hepatic coccidia? safe to eat? (graphic)

Background:
I've had a doe and buck for about half a year, tried to mate them twice with no success so far. My parents had a pet rabbit when I grew up, have kids of my own now, and we like to eat small game, so decided to start trying to raise rabbits, i'm still very green with the rabbit thing. I checked on them last night when I gave them water and both were fine. This morning my daughter let me know that our doe was dead. I was already outside shoveling the driveway, checked her, and she was still warm. I had my knife on me so unthinking I took her out back and dressed her to find out why she died. once I got inside I saw pea sized white dots on her internal skin, and multiple organs, including lungs (not shown in pic). I threw the pelt, organs, and carcass the deep freezer till I can hopefully get confirmation from people more knowledgeable then I. the hutches were set up top and bottom, she was on the bottom, I notices some feces that came down from the top (where the buck lived) into the bottom area (where she lived)

Between the dots, and feces, and google my guess is she died from hepatic coccidia. can anyone here confirm from the pics? The good news from what I read is that my overlooking gloves on the autopsy today shouldn't matter, as people can't catch it, which would not of been the case if it was tularemia.





is she still safe to cook and eat like normal? I'd have to have to use our first rabbit for coyote bait.

I personally would not risk eating it.

:yeahthat: You had said that she died on her own.. That is just to risky.
I am truly sorry for your loss..But welcome to rabbit talk lots of great folks here and excellent advice.

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wirelessdreamer said:

. This morning my daughter let me know that our doe was dead.

Click to expand...

If I butchered an apparently healthy rabbit and found a somewhat spotty liver from coccidiosis, I would eat the meat but not the organs.

This case is different. I would not even consider eating this rabbit. I don't know if it had hepatic coccidia or not--It is a bit difficult for me to tell what is what in the pictures because of the way everything is pulled out. Those lumpy masses in the foreground look sinister--Is that the liver?

I strongly suggest you dispose of this rabbit's carcass where other animals cannot eat it. It is definitely not normal.

DONT eat her!!

She died from liver failure so her entire body is full of toxins her badly diseased liver could no longer filter out of her blood.

In the wild she would have been picked off by a predator long before she became so contaminated and personally I would not even feed her to the coyotes and would burn her

Welcome to RT!

I am sorry for the loss of your rabbit, but thank you for posting those pictures, as it is good to know what worst case scenarios look like. I've never butchered before (other than dissection in class), so I wouldn't have known what is "normal" for a rabbit and what isn't.

Whoa, that is bad, I wouldn't eat the meat or feed it to pets. I thought hepatic coccidois was spots confined to the liver? I haven't ever seen any organs that look like that.

thank you everyone, looks like i'll be disposing of her, if anyone knows how to add the pictures to the main picture thread, feel free.

also, what can cause a liver to give out like that?

I assume the pelt will still be fine for me to tan still?

With white growths throughout the body, couldn't that be systematic pasteurella?

Did you break open any of the spots? Were they hard or squishy?

Your rabbits liver gave out because there was something very wrong with her. Did she have any symptoms before she died?

I wouldn't eat that, or feed to other animals either... I've seen some sick buns, but never anything like this.

Thank you for posting pics so we can see it.