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Silver Star Rabbitry

Silver Star Rabbitry

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Joined
Dec 26, 2009
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Location
North Louisiana
I was in my rabbitry watering and feeding, when I heard a sputtering sound coming from the cage of 3 month olds that I had just checked. One of the does had her head tilted up and what looked like diarrhea coming out of it and her mouth. I took her inside to wash it off and them put her in her own cage, but I think that she will by dead by the morning. She is now laying in her cage constantly opening and closing her mouth and twitching her head. What happened? I had just checked her and her littermates and they were all happily hopping around the cage.

Emily
 
Whoa... :( I'm sorry to hear about your doe! That would have freaked me out!

It sounds to me like something in her ruptured. Her stomach, maybe?

Did you clean the soiled part of the cage she had been sharing?
 
A rabbit's (and many other similar animals like horses and guinea pigs) digestive tract is designed so nothing can go backward once it enters the stomach. They cannot vomit. To have stomach contents go backward generally means death. In horses it usually means a ruptured stomach although the cause isn't always obvious. The wrong food too quickly (lots of grains or carbs), too long between meals, too little indigestible fiber in the diet, or anything else that can effect gut motility and digestion or produce excessive amounts of gas. I've heard of rabbits throwing up and then dying if they are fed meals of something such as pellets or vegetables in groups so they rush to eat theirs before the others might get it. I've never heard anyone explain what exactly happened though. Most of them probably didn't even take the body to a vet to find out the details.
 
Ruptured stomach was my first thought too. I think under the circumstances that it would be best to euthanize the rabbit, if it is still alive. So sorry you had this happen to one of your rabbits. It must have been very upsetting, to say the least. It is not the kind of thing you are ever likely to see again, so don't worry about that aspect of it. And don't blame yourself. I'm certain it was nothing in your care procedures that caused it.
 

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