has the mucous. Hay may irritate it. Pellets are made of alfalfa or hay but are already chewed up so to speak and won't irritate the intestines . Rolled oats are good to help keep weight on. Pellets also contain minerals and vitamins that hay may not have, plus have the same amount of fibre, usually about 20-22%.She needs the fluids and the probiotics still. There seems to be 2 kinds of mucoid enteritis, one that kills within a day or two and one that just seems to be there but doesn't quite make the rabbit sick. This could be caused by a heavy worm load or by coccidiosis . I would worm her and treat for the cocci as well just to be sure.
 
Devon's Mom Lauren":2ewfehol said:
Her intestines are inflamed, that's why she has the mucous. Hay may irritate it. Pellets are made of alfalfa or hay but are already chewed up so to speak and won't irritate the intestines . Rolled oats are good to help keep weight on. Pellets also contain minerals and vitamins that hay may not have, plus have the same amount of fibre, usually about 20-22%.She needs the fluids and the probiotics still. There seems to be 2 kinds of mucoid enteritis, one that kills within a day or two and one that just seems to be there but doesn't quite make the rabbit sick. This could be caused by a heavy worm load or by coccidiosis . I would worm her and treat for the cocci as well just to be sure.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying you are wrong, Lauren... you certainly know a lot about rabbits... but I have never seen this advice given for this kind of ailment. Can you provide some sources so I can look into it a bit further? Thanks!
 
my guess if she has runny/mucousy poops and is very active...that's not entretis/entropathy...that's coccidia. Treat it, give her grass hay, oats and some pellets... and she'll get better. Seriously.

That's how my brush with coccidia started. If I knew then, what I know now...would have saved myself a whole whack of heartache. It's easy to treat.

Don't mess around...just treat her and get it done. :)
 
Well, it's been a while since I was here. Bertha has spent here morning pooping :) Who knew I'd be overjoyed about THAT?! So she is getting baby oval for the gas; pineapple juice and electrolites for hydration; kale, hay, dandilion greens, plantain, and willow to munch on to get things going again; and frequent massage to help push out the poops. I'll be in search of sodium sulfamethazine 25% solution when the kids get home. She is moving around the sittingroom, eating some, and giving me a constant reminder to either get a steam cleaner or get hardwood floors for that room.
 
well, I looked into getting the sodium sulfamethazine 25% solution, and it's sold in 4L bottles for $60, and the feed store doesn't have any at this time... :( they offered me a tetracyclene based alternative, which works on chickens but I turned down, there's no info in this for rabbits).This is turning into one expensive meat bunny. I'll continue the diet, and if there's no real improovement by Monday I'll cull her.
 
That makes sense to me, Anna, and is about what I would do in your place. You definitely need good healthy stock to raise more rabbits. She may recover - sounds like you are doing all you can for her short of a vet visit, which is not usually in the cards for meat rabbits.
 
Saddly, no, no vet visit for a meat bunny. Like our chickens, if one gets sick, cull it, it's not a pet, it's a food source. After spending hundreds on our favorite barn cat, just to have her die the day she was suposed to come home has kinda jaded me towards vet visits for something like this. Technically she isn't a pet, she is food. It's just the attachment I have for her as my first flemish giant, and a bit of personal attachment because she's so darned cute that has me working so hard not to cull her. So, now she is pooping on her own, quite frequently, not runny, a little dry, but she's doing it without my help now. She is drinking lots when I offer juice, and I'll water some down and fill her crock before bed. She still has a full looking tummy, like she's a bit bloated... but maybe that's because the rest of her is so skinny... she's so thin I'm not sure what to offer her to help her. Do I stick to just hay and dandilion for a while, or add pellets and BOSS to help her fill out (if she isn't culled).
 
Are you giving her kitchen rolled oats? Most bunnies love them, find them very digestible and they do help put on a little weight. Probably if she is doing okay in the morning, you could add back a small quantity of pellets. The thing is to give a bit of something and assess how it is affecting her rather than giving a large amount right off the bat. BOSS will be good later, but may not be so easy to digest just now. Not really sure about that.
 
Well, she looks great today :) The bloated tummy is gone, she is eating, peeing and pooping with ease, and is happy to see me, and ready to run around the house with the dogs (she chases my mini poodle). I'm glad she made it through the weekend, and I hope this is the last time I have to go through a GI problem. Saddly she won't be welcome in the colony pen in the shed, Pepper hasn't seen her in days and has rejected Bertha's company. Now the size difference between the two is huge. Pepper (NZ doe) is quite large next to Bertha (baby flemish giant), and chased her around the pen quite roughly the last time they saw eachother. I'm headed to the colony forum to see about options for Pepper and Thumper...
 
Iggy,

Something you may wish to do occasionally (if you have any around where you live) is feed a few sycamore leaves. They're the trees that sprout the little prickly gumballs. Whether fresh or dried after they've fallen, they were very effective in dealing with bunnies which had upset stomachs and early stages of diarrhea.
 

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