TexGardenGirl
Member
I have several meat rabbits (well, hypothetically meat, we haven’t actually slaughtered any yet) and before now have only lost one (other than babies under a week). That one had been losing weight despite eating well and had very sticky sweet urine at the end so I suspect diabetes, though I know it’s rare in rabbits. That was about a year ago. Other than that the most serious problem has been that most of them haven’t properly shed their fur this summer - the old coat is getting matted. None of them enjoy being combed but I have been trying for about a month to comb what I can and any time I’ve got my hands in a cage I try to grab a small mat if they let me. They live outdoors in cages in an old chicken coop.
Anyway, that’s just background. This morning two of them were dead. It’s been hot here - over 105 - and I usually put frozen water bottles in their cages in the afternoon but I forgot yesterday so my first thought was overheating and I was feeling terrible about it. One was stretched out in his cage, the other was just curled up like he went to sleep and didn’t wake up. But I decided to go ahead and cut them open to see if anything obvious was wrong. Sorry I didn’t think to take any pictures. Since I’ve never slaughtered one I’m not really familiar with how their insides should look, but I am a former vet tech, and I’ve both slaughtered and necropsied lots of chickens and seen lots of dogs and cats in surgery, so I am not entirely clueless on what to expect.
They both had very gassy intestines which were a weird shade of grayish green rather than the pink I expected. But perhaps the color was just due to being dead for a few hours. When I lifted the intestines out of the way the first thing I noticed was stomach contents spilling out of a ruptured stomach. On the first one I thought maybe I had somehow punctured it but looking back I don’t think that’s even possible without also getting the intestines but they stayed intact. And on the second one I was extra careful and I know I didn’t nick anything. In both cases the stomach contents looked like softened pellets but was a huge amount, and it smelled sour, much like sour crop in a chicken. It didn’t look like the stomach “exploded”, there was no splattering of the contents, just like a bag of wet food had split and spilled. Livers looked normal, gallbladder intact, no fluid in abdominal cavity but there was fluid in the chest cavity of the first one (I forgot to open up the chest on the second because by then I was pretty sure it was the stomach rupture.) I don’t know if maybe the chest fluid can develop after death? Heart and lungs looked fine on the one I looked at. In addition to the very gassy intestines, one had some diarrhea present in the rectum and evidence of a little diarrhea recently on his anal fur.
I hadn’t noticed either acting especially different lately. They eat manna pro pellets and a variety of grass hays.
One had seemed a little more wiling to be petted but I thought it might be the fact I’ve been combing him more lately. He was in a 24x24” cage alone and was 15-16 months old. He’s never eaten a lot of hay, but recently I put in some hay from our yard and he seemed to like it a lot better. He didn’t go crazy and eat it all, but ate significantly more than usual. I’ve been putting in some of that yard hay almost daily for about 10-14 days. His appetite for pellets seemed to go up in that same time although I also found a few pellets more than usual that fell through the wire. So either way he’s been digging through the feed more than usual. I have not observed him to be acting uncomfortable unless his allowing me to pet him more might somehow mean something.
The second one was 13 months old, in a 30x36” cage with a littermate. They get along well. I hadn’t noticed anything at all out of the ordinary with him, though it’s always harder to notice changes when they share a cage. They had access to the same hay from the yard. (All the rabbits have also had some timothy and/or orchard grass hay in addition to the new hay).
So we suspect that there is something wrong with the hay from the yard. It is just a wild-ish country yard, probably half Bermuda grass, with other weedy grasses and random weeds. The only weed I know of that I know to be toxic is the “field bindweed” (Convolvulus arvensis) and I usually can pick it out because even after mowing its vines stay pretty intact. I suppose I could have missed some. Also my husband just remembered that area had a fire ant mound which we treated recently (maybe 2 months ago) with fipronil. I had forgotten about that, but when buying the fipronil I felt ok about it because it’s whats in Frontline for dogs and cats. I realize that doesn’t make it safe for rabbits to ingest but at the time hadn’t planned on using that grass for hay. And they didn’t ingest any on its own, just residue that maybe absorbed into the grass or dirt that got mixed in.
So far all the other bunnies seem fine.
Does anyone have any ideas what might have happened? I’d hate to lose any more, and we are planning on slaughtering several in the near future - it’s just a scheduling issue. I’d rather not eat them if something bad is going on, but also if it’s just the heat then maybe we should push to harvest them sooner before the heat takes them.
Thank you!
Oh I almost forgot - the second rabbit, the one with no visible symptoms, had no visible testicles. The scrotum was clearly there, but empty. I’m pretty sure he had them before (also he’s been in a cage with at least one other male for his entire life and no babies have occurred) and I forgot to look for them internally after I opened him up, so I don’t really have complete information on that. Just thought I’d mention that weird detail in case it means something.
Anyway, that’s just background. This morning two of them were dead. It’s been hot here - over 105 - and I usually put frozen water bottles in their cages in the afternoon but I forgot yesterday so my first thought was overheating and I was feeling terrible about it. One was stretched out in his cage, the other was just curled up like he went to sleep and didn’t wake up. But I decided to go ahead and cut them open to see if anything obvious was wrong. Sorry I didn’t think to take any pictures. Since I’ve never slaughtered one I’m not really familiar with how their insides should look, but I am a former vet tech, and I’ve both slaughtered and necropsied lots of chickens and seen lots of dogs and cats in surgery, so I am not entirely clueless on what to expect.
They both had very gassy intestines which were a weird shade of grayish green rather than the pink I expected. But perhaps the color was just due to being dead for a few hours. When I lifted the intestines out of the way the first thing I noticed was stomach contents spilling out of a ruptured stomach. On the first one I thought maybe I had somehow punctured it but looking back I don’t think that’s even possible without also getting the intestines but they stayed intact. And on the second one I was extra careful and I know I didn’t nick anything. In both cases the stomach contents looked like softened pellets but was a huge amount, and it smelled sour, much like sour crop in a chicken. It didn’t look like the stomach “exploded”, there was no splattering of the contents, just like a bag of wet food had split and spilled. Livers looked normal, gallbladder intact, no fluid in abdominal cavity but there was fluid in the chest cavity of the first one (I forgot to open up the chest on the second because by then I was pretty sure it was the stomach rupture.) I don’t know if maybe the chest fluid can develop after death? Heart and lungs looked fine on the one I looked at. In addition to the very gassy intestines, one had some diarrhea present in the rectum and evidence of a little diarrhea recently on his anal fur.
I hadn’t noticed either acting especially different lately. They eat manna pro pellets and a variety of grass hays.
One had seemed a little more wiling to be petted but I thought it might be the fact I’ve been combing him more lately. He was in a 24x24” cage alone and was 15-16 months old. He’s never eaten a lot of hay, but recently I put in some hay from our yard and he seemed to like it a lot better. He didn’t go crazy and eat it all, but ate significantly more than usual. I’ve been putting in some of that yard hay almost daily for about 10-14 days. His appetite for pellets seemed to go up in that same time although I also found a few pellets more than usual that fell through the wire. So either way he’s been digging through the feed more than usual. I have not observed him to be acting uncomfortable unless his allowing me to pet him more might somehow mean something.
The second one was 13 months old, in a 30x36” cage with a littermate. They get along well. I hadn’t noticed anything at all out of the ordinary with him, though it’s always harder to notice changes when they share a cage. They had access to the same hay from the yard. (All the rabbits have also had some timothy and/or orchard grass hay in addition to the new hay).
So we suspect that there is something wrong with the hay from the yard. It is just a wild-ish country yard, probably half Bermuda grass, with other weedy grasses and random weeds. The only weed I know of that I know to be toxic is the “field bindweed” (Convolvulus arvensis) and I usually can pick it out because even after mowing its vines stay pretty intact. I suppose I could have missed some. Also my husband just remembered that area had a fire ant mound which we treated recently (maybe 2 months ago) with fipronil. I had forgotten about that, but when buying the fipronil I felt ok about it because it’s whats in Frontline for dogs and cats. I realize that doesn’t make it safe for rabbits to ingest but at the time hadn’t planned on using that grass for hay. And they didn’t ingest any on its own, just residue that maybe absorbed into the grass or dirt that got mixed in.
So far all the other bunnies seem fine.
Does anyone have any ideas what might have happened? I’d hate to lose any more, and we are planning on slaughtering several in the near future - it’s just a scheduling issue. I’d rather not eat them if something bad is going on, but also if it’s just the heat then maybe we should push to harvest them sooner before the heat takes them.
Thank you!
Oh I almost forgot - the second rabbit, the one with no visible symptoms, had no visible testicles. The scrotum was clearly there, but empty. I’m pretty sure he had them before (also he’s been in a cage with at least one other male for his entire life and no babies have occurred) and I forgot to look for them internally after I opened him up, so I don’t really have complete information on that. Just thought I’d mention that weird detail in case it means something.
